COVID-19 Pandemic · 4:07am Mar 13th, 2020
Seriously, where did all the toilet paper go?
((My graduate training is in epidemiology and public health, and I'd like to think I know whereof I speak. This will be off-topic—possibly a more inane blog post than I've ever made here. You know what it's about.))
On Wednesday, 2020-03-11, the WHO announced COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, inciting a lot of severe responses from a lot of places. Schools are closing or going remote, workplaces are enforcing telecommuting, and conventions are being canceled. Taking a step back from all this, how has this disease changed?
It hasn't. COVID-19 doesn't know it's been called a pandemic, and it's not spreading any faster or behaving any differently because of it. It is no more infectious, no more lethal, no more dangerous than it was before. What's changed is our (that is, people in general) mentality on this "panic-demic." That's where all the toilet paper has gone—to fuel this mentality. (Though that's not saying it wasn't disappearing before that declaration.)
One person's word isn't going to change this response, but I'll say it here: Fear always has the potential to more damage than a pandemic ever could. Most families probably do not need forty rolls of toilet paper, or ten kilograms of canned food, or two gallons of hand sanitizer; it just makes it more difficult to purchase those goods when they're actually needed. The world is not ending because it's battling a pandemic—it's tripped on a rock. There's a reason why businesses are still working, schools are still educating, and conferences are finding ways to go on.
Tomorrow, the sun, too, will rise.
We are concerned because COVID-19 is a novel, infectious virus that humans generally aren't immune to. It got that way because it we believe it jumped from bats to humans sometime in November-December 2019, and the fact that it originated from a different species (we call that zoonotic disease) is why humans don't (yet) have much immunity to it. It's how pretty much all pandemics start (Ebola, SARS, bubonic plague, you name it). That lack of immunity means it takes longer for the immune system to mount a response, which generally means the disease is more infectious for longer, which generally means symptoms are more severe, which generally means the disease is more lethal to more people. The reason COVID-19 is a pandemic now is because it has the potential to spread to many and kill many if left unchecked.
If.
The above responses I mentioned (schools, businesses, and large gatherings) are severe, but necessary. It's called social distancing, and it's the most effective public measure to reduce spread of a droplet-borne disease. (It's not necessarily airborne—we don't know that yet.) Something that's easily hidden amidst all the other news about COVID-19 is that the original hotbed of all this, China, is actually controlling this disease quite effectively. A pandemic is not cause for panic—it's a statement that sustained, worldwide transmission of this disease is reality and that we should be ready. Apparently severe response is a good thing—it saves lives—and we should all do our part in them.
Find your information in credible places. The linked Youtube playlist above is a good place to start. The CDC, WHO, NIH, and your local public health department also have up-to-date resources on COVID-19: What to know, how to protect yourself, and how to protect others.
Penned while on the toilet.
((And if you must know: no, I'm not disease free, and yes, I'm still writing, albeit very slowly and without a goal in mind.))
Yay, you are ok!!