Two of Elizabethton’s best known and beloved citizens — Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Hopland — are quarantined in Japan because of the coronavirus. Mrs. Hopland, who tested positive for the virus while on the cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, is quarantined in a hospital on a military base near Tokyo. The doctor is in isolation at a college, also located near Tokyo.
At this point they have no idea when they will be coming home. All passengers and the ship’s crew have been placed under travel restrictions, preventing them from returning to the United States for at least 14 days after leaving the Diamond Princess. Because of their high-risk exposure, CDC expects there will be additional confirmed cases of the highly contagious virus among those passengers who have left the ship and are in quarantine.
Our hope and prayers are that the Hoplands will remain well and will be able to leave Japan soon and return home to their family and friends.
There are still many unknowns about this outbreak but it must be a warning on how to prepare for future pandemics. China and Japan are not alone in this. The world is so connected in this day and age that what affects one country usually affects the whole world.
Because most of the confirmed cases of the coronavirus have been confined to the Far East with a few scattered reports elsewhere does not mean that we should be complacent about the likely impact of the virus, however. There are no treatments or vaccines for this virus and, crucially, no pre-existing immunity in the population. During the 2009-10 flu pandemic, many older people were protected because they had already been exposed to the virus strain involved. This will not occur if Covid-19 spreads across Europe and the UK. The elderly are likely to be particularly at risk.
In fact, there are so many huge unknowns about this outbreak that it is still impossible to work out how it will progress. For example, we don’t know just how infectious people are before they show symptoms of the disease. A low infection rate suggests death tolls will be modest. A higher one will mean that fatalities could be significant. Careful monitoring of the disease is therefore going to be crucial over the next few months. To date, the National Health Service has responded well. However, it remains to be seen how it will perform when tens of thousands of people gather at hospitals seeking tests for the condition and wards fill up with those found to be infected.
Urgent measures now need to be taken to head off future pandemics that could catch us off-guard in the future, a point that has been highlighted by the billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. “Given the continual emergence of new pathogens… and the ever-increasing connectedness of our world, there is a significant probability that a large and lethal modern-day pandemic will occur in our lifetime,” he warned some time ago.
For now the biggest challenge of the coronavirus threat is the unknown. There’s no denying the seriousness of the outbreak.
It’s important to remember that while the spread of the coronavirus is unusually fast and has already resulted in more deaths than the SARS outbreak, influenza results in 9 million to 45 million illnesses, 140,000 to 810,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the United States every year, according to the CDC. Yet, there are many, many people who do not take precautions and get their flu vaccine.
The coronavirus has taken the world by surprise. Much remains unknown about the extent of its threat. It’s important that residents of this stay calm and take a common-sense approach to responding to an outbreak, should there be one.
In the meantime, we need to continue to pray for the safety of Dr. and Mrs. Hopland and a quick return to the U.S. for them. We cannot know the thoughts that are running through their minds.