My friend coughs into his elbow above a separate bowl of chips I had half-jokingly prepared just for him. I don’t want him dipping his hands into the communal bowl, in case he spreads the cold he’s just now getting over. Everyone’s crowded around my living room table, carefully analyzing a world map. Another friend flips over a card with a city name on it: Miami’s just been hit with another outbreak.

We’re playing a board game called Pandemic Legacy, and the outbreaks are imaginary. We’ve been playing this strategy game for months, well before a new (and very real) virus made its first appearance in China. But now that the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared a real-life pandemic, the game has taken on a different tone.

My friend coughs again. How worried should we be?

Coronavirus 101

If you’ve ever seen a picture of a total solar eclipse, or had the amazing fortune to see it live, you’ll remember the bright halo around a stark black shadow. That halo is called the sun’s corona, which has origins in the word “crown.” Coronaviruses are likewise named after their own wreath of crown-like spikes.

According to Dr. David Hirschwerk, an infectious disease specialist at Northwell Health, a coronavirus is “a class of virus that usually causes the common cold. Some strains infect humans, some infect animals.” But the new coronavirus, COVID-19, is a type that hasn’t been identified before. Which means there’s no known treatment yet, and no historical data about how quickly or easily it can spread.

Other coronaviruses that have made news in the past include Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). These viruses, and now COVID-19, all infected animals first and then evolved to infect humans, Hirschwerk says.

New coronavirus, a lot of unknowns

While this new coronavirus first appeared back in December, details of its emergence still remain a bit unclear. But we know it began in the city of Wuhan, China, and the first to fall ill were connected to a seafood and animal market that is “highly populated,” according to Hirschwerk. “Initial exposure then spread from there.” Recent reports claim that the infected animal to first pass the disease to humans was likely a bat.

Since then, the virus has spread worldwide and the number of fatalities continues to grow.



Hirschwerk says the disease is passed “most commonly by respiratory droplets,” with a possibility that the virus may live on surfaces or spread through fecal matter. But one of the biggest questions right now is whether COVID-19 can spread before its symptoms—including fever, cough, and difficulty breathing—appear. That would be a big difference between COVID-19 and MERS and SARS, which were felt to be most contagious when infected individuals were actively showing signs of sickness.

Stopping the spread

With these concerns mounting, many have been buying out stores’ supplies of medical face masks. In Wuhan, anyone going out in public is required to wear a face mask. But, according to Time, “wearing surgical masks does not prevent a person from inhaling smaller airborne particles; they are not considered respiratory protection by the CDC.” N95 respirators, which filter out 95% of airborne particles, are much more effective at getting the job done, but aren’t recommended for the public because of the training required to wear them properly.

In the absence of a vaccine, the CDC has issued guidelines for preventing the spread of infection, including recommendations to wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue.

With the number of U.S. cases growing, Hirschwerk has received many worried calls about the risk to us here in the States. “We are following the CDC guidelines,” he says. “The overall risks in the U.S. remain unknown but we’re likely to see more cases than we have currently.”

What the future holds

While researchers and experts are working furiously to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, the WHO recently announced that it still may be another 18 months before one is available. Soon after this announcement was made, news broke that a lab in San Diego discovered a vaccine in a span of just three hours, with hopes of beginning clinical trials by early summer.

While a pandemic certainly sounds worrisome (and it is), the fear may be somewhat tempered by the fact that the virus has around a 2% mortality rate, which might actually be even lower due to currently unreported cases. However, some recent reports in China have suggested a rate approaching 3%.

As for its recent renaming of COVID-19 (originally referred to in the news as 2019-nCoV), I think my friends and I would have been pretty good at giving it a name. After all, our board game allows us to name fictional viruses, and we called our most recent one “COVA” in recognition of the new coronavirus. (We thought that was its real name at the time.)

Unlike our game, we can’t clear the pieces of this very real coronavirus with a few lucky card draws and some well-timed game actions. That task belongs to the expert medical professionals both in China and worldwide.

Still, I suppose some responsibility rests on us, as I bring the chip bowl to the kitchen sink, pump some soap into my hands, and wash for 20 seconds.

*All statistics are current to the time of publication.