Think you could get COVID-19?

Commuters, wearing facemasks, wait for a canal boat in Bangkok. Pic/AFP

Let's get a few things straight first - Mr Xi Jinping, president of China, is not hiding in a dungeon because he's afraid of catching COVID-19. The shrill YouTube video making the rounds is by an alarmist called Christopher Greene, well-known vendor of bullshit who last predicted that the planet would be plunged into a world war starting 2012.

Another thing - keeping your throat wet does nothing to prevent COVID-19 infection. That's another debunked but widely shared factoid. WHO put out a notice warning people not to believe it.

And eating or avoiding spicy food has zero to do with COVID-19, which is a respiratory infection. Oh, did I mention that masks don't help prevent infection? They help prevent spread of infection if you have COVID-19. Getting the message?

So let's get straight to the question thudding in your heart: how afraid should you be of COVID-19? I'm writing this because when something unknown comes your way, the questions you ask are as important as the answers you get. Most people are getting scary answers and they haven't even asked the right questions yet.

If I may read your mind for a moment, your main questions are - Am I going to get Coronavirus? Is someone I love going to get it? Is COVID-19 going to kill us all? Let me break these down into swallow-sized answers.

What is your risk of exposure - and infection?
First, exposure is not the same as infection. Exposure means you just happened to be within infection range of someone with Coronavirus. What are your chances of exposure? Very, very low, unless you are surrounded by people who just got back from hot spots - China, Italy and South Korea right now. That might change soon, so stay tuned.

There are, as I write this (March 2), 89,780 cases of COVID-19 infection on a planet of 8 billion humans, or about one case per 100,000. Oh, and did I mention that 45,534 of them recovered completely? Just to relax those tense shoulder muscles, here's another factoid: traffic accidents kill 17.4 Indians in every 100,000. It's very remotely likely that you will get exposed to COVID-19.

Let's say you get exposed somehow, maybe in a train or an international workshop. What are the chances you'll be infected from this exposure?

Let's check out what happened in Wuhan. Did "everyone" in Wuhan get infected? Let's assume that all 11 million people in Wuhan got exposed (not true). However, we know that as of today only 80,026 people in Wuhan have been detected with the infection. That's an infection rate of 7 per 1,000 people exposed.

The story thus far - your chances of getting exposed are very, very low, and on top of that only seven in 1,000 exposed people get infected. Feeling any better yet?

Let's say you somehow did get infected with COVID-19: runny nose, flu-like feeling, fever, maybe some trouble breathing. What are the chances you'll call it a day?

This is the fatality rate. In Wuhan 3,069 have died out of 89,780. A fatality rate of about 3.4 per cent, or about 7 people in every 200 infected.

Let's go to worse case.
Since many infected people might have experienced symptoms so mild that they did not bother reporting them, it's possible Wuhan's infection rate is higher than estimated. Let's see what happens to your personal risk of dying from COVID-19 if the virus was 10 times more infectious. Let's make it a real threat.

You're in a city of 10 million and 4 million get exposed. Of them, let's say that instead of 0.07 per cent, 10 per cent or 400,000 get infected. Since COVID-19 has a fatality rate of about 3.5 per cent (as far as we know now), about 14,000 will die.

What are your chances of getting infected and dying? It's simple math - infection rate multiplied by fatality rate. In this case, it would 10 per cent (infection rate) x 3.5 per cent (fatality rate) = .035 or 3.5 per cent.

That means you have a 96.5 per cent chance of dodging COVID-19 even if the virus was 10 times more infectious.

Are you breathing yet?
It's very difficult to nail down infection and mortality rates in a fast-evolving epidemic like COVID-19 so expect numbers and predictions to change. The most useful advice I've read about COVID-19 so far is:

1. Stay calm
2. Don't bother with face masks unless you're going into public spaces like an airport.

3. Carry a hand sanitizer. Wash your hands as many times as you can, especially after touching public surfaces in trains, buses or taxis.

Deep gratitude to Dr David Latz, whose brilliant and calmly reasoned article in Medium informs much of what I've written here. You can read his original here at https://tinyurl.com/vepcfn6

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper

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