If you have lived anywhere other than under a rock in the last few months, you’ve heard of the new strain of Coronavirus. And what you’ve heard is scary, like the fact that tens of millions of people are quarantined in China to try and control the epidemic or that 8,000 cases have been diagnosed, 96 of which in 16 countries outside of China and that it’s responsible for 170 deaths so far. Just yesterday the World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency of international concern. This particular outbreak (nCOV) is causing a big stir because it’s never been seen in humans before. And I get it, all that information is scary. I’m not downplaying it. But in your panic, try to remember with SARS and all the outbreaks that came before it, the more information that comes out about it means the more that’s being learned by disease control, which generally means they are on their way to containing it. So that’s my attempt to calm you.
Also know that no matter what you learn, do NOT blame this epidemic on the beer. Because according to Google, folks are searching how Corona beer is responsible for this mess.
Corona beer lovers have no fear, your favorite beverage is not to blame for the coronavirus.
As the rapidly spreading disease continues to impact millions, it seems that many people are beginning to wonder whether the virus has anything to do with the similar-sounding Corona beer.
Google Trends recently calculated that in the United States, there has been a sharp increase in people searching for “beer virus” or “corona beer virus,” over the last week, USA Today reported.
They also revealed that Global search interest for “coronavirus symptoms” spiked +1,050 percent this week, with other top searches including “how does coronavirus spread” and “where does coronavirus come from.”
It definitely does not come from Corona beer.
That’s right, folks – unless that chicken downed a six-pack before you neglected to cook its drumstick all the way through, there is no connection. But is Corona beer concerned who this will affect business? Nah. The company trusts their customers to, “understand there’s no linkage between the virus and our business.” That’s good, and I think it’s the right way to respond. But I prefer this response:
The only man that can save us from the Coronavirus pic.twitter.com/xcxpvQPH2l
— ETC!ETC! (@IAMETC) January 27, 2020
And these:
Idk what is going on with this Corona virus stuff but all I know is it’s a good thing I prefer Dos Equis anyway
— Diego Levy (@DiegoJLevy) January 24, 2020
#coronavirus sorted pic.twitter.com/LStGxmxxpk
— Fergus McCann (@BunnetMcCann) January 30, 2020
Again, I know this is serious. Read up on how to prevent it and what symptoms to watch for. Get your flu shot. Wash your hands and keep hand sanitizer on you at all time. Take extra precautions if you visit a live market. Stay home if you are sick. And if you still need to relax after taking all the necessary precautions, why not a refreshing Corona with lime – it’s safe to do so.
PSA for everyone freaking out about this coronavirus:
A country that YouTubed itself into a 21st Century measles outbreak does not get to talk any shit about anyone else's health practices.
— Elliott Kay (@ElliottKaybooks) January 29, 2020
Photo credit: Nice Guys and Oleg Magni/Pexels, Getty Images and Twitter
This would be hilarious but for the fact that the real Coronavirus is so deadly.
Not really, outside Wuhan, the deathrate is much lower than the average for all cases. I believe the overal average is 2%. Still way worse than the common flu btw. The biggest problem is with the rate that it spreads. It’s communicable before you show symptoms and it’s estimated that one carrier infects up to 4 others at this point. That’s why the emphasis is on not travelling and staying put and putting people in quarantine.
Also a flu shot will not help against the novel corona virus. It will help to keep the normal flu away and keep you from a superinfection (although virusses will compete with each other too.
And I can’t stress this enough; it’s not enough to only stay at home when you get symptoms. This will not prevent further spread of the virus if you do happen to have caught it.
If you came in contact with someone from that region or travelled to China at all at this point. Please stay at home for at least 14 days and quarantaine yourself. Do not come in contact with others. It takes up to 14 days to start showing symptoms, but you are spreading it way before that moment.
And I’m pretty sure people aren’t serious with the Corona beer jokes… Also month, not months.
Something to keep in mind is the Wuhan Coronavirus has an average mortality rate of 2%, which is awful but is closer to the mortality rate of the average American flu than SARS (10%) or MERS (35%). The death toll is as high as it is because it is more contagious than it is deadly.
Good to know. I prefer to call it the Wuhan virus but I guess China doesn’t want to be associated with the virus?
Two percent (2%) case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918; so the 2019-nCoV (i.e. the 2019 novel coronavirus) is of significant concern globally. Also, keep in mind that most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1000 people (i.e. less than 0.1%). So although there is no reason to panic, there is reason to be vigilant.
Not denying vigilance, that’s always necessary even with no immediate threat. I just feel there’s a lot of fear and misinformation floating around and it’s best to know all the facts out there, especially if it may keep someone from outright panicking 😊
To put it in perspective, a 2% fatality rate means that 2019-nCoV is at least twenty times (20x) more deadly than seasonal flu viruses (which normally have a <0.1% fatality rate). Also, given advances in medicine, it is evident that the novel virus is more deadly than the 1918 Spanish flu.
Outside of China, vigilance mean washing your hands, covering coughs and sneezes, and staying home if you feel sick. If you have been in contact with someone who has travelled to the hotspot, vigilance means advising and pre-arranging your arrival at hospitals with first-responders so that the necessary precautions can be made to prevent further spread.
Yeah, but the issue with the Spanish flu (or with the current H1N1 strains) was also that those who’d get really sick and die were mostly young adults between 24 and 30 and not elderly people as usual. That’s what’s scary about it: it wiped the generation that’s supposed to build the society and make children. The coronavirus isn’t doing that. There’s been a lot of mismanagement from the Chinese authorities, there have been no fatalities outside of China so far, so I’d tend to believe that the actual mortality rate is lower than 2%
Also remember that the numbers thus far are skewed toward those who’ve presented themselves at hospitals — the “sicker” or “sickest” cohort. 2% of that group has died in China, but we don’t know how many people have contracted the virus and just not gotten sick enough to go to a hospital. I agree that vigilance is best practice, but I’m not boarding the excessive worry boat yet.
MTE, Cleo. I underdstand that this is a new virus and people are worried because it’s still not clear how it spreads, how severe it might be, and so on, but 2% is not panic territory IMHO. Yes, the Spanish Flu had a mortality rate that was about the same, but that was 100 years ago and medicine has advanced in leaps and bounds since then.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be cautious, but when I hear about drugstores selling out of face masks (when it’s not even clear that they do anything to protect anyone) and people levelling racist accusations against the Chinese, I get very annoyed at how we can get whipped into a frenzy so freakin’ easily these days.
Exactly
There is a lot of data available already (of course after 12000 infections…) and yes the 2% is accurate for the totals accounted for at this point. And it’s a lot lower outside of Hubei.
The biggest fear is if it spreads to countries where basic care like oxygen treatment and anti viral medications (and anti bacterial/anti fungal in case of superinfections) are not readily available. Countries where common pneumonia cannot be treated well, let alone if there are so many cases. The mortality rate will go up drastically at that point. But then ithe numbers would not be relevant for people living in countries where that care is available.
The main concern is the way it spreads and it communicability far before showing symptoms and people who have only weak symptoms or hardly any. They still are spreading the virus at that point.
OG
we dont know the mortality rate yet
please dont spread mis info
The more it travels, though, the more opportunity it has to mutate, and respiratory infections often open the door to secondary infections like pneumonia. I think that’s a large reason the WHO is taking such huge precautions. An once of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that.
I travel for a living, so you can bet I nabbed an N95-level mask ASAP when I heard this hit American cities. I already caught a rarer strain of Influenza A this year (not one in the vaccine – an outrage!), and that was….quite enough for me. That shit knocked me out for a week straight and gave me respiratory issues for three weeks after. It was a grim reminder of how deadly it can be to the immunocompromised if it took me, a relatively healthy 30 something, out for that long.
So while I agree the xenophobia is misplaced, I’m not going to yell at the WHO for doing more and not less. The real problem is how poor the public’s understanding of health issues really is. I am continuously startled how many people just don’t have basic medical knowledge.
I agree with you. I think the most concerning aspect is the possibility of it traveling to areas where there is generally less widespread access to modern medical facilities such as some parts of Africa and South Asia and it could kill far more people than it has in North America, Europe, and other East Asian countries, where I don’t believe anyone has died.
The pneumonia is not a secondary infection in this case. The virus itself can cause a viral pneumonia. Secondary or super infections are infections that worsen the pneumonia (which means nothing more than infection of the lungs) by adding to it (another virus, bacteria, fungii).
Also someone is not xenophobic for using the correlation between the population and the disease to prevent themselves from getting sick. Someone is not infected because they are from Wuhan, they do have a highter chance of being infected because the virus originated in Wuhan and they so happen to be from that city. The difference is in what it implies in keeping away from someone from that region. You don’t stay away because they are Chinese, you stay away because they might be so unlucky to have been infected by the virus. The culprit being the virus, not the person. The fear being the contraction of the virus, not the judgment of how someone caught it.
The scary part it that they haven’t found a cure yet. With SARS and other epidemics, they had something to fight it with within days/a week. There is no cute yet for this virus, and it’s been weeks. This is a VERY big deal and everyone should be extra vigilant and concerned. This is different from the others in that regard.
There’s no effective cure for SARS or the Middle Eastern strain, they are simply bad at replicating in humans and we now know how to manage the symptoms properly. The sane will likely happen for this strain
It’s been more than weeks. The first case was reported December 1 in Wuhan. This virus has been circulating for almost 2 months now. I know they didn’t start working on a vaccine until a month ago but a vaccine takes up to a year to create.
A “cure”? There’s no “cure” for a respiratory virus. There are vaccines and occasionally there are mediating agents like Tamiflu, which can make your flu less severe but certainly doesn’t “cure” it. You could just as easily be frightened that there’s no “cure” for the common cold.
An Australian university has replicated the virus so hopefully that will help.
Further proof that divestment in public eduction has real consequences.
Word.
Yes. People are ridiculously stupid these days.
I mean wow they really are. Do people not watch REAL news anymore? How could anyone equate the coronavirus with beer ??? I think people are just googling both as a joke (which is stupid because people need to take this seriously).
Yes so true. We have a plethora of stupid
I agree and the beer search is funny and I love Kaiser’s post. Sounds like an idea for a Monty Python sketch.
…
Do we really need more proof that a lot of people are just very stupid?..look who’s prez…
Yes. This “mix-up” is just evidence of the vast amount of stupid in this country. And we wonder how our current President is beloved by some.
Oh, I just came to say… bless their heart!! (That’s the American expression for poor fellows, not much intelligence there, right?- non-native speaker here…
Yup! Bless their hearts, indeed.
I suffered with the Corona virus all through college. Good times (and not so good hangovers).
I’ll see myself out now…
You know what goes well with a nice cold corona virus?
Lyme disease.
*ba dum tish*
I see what you did there. Well-played.
Name checks out ; )
@HAHA LMAO!
People are googling Corona Beer and the virus looking for memes making jokes about the connection, not to see if there is a connection to the virus and the beer. The news just likes to twist things. Lol 🙄😳
Definitely keep calm but be cautious. Wash hands for twenty seconds and with soap. IMO if you are sick or have a lowered immune system, be cautious and just wear a mask. In general, please try not to be racist. That’s how we get these oligarchs making money from fear and less logical paranoia.
And push your government or, if you don’t feel like they listen, at least try to get your local communities reps to respond to your needs and concerns. That seems to be evergreen advice that can stop these global situations from escalating – I wish!!!
My grandmother called me the other day talking about the Wu-Tang virus. I don’t even think she knows who Wu-Tang are, she’s just heard the name “Wu-Tang” more often than “Wuhan”.
That’s hilarious though!!!
Hmm. The cynic in me thinks Corona is using the virus name to plug themselves.
That would be pretty low, and though I wouldn’t put it past them I’m also not sure how it would help them (unless “any press is good press.”)
But I do think this is a case of people being ignorant of the meaning of the word “corona” (thinking it’s just a brand) OR if I’m being more generous about it, people just Googling before they pause to think critically.
I know. It’s dreadful. But I wouldn’t it past most businesses. And they could’ve had no telling how many people start something. Then they can run a series of compassionate ads, maybe even donate to the epidemic.
Ha! I wondered how long this idea would take to raise it’s stupid head. Do these halfwits also believe Pizza Hut is an Italian company, and that Burger King really was started by an actual king? It must be because the whole Corona-and-lime-wedge thing is so poncey. Pharque. 🙄
There’s no reason for the general population to panic but there are good reasons for the WHO to increase its alarm, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. As a virologist, I’m of course super interested in the case, but, ultimately, measles worry me much more than the coronavirus…
And seriously people, wash your hands, alcohol-based disinfectants like Purel are pretty useless, they give you a false sense of protection and dry up your skin too much. Good ol’ soap and water does wonders!
That is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard and I’ve heard some really dumb stuff.
I’m glad that China and other places are taking this thing seriously but I think there are only 6 confirmed cases in the US and those who perished were either quite old or under 3 years of age.
It’s another Flu type thing and those with poor immune systems will suffer most.
Honestly, I live in The Rocky Mountains and I’m more afraid of Lyme Disease and, no, it’s not the kind of lime you stick in a bottle of Corona.
YES. This is … extraordinarily dumb.
Humans are stupid ugh! Anyways…remember to wash your hands ya’ll and don’t be racist towards Chinese/Asian people (or anyone really). Some of the comments (not on this site) I’ve seen are horrible.
To the person who wrote that China mismanaged the situation at the beginning, or something close to it, can you expand on that.
Also the comment about youtubing our way to a measles outbreak, does he mean all the antivax info?
It was not me who commented but I’m really following it and I have read that it’s been mismanaged in at least two ways:
1. Instead of warning people about it right away the government punished people who talked about it online
2. Didn’t let the US (doctors/scientists) come in and help right away.
On the positive side I think they’ve just built a new huge hospital just for this and in like a week. That’s amazing.
thanks for the info
china has the ability to harness their population to allow them to build this 1000 bed hospital in under two weeks. But still their govt intimidates me, so controlling
The Chinese government is still not collaborating and sharing clinical data and information with international agencies like the WHO. The 1st cases appeared in the beginning of December and health workers who have been trying to spread the news about a potential new infectious disease were arrested instead of being listened to… Silencing doctors will lead to more infections, poor management of those who are sick and increase the rate of transmission, it’s silly. Ultimately, this will harm the economy much more than if they had been collaborative (cuz it’s really just about money)
There have been comparisons with how Chernobyl was managed and to a certain extend, they are apt. The earlier you know about something, the faster you can act and limit the damages. There are no reasons to panic, but refusing to collaborate and trying to keep things hushed will create the opposite effect.
thanks for your answer
Chinese doctors have sequenced the virus and shared it globally and this was confirmed by WHO. People can look this up on the WHO website and their on the second meeting on 30 January.
Apparently a QAnon faction is saying that consuming bleach wards off the coronavirus. I wish I was kidding.
Well, it probably does. Consume enough bleach and you’ll be dead. And when you’re dead you definitely will not need to worry about this or any other viruses.
Sounds like rabid anti-vax/anti-Western medicine types drinking turpentine. Yes, this is a thing.
first beer I used to drink steady when I was younger!!
I just want to say I am so impressed by the general level of intelligence and level headedness of the community of Celebitchy posters. There is no much good info cited and explained on this post about a subject ripe for panic and fearmongering.
I’m a university instructor in Beijing and have been on complete lockdown for what seems like a millennium. I chose to stay because the thought of being exposed during the long travel process back to the U.S. seemed riskier. I haven’t been in contact with another human since the 18th, the streets are empty and everyone is being vigilant. Having said that, what I wouldn’t give for a Corona with lime (or 20), sitting on a beach somewhere. CB and the comments have kept me in good spirits and sane – thanks for that. Be cautious everyone, but don’t panic…and please don’t believe everything you read about this truly horrible situation. A lot of it is meant to sensationalize, you know, for clicks…looking at you DM.
how do you manage for groceries? Are stores open for some hours. I’m in Ontario Canada and a nurse. Our professional nursing groups and my employer are sending out updates almost daily. I’ve seen a few people out in public wearing procedure masks. my husband’s employer has cancelled all travel to the area and employees recently returned are working from home. It’s highly contagious but not as deadly as SARS as best I can tell. Incubation of 2 weeks so that’s a long quarantine period.
there was a blurb in the news that china was unhappy with the travel ban enacted by the USA but at a glance it looks more or less like what china is doing itself.
Are you staying busy? Are you on Instagram? the account awkwardfamilyphotos is good for some comic relief.