Openlab.citytech.cuny.edu



For my bibliography, I am going to ask the question: how does COVID-19 also known as coronavirus compare to seasonal influenza also known as the “flu”? The reason why I choose to create a bibliography about this topic is because I find it to be both interesting and important to know about, especially at this time. I believe that we all should be more informed about diseases like COVID-19 that have the potential to be very devastating to society. I have heard many people talk about how similar COVID-19 is to seasonal influenza, and would like to know exactly how these two diseases are similar, and how they are different. During my research, I am expecting to find the answers to the following questions. Why does the flu mostly infect people only during certain seasons, while COVID-19 has been infecting people all year round? Is COVID-19 deadlier than the flu? How much more contagious is COVID-19 than the flu? My hypothesis for why COVID-19 is so much deadlier than the flu is simply because there is no known cure for it at this time. My hypothesis for why COVID-19 is more contagious than the flu is because of COVID-19 has a longer incubation period than the flu so more asymptomatic people go out, and unknowingly spread the disease. I think that COVID-19 can also linger in the air, and survive on surfaces longer than the flu. My hypothesis or why the flu is seasonal, and COVID-19 is not, is that the flu is less resistant to heat than COVID-19. If I find things that don’t fit one or both of my hypotheses in any of the sources that I find, I will point it out in my source summary, and change my mind about the subject if the author has the right credentials.Faust, Jeremy Samuel, and Carlos Del Rio. “Assessment of Deaths From COVID-19 and From Seasonal Influenza.” Jama Network, 14 May 2020, journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2766121.In this academic journal, the authors wrote that public officials have been comparing the COVID-19 mortality rate to the mortality rate of seasonal influenza as an attempt to minimize the effects of .02have been worked beyond their limits. They also say that there has never been such a high demand on hospital resources in the United States, even during the worst flu seasons. The article states that the case fatality rate of the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak was 1.8%, thirteen deaths out of seven hundred and twelve cases, as of late April 2020. If this figure was adjusted to reflect the general population, the figure would have been closer to 0.5%. A case fatality rate of 0.5% would still be five times higher than the commonly cited case fatality rate of adult seasonal influenza. The authors of this article also claim that deaths from COVID-19 maybe be undercounted due to limitations of test capacity or false-negative virus test results. However, something else that’s been effecting the COVID-19 death count is that in some places like New York City, both probable, and confirmed, COVID-19 deaths are being reported. This has created the possibility that some deaths that have been labeled as having been caused by COVID-19 are not due to COVID-19. The counts of people who have died from seasonal influenza could be less reliable than the counts of people who have died of Covid-19 because adult influenza deaths are not reportable to health authorities, unlike COVID-19 deaths. Epidemiologists actually have to rely on surveillance mechanisms that attempt to account for potential underreporting, due to the fact that adult seasonal influenza deaths are not reportable. I believe that this source is credible. I thought that the authors of this article provided there readers a very informative viewpoint, and used evidence to back up there claims. The authors are both medical doctors which I believe are appropriate credentials for this topic. I have two questions. Could the reason why seasonal influenza isn’t as deadly as COVID-19 be because we actually have vaccines for seasonal influenza? What is the medical profile of the people dying from Covid-19? I believe that it is important to know how dangerous these diseases can be, and that the people who are more vulnerable to these diseases like people with preexisting conditions should hear about this, and do what they can to stay safe.Two quotes from this article that I think are important are:“Comparisons between SARS-CoV-2 mortality and seasonal influenza mortality must be made using an apples-to-apples comparison, not an apples-to-oranges comparison. Doing so better demonstrates the true threat to public health from COVID-19.”“Although officials may say that SARS-CoV-2 is “just another flu,” this is not true.” Willis, Olivia. How Does Coronavirus COVID-19 Compare to Flu?, 19 Mar. 2020, .au/news/health/2020-03-20/how-coronavirus-covid-19-compares-to-flu/12073696.COVID-19 also known as coronavirus is compared to seasonal influenza also known as the flu in this article from ABC news. The first thing that the news article talks about are the ways that COVID-19 and seasonal influenza are similar. The two diseases are both caused by viral infection, and they both can cause fever, coughing, and a sore throat. The symptoms of both diseases can vary from mild to fatal. They are also both transmitted in the same way, via respiratory droplets. According to the article, researchers from Australia have discovered that the immune systems in our bodies respond to COVID-19 in the same way as it would to seasonal influenza. The immune system cells that appear in the blood before patients recover from COVID-19, are the same cells we see in the blood of patients before they recover from seasonal influenza. The article then claims that COVID-19 is more contagious than seasonal influenza. They wrote that epidemiologists use a few different measures to work out how far and fast a virus is likely to spread. One of these is called the basic reproduction number, also known as the R naught, or R0. The Article refers to an infectious disease specialist named Doctor Sanjaya Senanyake who said that the R0 refers to the number of secondary infections generated from one infected individual. Dr. Senyake also says that For COVID-19, that number is 2 to 2.5. That means one person with COVID-19 goes on to infect “two or two-and-a-half people”. The R0 value for seasonal influenza varies, but is estimated to be around 1.3. That means that COVID-19 could be almost twice as contagious as the flu. Another claim is that COVID-19 is deadlier than seasonal influenza. Most people who catch COVID-19 or seasonal influenza recover from these diseases. The news article states that eighty per cent of people with COVID-19 just have a mild to moderate illness that lasts about fourteen days or two weeks. However, the fraction of people who develop severe symptoms from COVID-19 is higher than it is for seasonal influenza. According to the World Health Organization, fifteen per cent of COVID-19 cases are severe infections that require oxygen, and five per cent are critical infections, requiring ventilation. At the time that the article was written, the global case fatality rate was over three percent, but the author thinks that it is probably closer to 1 per cent. At a rate of one per cent, COVID-19 would be about ten times more deadly than the flu. The flu is estimated to kill between 290,000 and 650,000 people globally every year. I think that this is a good news article. I think that the author wrote an interesting, and very informative news article, with claims that I believe are legitimate. The author uses information from credible sources like the World Health Organization, and health experts, to back up there claims. If I could say something to Olivia Willis it would be that she is doing a great job at informing people about the similarities, and differences, between COVID-19, and the flu. I was surprised to find out that COVID-19, and the flu, are so similar that our immune systems even respond to them in the same way. I think that knowing the similarities, and differences, between COVID-19, and the flu, is important.A quotes from this news article that I think is important is:“Many people who fall ill with the new coronavirus disease will experience mild, flu-like symptoms. But COVID-19 is not the same as flu.”RAO, JOE. “Flu Season.” Natural History, vol. 125, no. 9, Sept. 2017, pp. 46–47. EBSCOhost, search.login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=124519995&site=ehost-live&scope=site.In this magazine article, the author states that activity from seasonal influenza peaks in the northern hemisphere, including the United States of America, between the months of December and February. Flu season is said to begin when autumn begins, around September 22nd. The opposite happens in the southern hemisphere. Seasonal influenza activity peaks in the southern hemisphere between the months of June and August. These are the winter months for the Southern Hemisphere. People who live in the tropical areas near the equator usually experience a much less well-defined peak of influenza or even may have two small peaks separated by a few weeks. The author states that a major reason why seasonal influenza tends to peak during the fall and winter is because of the cooler temperatures, and dryer weather, during those times of the year. Cooler temperatures could prolong the period of time that an infected person harbors flu viruses in the upper respiratory tract, because flu viruses are more stable. It could also be because the mucus is thicker and slows the beating of the cilia lining the airways. The low humidity helps keep the droplets from coughing, and sneezing, circulating freely. The author says that these conclusions were based on tests done on guinea pigs, published in 2007 by a team of microbiologists at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Guineapigs are susceptible to human influenza viruses. The author also said that some other reasons why people are more likely to catch seasonal influenza during the fall and winter have to do with different habits that people have during the winter months. One other reason why people catch the flu more often during the winter is because people tend to stay indoors in close proximity to each other more often during the winter, and this makes it easier for seasonal influenza to spread. Another reason is because school is in session, and this increases close contact between many children from different families. The author even states that reduced exposure to the Sunlight in winter may deprive some people of adequate vitamin D which can weaken their immune systems, and make them more vulnerable to diseases like seasonal influenza. I think that the author wrote this article using a style that they thought would be easy for the average person to read, and that would grab, and keep their attention. I believe that the claims made in the source are legitimate. The author of this magazine article is a broadcast meteorologist and an associate and lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and said that he obtained some of his information from microbiologists from at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. One question that I have after reading this article is: how will climate change effect flu season? I liked that I was able to learn why the flu is so much more prevalent during certain times of the year. Two quotes from this article that I think are important are:“Recent research, however, supports the view that, above all, cool, dry weather benefits influenza viruses.”“Many explanations have been put forward over the years as to why temperate zones have a pronounced flu season. Among them are people’s different habits in winter”“Why Is This Virus So Contagious?” Performance by Hank Green, YouTube, 1 May 2020, watch?v=cXfb2okvzds.In this video, created by a YouTube channel named “SciShow”, Hank Green, the host, tells viewers why COVID-19 is so contagious. He mentions that on April 7th, 2020, the United States Center for Disease Control published an analysis which estimated that, on average, each person who caught the virus in Wuhan, China may have infected five to six other people. This is twice the estimate of another disease named SARS. Green says that “outbreaks grow exponentially, not linearly” so if a person with SARS infects three others, and each of those three infect three other people, after five rounds, SARS can infect two hundred and fifty people. If a person with COVID-19 infects six other people, and each of those six people infect five or six other people, after five rounds, COVID-19 can infect more than six thousand people. He also says he still doesn’t know all the reasons why COVID-19 is so contagious, and that that researches from around the world are still trying to “piece together all the clues” to find out all the reasons why. One big thing that makes COVID-19 stand out is that people can pass along the infection before they start showing symptoms. This is referred to as pre-symptomatic transmission. Green says that with COVID-19, there even appears to be a few asymptomatic transmissions. This happens when people who do not become sick themselves pass the virus to another person. Many other diseases, including SARS, don’t transmit themselves asymptomatically like COVID-19 does. The answer to why many diseases like SARS can’t be passed by an asymptomatic person is because those diseases need relatively large droplets of fluids from the airways to successfully transmit themselves to someone else, like the droplets that come from coughs or sneezes. COVID-19 can transmit itself with smaller droplets that come from speaking, and breathing. One possibility for why COVID-19 can do this is that people who are infected have a lot of the virus in them, a high viral load. If there is enough of the virus in a person’s nose, and throat, then even the smaller droplets that someone breaths out could have enough viruses to infect someone. It is also possible that the reason why COVID-19 can infect people with smaller droplets is because researchers have estimated that COVID-19 binds ten times more tightly to human ace2s than SARS. Ace2 are proteins on our cell membranes that both COVID-19, and SARS attach to using there spike proteins. The better a virus is at binding to its receptor, the fewer viruses one needs to infect a cell. This could also explain how COVID-19 can infect people with smaller droplets.I believe that the creator of this video was able to present the topic in a way that was both informative, and at least somewhat entertaining. He not just talked about the topic, he also presented images, and short animations, to visualize the information. These visualizations help the viewer understand the information, and make the video more fun to watch. One question that I still have after watching this video is: could another reason why COVID-19 is so contagious be that COVID-19 can linger in the air or survive on surfaces longer? To better understand this video, I think people should look up more information about microbiology, more specifically about how cells, and viruses, function, and interact with each other. I believe that I was able to get a good answer to my research question about why COVID-19 is so contagious from this video. I believe that the claims made in this video are legitimate. The creator of the video used information from legitimate sources like the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the New England Journal of Medicine, to back up his claims. He listed all his sources in the video description.In conclusion, I think I learned a lot about both COVID-19, and seasonal influenza from my research. To be honestly, I was shocked about how little I actually knew about both of these diseases before I started doing my research. From my research, I learned why seasonal influenza is seasonal, why COVID-19 is so contagious, how COVID-19 infects cells, and that COVID-19 is indeed deadlier than the flu. I think all of things that I learned about these two diseases is important. Seasonal influenza, and COVID-19, have a lot in common, so I can see why a lot of people have been comparing COVID-19 to seasonal influenza. One thing that I learned from my research that I thought was interesting was that COVID-19, and seasonal influenza are so similar to each other that the immune system actually responds to COVID-19 in the same way it does to seasonal influenza. I know that comparing COVID-19 to the flu is often used as a way to downplay how much of a serious threat to all of humanity that COVID-19 is though. My research shows that COVID-19 could be twice as infectious, and up to ten times deadlier, than seasonal influenza. COVID-19 can transmit itself to other people via the small droplets that come out of people’s mouths from just talking, something that a lot of other viruses cannot do, which is the reason why we all need to social distance ourselves, and wear face masks out in public, especially if you actually caught the virus, and are currently contagious. I believe that people who are still trying to downplay COVID-19 by saying things like “it’s just the flu” should hear about this. I believe that the information that I obtained in my research would be able convince someone to stop believing that COVID-19 is “just the flu”, and actually start taking the virus more seriously. Treating COVID-19 like it is no big deal, and something minor, like how most people think of seasonal influenza, could, and already has, had dire consequences for many people, especially if they had were elderly, or had a preexisting medical condition. I believe that it’s bad for even young healthy people to catch COVID-19. Young healthy people most likely won’t die from the virus, but they can still help spread it around, and potentially get more vulnerable people infected. These are the reasons why I believe that people who still think that COVID-19 is “just the flu” should hear about this. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download