What You Can Do Right Now About the Coronavirus
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Updated at 9:38 a.m. ET on March 17, 2020.
The coronavirus is now testing the global population in ways no microbe has for a century. Much is unknown about exactly how this particular virus causes the disease known as COVID-19, but much is known about how best to stop it. The basic principles of disease mitigation that have worked reliably for millennia—hygiene and social distancing—are no less applicable today.
While the world and medications, slowing the spread of the new virus is crucial. The more people who are infected at once in a given area, the greater the strain on local health-care systems. When those systems are overrun, people will die who could have been saved in less demanding circumstances. Minimizing that impact requires every single person to take part. Individual behaviors matter in an immediate sense. They matter especially among the demographic most likely to survive an infection—the young and healthy—who may need to pay the closest
