The confusion of corona virus starts with the name, which was changed sometime in February. The disease caused by the virus is now known as Covid-19, and the virus that causes it is severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. As that implies, scientists now think is it a variant of the original SARS.

I have a SARS story: at the time of original SARS, the only person in NH who contracted it was a co-worker of mine. He had been traveling in the Far East and was quarantined as soon as he got back to the US. I don’t remember many details, and with this new virus being called SARS, Internet searches now don’t turn up anything about the original one. My husband keeps telling me one can search the Internet by date, mostly because I complain about all the ancient info that pops up, and someday I’m sure I will decide that adding that skill is important enough for me to spend time doing so.

Another confusion has to do with the rumors, which spread at the speed of the Internet, and of course create general confusion about every aspect of modern life, especially for people who have not developed a reliable system of separating fact from factoid. Some SARS-CoV-2 factoids:

• No one is confusing beer with a virus.
• The virus was not created as a bioweapon.
• Antibiotics do not help.

For any topic, the site for truth-finding is Snopes.com, and everyone who doesn’t know that will soon, I hope, go there to check it out and to contribute some money. It is literally the only site on which I have never found contradictory info, and I’m definitely including nytimes.com.

The public is starting to get onto the handwashing bandwagon, but there’s plenty of confusion about soap vs antibacterial soap vs hand sanitizers–and this is also addressed on Snopes, BTW. Short answer is, regular soap is best! Wash every time you cough or sneeze. And for all you geezers out there, for everyone’s sake, stop stashing partially used tissues for later use, I mean forever, as in, never do that again. Yuk.

Another topic of confusion is virulence. We all seek one number for the percent of people who die from this virus–even Trump wants one number, just not any of the ones that science is suggesting–but that may not make sense. The 1918 flu, which killed 50 million people worldwide over more than a year, had a wide range of death rates, from 0.1% in Tasmania to 20% on one of the islands of American Samoa to 90% in some Alaskan villages. That last is some sadly Columbian death rate. The mortality rate overall was more than 2.5%, as compared to 0.1% for seasonal flu and 3.4% estimated for Covid-19 at the moment (WHO, March 3).

Rates of infection are also confusing. Here is California we do everything by county, and for each county we have a count, not even a rate. In Santa Cruz county we have one case, discovered two days ago. In the city of San Francisco, aka San Francisco County, despite what you might assume about Chinatown or offshore disease cruises or big cities, there are 2 cases. In Santa Clara county, the heart of Silicon Valley, there are 24, the most in any US county I believe, certainly in any California country. Is that really the most dangerous place, or just the place where testing and counting are popular activities? How many total people live in each of these counties anyway? No idea.

What is not confusing is, this is a great time for commercial air travel. At the moment, ghost flights fill the sky because airlines are reluctant to give up their gate slots, which are use-or-lose. Unless the virus unexpectedly abates, I imagine the airlines will eventually give up this plan and their slots, but now flights are cheap and empty. Of course, if someone with the virus does sneak on, you will definitely be exposed to it in the recirculating air system. I guess that’s why the wealthy are chartering planes and boats, and sheltering in place at their vacation mansions.

My husband and I are going to a contra dance tonight, which happily has not been cancelled. As is often the case, we’re feeling lucky!