The Vegas Voice 9-20

How Well Was COVID-19 Handled?
By: Kyo Mitchell / A Healthier You
had a patient who expressed to me how
I horribly she thought the COVID-19 pandemic
had been handled. While everyone has a right to
their opinion, I prefer the objectivity of science.
Good science will always cite
references, so anyone can validate
the source of information and the
conclusions. All of the following
information is sourced from the
Centers of Disease Control (CDC).
In the United States, there have been
two pandemics in the last 15 years -
the swine flu/H1N1in 2009/10 and
COVID-19 in 2019/20. To compare
these two pandemics, we need to start by explaining what is called the
R0 (pronounced R naught) factor.
The R0 factor tells you how contagious a disease is. This is given as a
range of numbers. If a disease has an R0 factor of between 1.5 and 2.0,
that means that if a person contracts that disease, they will, on average,
pass it on to between 1.5 and 2 people.
In turn those newly infected people will also infect, on average,
between 1.5 and 2 people.
According to the CDC, the R0 factor for the swine flu/H1N1 was
between 1.4 and 1.6. The R0 factor for COVID-19 was between 2.0 and
4.0.
To understand this better, let’s go through 10 interactions of passing
on the disease. Using the highest R0 factor for H1N1 (1.6), one person
infected with H1N1 would result in 110 infected individuals in ten
iterations.
Using the lowest R0 Factor for
COVID-19 (2.0) one person with
COVID-19 would result in 1,024
infected individuals. With 15 iterations,
the numbers become 1,153 persons
for H1N1 and 32,768 persons for
COVID-19.
As of this date (09/17/20) the number
of COVID-19 cases is approximately
6.6 million over a six month period. According to the CDC, the H1N1
pandemic lasted about 1 year and infected 60.8 million cases.
Even though COVID-19 is far more contagious, there were less than
one fourth the cases compared to H1N1 per unit time.
Next Month: Comparing mortalities of the two pandemics.
Dr. Kyo Mitchell served as faculty at Bastyr University in Seattle
and Wongu University in Las Vegas for over a decade. Dr. Mitchell
practices in Summerlin and can be reached at 702-481-6216 or
rkyomitchell@gmail.com.
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October 2020