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To the Editor:
I want to review with you and your readers about our current knowledge about COVID-19.
It’s a respiratory virus. It’s a dangerous virus. This disease can be serious, even fatal, although some people have a mild illness or no symptoms and can unknowingly give the virus to others.
It can cause a severe pneumonia that puts you in the hospital ICU. It can cause vomiting and diarrhea (virus is found in stool), and it can attack your liver or kidneys if they’re already damaged or you’re diabetic or overweight.
You are most at risk for severe illness and death if you’re 65 or older, if you have chronic illnesses such as COPD, asthma, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, cancer and immune suppression, if you smoke cigarettes or vape or if you’re pregnant.
There’s no information yet about long-term effects from COVID-19.
We expel spit droplets 5 to 5 feet straight out from our mouths when we talk normally, farther when shouting, up to 20 feet or more with sneeze or cough, singing or exercising, and the virus rides on those spit droplets.
When away from home we need to protect ourselves and others by physical distancing (staying six feet away from the nearest person), wearing face masks that cover our nose and mouth, washing our hands often, and coughing into our sleeves in the crook of our arms — so spit droplets and viruses don’t get to other people.
We need to stay from large groups of people (especially in-doors) to decease our chance of being exposed to the virus.
You can continue to be with your immediate family (spouse and children), can continue checking on elderly relatives, and can go to work if your jobs are important to keeping life normal (e.g., police, pharmacies, nurses, doctors, teachers, city sanitation workers, restaurant employees, grocery store workers, truck drivers, and mechanics, etc.).
From experience with other coronavirus, we think that infection with COVID-19 may not give a person long-term immunity; also, the virus is still mutating — so a person could get the illness again, from a different strain.
We hope to have a vaccine next year that is safe and effective.
People with the most up-to-date information about COVID-19 include officials of the CDC, the National Institute of Allergy & Immunology, and the Surgeon General’s office.

Dr. Neal Sanders
Johnson City