Three months into the pandemic, here’s how likely the coronavirus is to infect people
The Washington Post, March 28, 2020
Three months into the pandemic, here’s how likely the coronavirus is to infect people
“This is a new virus that has landed in the human community. We are a brand-new, naive population. We’re kind of sitting ducks, right?” said Ilhem Messaoudi, a virologist at the University of California at Irvine. … At the genetic level, the new virus is not terribly different from the SARS virus that emerged in China in 2002 … “We thought we cured it. We thought the virus disappeared. Well, the virus didn’t disappear, did it?” said Michael Buchmeier, a UC Irvine virologist who has studied coronaviruses for three decades. … “Social distancing is building speed bumps so that we can slow the spread of the virus. We have to respect the speed bumps,” Messaoudi said.