(Calcalist) Ari Libsker - Nobel laureate Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist, looked at the statistics and concluded that the spread of the coronavirus will come to a halt. At the same time, he emphasizes his support of the safety measures currently being taken and the need to adhere to them. Levitt explained: "The rate of infection of the virus in Hubei province [in China] increased by 30% each day." At this rate, the entire world should have been infected within 90 days, he said. But then, the trend changed. "On Feb. 7, the number of new infections started to drop linearly and did not stop. A week later, the same happened with the number of deaths....Now there are very few new infection cases." Based on the diminishing number of infection cases and deaths, he said, the virus will probably disappear from China by the end of March. There are other factors at work. "In Wuhan, which had the highest number of infection cases in Hubei province, everyone had a chance of getting infected, but only 3% caught it," he explained. "Even on the Diamond Princess (the virus-stricken cruise ship), the infection rate did not top 20%." Based on these statistics, Levitt concluded that many people are just naturally immune to the virus. "You need to think of corona like a severe flu. It is four to eight times as strong as a common flu, and yet, most people will remain healthy and humanity will survive."
2020-03-16 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive