“Life does not belong to us; it travels through us.” — Photo by Travel Singularity

"Life does not belong to us; it travels through us." - Niccolò Ammaniti, Anna.

Latest update: March 10.

The Cases:
There are currently 120,000 confirmed cases globally: 65,000 recovered and 4,000 fatalities. The recovery rate is over 50%, and the mortality rate a little under 4%. 20% of patients need to be hospitalized, and 5% need respiratory support. However, 80% of the cases remain mild to moderate, and most people recover within a week or two.

The Countries:
75% of all the cases are in China, followed by 8% in Italy and 6% in the Republic of Korea. The death rate in Italy is 6%, one of the highest in the world, probably due to the higher average median age (45.4 vs. 29.6 years worldwide). Italian patients who died, in fact, had an average age of 81.

Demographic:
9 out of 10 cases are in people ages 30 to 79. 8% of cases are in their 20s, 1% are teens, and less than 1% are nine or younger. The fatality rate draws a clear pattern, linked to age:

  • 15% of deaths = people in their 80s
  • 1.3% of deaths = people in their 50s
  • 0.4% of deaths = people in their 40s
  • 0.2% of deaths = people between 10 to 39

As of today, no deaths in children younger than nine have been reported and, as an Italian and avid reader, I cannot help but notice peculiar similarities between COVID-19 and "La Rossa," a virus created by the mind of fictional writer Niccolò Ammaniti on his latest book, Anna (due the quote at the beginning of the piece). The story, published in 2017, takes place in 2020, in a lord-of-the-fly-ish future, wherea virus killed off everyone over the age of 14, leaving the planet a in the hands of children. Not sure if there's an English version of it, but it's a fascinating read.

The fatality rate, similarly to other coronaviruses, is higher when underlying health conditions exist.

  • Patients with cardiovascular disease = 13% fatality rate
  • Patients with diabetes = 9% fatality rate
  • Patients with respiratory diseases, high blood pressure or cancer patients = 8% fatality rate

Men are slightly more vulnerable to the virus (between 51% and 58% of cases, depending on the source).

Infections per patient:
On average, one coronavirus patient infects between 1.6 and 2.4 other people (around twice the common flu). There is no evidence of whether COVID-19 will or will not be impacted by seasonality, and this is, in my opinion, one of the main variables when it comes to making predictions. Another unclear variable is whether recovered patients remain infectious after their recovery or not. Some studies suggest that patients are not very contagious in the post-symptom period, but I could not find a unanimous opinion here.

Travel Bans:
As of today (March 10) Italy has imposed a nationwide ban on "unnecessary travel", and all Expedia bookings for hotels in Italy will be refunded, even the non-refundable ones (a full refund, so far, will only be guaranteed for bookings made before March, the 10th 2020 and with stay date between today and the 3rd of April, 2020).

The health and economic outcome:
"The first cases of AIDS," microbiologist at the University of Navarra, Spain, Ignacio López-Goñi wrote, "were described in 1981 and it took more than two years to identify the virus causing the disease. With COVID-19, the first cases were reported on December 31, 2019, and by January 7, the virus had already been identified (…) The genome was available on day 10 (…) Since January 13, a test to detect the virus has been available." As of today, there are over 30 potential coronavirus vaccines in the works, 80 clinical trials analyzing possible treatments, and over 160 articles accessible on PubMed on COVID19 (during the 2003 SARS epidemic, it took over a year to reach half this number). The future does not seem so dire. According to McKinsey, there are three possible scenarios and, overall, I agree with their predictions.

  1. Quick recovery: a fast rebound (Q2) after an initial acute drop in consumer demand.
  2. Global slowdown: recover at the end of Q2.
  3. Recession: recover at the end of Q3 or beyond.

Whatever the scenario, it is possible that travel will take longer than other industries to recover, especially due to the decline in Chinese demand and airlines missing the summer season. However, with the oil price declining, a spike in low-cost flights is very likely, boosting last-minute leisure travels. The next two weeks will be crucial to have a better understanding of the possible outcome(s).

Update. March 11th

Joe Rogan interviewed public health scientist and biosecurity expert, Michael T. Osterholm, during his famous Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Osterholm is author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, and Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe. It's one and a half-hour of very interesting data from one of the top authorities on infectious diseases.

Update. March 11th

Facebook (temporarily) banned advertisements for medical face masks to prevent the use of its ad platform to exploit people's anxieties on the virus.