COVID-19 Blog - 03/20/20

COVID-19 Blog
03/20/20
Tung Nguyen, MD
Professor of Medicine, University of California San Francisco (UCSF)
President, PIVOT-The Progressive Vietnamese American Association

It has been 3 months since the first patients infected with COVID-19 showed up in China, and 2 months in the U.S. Worldwide, there are over 200,000 infected people as of March 20th, and  14,000 cases in the U.S. Since we can only test a small number of people, the actual number of infected people are much higher. As far as scientists can tell, the death rate is about 3.6%, that is, for every 100 infected persons, 3 to 4 will die.  This is about 30 times worse than the usual flu.

In the first 2 and ½ months of the pandemic, there were 100,000 patients. In the last 2 weeks, there are 100,000 more patients. This “exponential” or rapid spread is the reason why most affected countries have put in drastic social distancing policies. Imagine the numbers if we did nothing. Respected scientists made estimates based on the available data and concluded that if we did nothing, over 100 million Americans would be infected and 2.2 million will die. The drastic measures that we are seeing now, such as the entire state of California other than essential workers being asked to stay at home, may drop these numbers to about 100-200,000 deaths. As bad as this seems, the numbers do not include people who have other diseases who will die because doctors and hospitals cannot take care of them while taking care of COVID-19 patients. We do not have enough hospital beds or ventilators to take care of all the COVID-19 patients, much less other sick patients.

There is a lot of misinformation about COVID. Some people do not think this is a real problem. As a doctor, I can tell you that I have never seen doctors so concerned about a disease. This is worse than anything we have seen in a century, and it is real. You must follow the order to stay at home as much as possible. It is for your own safety, but also the safety of everyone you love. If they and thousands of others get COVID-19, they may not have the healthcare needed to survive. PIVOT will continue to give you accurate health information as the situation changes.