How to tell if a cold is COVID-19

Friday, February 28, 2020 - 14:30 in Health & Medicine

If you're sick, try to stay home. (Unsplash/)The CDC calling the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 across the United States “inevitable” has understandably triggered a decent amount of anxiety. While COVID-19—which is thought to have originated in Wuhan, China back in December after jumping from an as-yet-unconfirmed animal host—has a troubling fatality rate of around 2 percent (based on current estimates), the vast majority of people who contract the virus experience only mild, cold-like symptoms. In fact, it’s quite possible that the disease’s fatality rate is artificially inflated; with so many confirmed cases featuring mild symptoms, it’s likely that there are many COVID-19 cases going totally unnoticed.If you get COVID-19, you’re unlikely to get seriously sick and even less likely to die, especially if you are otherwise healthy. But that raises a troubling question that’s difficult to answer: How do you know if your seasonal sniffles might actually be...

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