Harmful conspiracies about COVID-19 are multiplying throughout social media and are frequently published in disreputable news sources.
Some of the authors of these hackneyed and unscientific theories are convinced the world is undergoing a sinister Plannedemic engineered by the elites such as Bill Gates 鈥� the founder of the Microsoft Corporation.
For the conspiracists, COVID-19 either doesn鈥檛 exist, or the disease has been hyped for a variety of manipulative purposes.
There are some who believe that COVID-19 is nothing more than an overestimated version of the flu. Yet, when considering scientific facts, the differences between COVID-19 and the flu are significant.
Make no mistake 鈥� COVID-19 can be very deadly. The death rate for the virus continues to climb 鈥� on August 10, there were 732,000 deaths recorded worldwide since early March, along with 19.9 million cases and 12.1 million recoveries.
The first death related to COVID-19 in Canada was documented when B.C. health officials confirmed a man in his 80s with underlying health conditions died on Sunday, March 8 after becoming infected with the illness at the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver.听
In Canada, the virus has caused 9,026 COVID-19 deaths as verified on August 16 in a span of 5-6 months, with the death rate continuing to climb.
People die from the common flu each year, but at significantly lower numbers. The Public Heath Agency of Canada reported the death rate for influenza averaged from 500-1500 cases per year.
In 2018, the combination of influenza and pneumonia killed 8,511 people in Canada in the stretch of an entire year. 听
COVID-19鈥檚 death rate is much higher on average than the flu on a world spectrum. According to statistics from Worldometer,1.4 per cent of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will have a fatal outcome, while 98.6 per cent recover. Meanwhile, a report from the MIT Technology Review in March said the death stats for the flu stood at 0.1 per cent.
There are no vaccines to protect against COVID-19 in August 2020, although scientists across the world have been making progress.
Flu vaccines are capable of safeguarding people against three different types of viruses, known as a trivalent vaccine. These vaccines are effective against influenza听A (H1N1) virus, influenza听A (H3N2) virus and the听influenza听B virus. Two of the trivalent听vaccines听were created听for听people 65 and older to create a sturdier immune reaction.
Further, the flu season generally runs from the latter part of autumn to the early spring, whereas COVID-19 isn鈥檛 confined to a particular time on the annual calendar. In fact, a second wave is already hitting the United States this summer.
COVID-19 is lethal, unstable and the virus might even interact with colds and other common illnesses.听
Debora MacKenzie in The Guardian wrote: 鈥淭he real unknown is what COVID-19 does around other viruses. Every autumn there is a predictable series of outbreaks of respiratory viruses. It starts with rhinovirus, the main cause of the common cold, which breaks out every September as young children go to school and swap mucus. As no parent needs to be told, children are to sniffles what mosquitos are to malaria.鈥� (July 19, 2020).听听 听
Why the build-up over masks?
Masks are being promoted in Great Britain, Canada, the United States and other countries by doctors who want to contain the virus, angering a number of people who are already annoyed with lockdowns, curfews, social distancing and the economic fallout instigated by the pandemic.
COVID-19 is highly contagious and spreads through oral droplets, so masks can act as barriers to prevent infections.
In a release from John Hopkins Medicine, the importance of mask wearing to prevent transmission was accentuated, along with necessity of social distancing.
鈥淢asks are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from travelling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the mask coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice.
鈥淭his is called source control. This recommendation is based on what we know about the role respiratory droplets play in the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, paired with听听from clinical and laboratory studies that shows masks reduce the spray of droplets when worn over the nose and mouth.
鈥淐OVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact with one another (within two metres), so the use of masks is particularly important in settings where people are close to each other or where social distancing is difficult to maintain.鈥�
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