Coronavirus: Fact or Fiction?
Many of you have questions about coronavirus - and we're getting answers from local health experts.
There’s a lot of information flying around about COVID-19. Here at Channel 8, Nebraska’s Trusted News Source for coronavirus coverage, we want to help you sort through it all.
We’ve taken your questions and gotten answers from local health experts – to help separate fact from fiction. In this edition, we talked to Dr. David Quimby, an infectious disease doctor at CHI Health.
Question 1: Fact or Fiction – young people don’t need to worry about getting infected with the coronavirus?
“Fiction – young people can easily get infected just like with any other virus. If they do get infected, they are less likely, not impossible, to get severely ill than older folk but young people can also bring it home to grandma and that could be very bad.”
Question 2: Fact or Fiction – if not worn properly, using a face mask can actually increase your risk of getting infected?
“Fact – the main point of a face mask is if you’re actually spreading the virus to capture droplets so they don’t go to other people. If you’re not used to wearing a mask, you’re more likely to touch your face, and if you’re not infected and you keep touching your face, you’re more likely to get infected than someone who’s not touching their face.”
Question 3: Fact or Fiction – eating immune-boosting foods can help prevent you from getting the coronavirus?
“I’m going to say as worded, fiction – there is no superfood that can prevent infection. However, a generally healthy diet makes you a healthier person overall and then it’s easier to fight off infection.”
Question 4: Fact or Fiction – The coronavirus actually looks like this?
“Fact – it is very difficult for us to see, but, if you do electron microscope pictures it does look like that.”
Question 5: Fact or Fiction – the coronavirus is spreading faster than any other disease in history?
“How about ignorance – I was not here throughout all of history, but, this is spreading faster than other things in modern history. However when smallpox was introduced to the new world many hundreds of years ago it wiped out a significant portion of the population and we don’t know exactly how long it took that to happen.”
The next addition of fact or fiction will be Thursday, April 16. If you have questions you want us to answer, you can send them here.
