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Image 1. Authorities control a line of motorists waiting to be tested for coronavirus at Glen Island Park in New Rochelle, New York, March 13, 2020. Closing areas such as parks is an essential part of the social distancing needed to slow the COVID-19 outbreak. Photo: John Minchillo/AP Photo
By Forbes, adapted by Newsela staff
Published:03/16/2020
Word Count:765
Schools have recently been shutting down all over the country, moving instruction online. Sporting events are being canceled and postponed. The future of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan is in doubt. Festivals and conferences are also being delayed or postponed.
The cause for all these closures is a flu-like illness called COVID-19. COVID-19 is short for coronavirus disease 2019. It began in China. It has been spreading across the globe since December 2019.
There have been around 1,660 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in the United States. There have been fewer than 50 deaths because of it.
Health officials are telling people to not gather in groups. This helps prevent the spread of the virus.
Many people talk about the flu. Every year the flu makes millions of people sick. It kills tens of thousands of people. The flu is expected to make 50 million people in the United States sick this year. It is expected to kill as many as 52,000.
So why is everyone making such a big deal about the coronavirus? Why are events being canceled? Why are classes being moved online? Especially when there are so few cases right now.
There's a good reason to "cancel everything." The goal is to slow down the spread of the virus. This will also help prevent overburdening the health care system. If someone gets the coronavirus, they have to go to the hospital. If a lot of people get sick at the same time, the hospital will get full quickly. If too many people get sick at the same time there will not be enough space for everyone who is sick to be taken care of. That is what is happening in Italy.
It's called "flattening the curve." And that's exactly what it looks like when you see it drawn out.
Image 2. What it means to "flatten the curve." The peak on the left represents the number of COVID-19 cases if no protective measures are taken, such as hand washing and social distancing. Protective measures can reduce how fast the virus spreads over time, hopefully preventing hospitals from becoming overburdened. The capacity of the health care system can change depending on the amount of resources and health care professionals available. Graph: Max Roser/Our World in Data. Modified by Newsela staff.
Epidemiologists study diseases and how they spread. They try to predict how diseases spread. They look at how the disease behaves. If everyone acted like normal and did not limit social interaction the number of cases would increase. The number of people infected would grow quickly. They would overwhelm hospitals. This will result in more people dying. This is happening in Italy. There are not enough hospital beds or medicine for everyone who is sick. There aren't even enough healthy doctors and nurses to take care of everyone at once.
However, if that same number of cases gets stretched out over months it changes things. Then people can get the care they need. More health care providers can avoid illness and burnout, and fewer people are likely to die — as South Korea has shown.
But are we really headed for that many cases?
Yes.
Scott Gottlieb used to work for the Food and Drug Administration. He explained in a recent interview, the novel coronavirus — just declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization — is beyond containment. A pandemic is when a disease has spread all over a country or the world. If it's not already in your community, it's coming soon. The only reason total U.S. cases aren't already skyrocketing is that coronavirus testing has been such a mess that too few people — just 77 by the CDC in the whole week of March 8— are being tested. The CDC is short for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is the U.S. health care agency. You can't count cases you haven't found yet.
So what do we do to avert disaster? We have to flatten the curve. Fortunately, people are listening. And the idea has caught on so well among armchair epidemiologists that the #flatteningthecurve and #FlattenTheCurve hashtags have trended several times on Twitter in recent days.
Clearly, public officials and businesses are listening to the warnings of public health officials, as evidenced by all the closings and cancellations. But to be effective, ordinary people need to do their part by avoiding as much as possible any crowds and places where large numbers of people congregate, such as movie theaters, malls and events that haven't been canceled.