Thread by @RogueVictorian

So I want to explain some terms today & put things in perspective. You hear the term Ro or R naught. What it is is the measure of an average of how many people 1 infected person spreads a disease to. Covid was originally about R2.4, it has increased to an astounding R12+ with BA2

What does this MEAN? This means that the virus is getting BETTER at spreading with each wave. Improving the ability to infect us. What can happen next is a mutation increasing mortality, or the percentage of people it kills. Fun times! #CovidIsntOver plus.maths.org/content/epidem…

Unlike other viruses #COVID19 has the unique ability to spread before you even have symptoms. In other words this virus could have a 100% mortality rate & it wouldn’t matter. It would continue to spread. As it has already spread before it kills its host. Which is us. #MaskUp

Hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola, stay isolated because they kill people so rapidly, they don’t have much chance to spread. Let’s look at other coronaviruses closely related to #COVID, like MERS. MERS has a mortality rate of about 34%. Now imagine if Covid starts to kill more?

This scenario SEEMS like science fiction, but it’s not. If you had asked almost any scientist in 2020 of Covid would mutate to an R of 12+, you would have been laughed at as a crackpot. Now look where we are. The ONLY way to prevent these mutations is to control the spread of BA2

EACH person who is infected is potentially patient zero for the next more lethal wave. Keeping this virus under wraps is critical in slowing down the mutation cycle. So support China, their population, if infected, could be catastrophic for us all. This goes beyond one country!

Well since I can’t correct the above tweet & everyone seems to feel the need to correct me here. Many respiratory viruses, like the flu, are spread via a cough or sneeze. So you know you are sick. Prior to that you shed little virus ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…