According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease doctor in the United States, COVID-19 is the worst nightmare of a public health official. He made this statement in an interview given this Thursday. He explained that, after speaking to a lot of his fellow doctors, they all mentioned the emergence of a respiratory disease than can be transmitted easily and goes from person to person with a high rate of mortality and morbidity among their biggest fears.
Continuing, Fauci said that, unfortunately, the biggest fear of a lot of epidemiologists is exactly what is going on all over the globe at the moment. The COVID-19 pandemic is definitely a historical event. During a press briefing just before the COVID-19 Conference at the AIDS 2020 Virtual Meeting, Dr. Fauci, who is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that he will lead a much bigger presentation about the subject this Friday.
Why Is COVID-19 so Bad?
At the press briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that what we are currently going through is entirely unique and totally unprecedented. There is nothing we can compare the disease to, mostly because of the protean manifestations that the new coronavirus has. This has left the entire science and health community with their hands in the air.
Fauci also mentioned that the world has never before seen a virus that affects different people so wildly. Some are completely asymptomatic, others exhibit mild symptoms, while others go higher in the degree of severity, going as high as needing hospitalization, which could include oxygen therapy and even mechanical intubation. In extreme cases, as we know, COVID-19 can cause death.
In the press briefing, Fauci made sure to highlight the extremely strict measures that were taken by the entire world to fight against the disease. He mentioned that public health measures have reduced the impact of the virus in over 200 countries affected by the pandemic.