Our Experts Answer the Coronavirus Questions You’re Afraid to Ask
Since creeping onto the international radar late last year, COVID-19, or the novel 2019 coronavirus, has spread rapidly, infecting some 75,000 people and killing over 2,000, mostly in mainland China, where it originated. But thanks in part to deeply flawed containment efforts, including in Japan and the United States, the prospect of a massive global outbreak looms.
So far, one American citizen—who was in the virus’ epicenter of Wuhan, China—has died. Yet the number of U.S. cases recently doubled with the return of at least 14 infected people from a quarantined cruise ship off the coast of Japan, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has suggested more cases will follow.
To put the emerging crisis in perspective, The Daily Beast canvassed three top public health experts with particular insight into the spread of infectious diseases. Jeremy Brown is director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health, a physician and author of Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History. Irwin Redlener is director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and contributor to The Daily Beast. Michael Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
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