Ken Schechtman, professor of biostatistics and of medicine in the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
We in Missouri have been extraordinarily lucky so far. As of Sunday night, 106 people had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. There have been three deaths. We have been impacted psychologically and have begun changing our behavior in disconcerting but essential ways. Beginning Monday St. Louis and St. Louis County leaders have ordered their 1.3 million residents to stay home.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with this kind of circumstance. If you compare it to the flu, the coronavirus is particularly ominous. It’s probably 10 times as deadly as the flu that strikes every year, and it appears to be more easily transmitted. And perhaps most importantly, it can be spread by asymptomatic individuals who do not know they are infected. That’s a deadly combination that helps explain why the worst case mathematical models yield estimates of millions of deaths.
Given the above circumstances, it’s essential that we separate people until the average number of individuals infected by someone with the virus is near or less than one.
Read the full piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.