The world seems to be at war with a virus which won the first round just because it caught us unaware. Now we have learnt about our enemy quite a lot. It is a smart enemy. It has used human chain of network to create havoc all through the world. It travels from one infected person to 2-6 people "close" to him. We know one weakness of the virus: Unlike measles virus these heavy viruses cannot travel more than 1-2 meters in air. They fall at a distance of 1m or so like Ebola virus (figure 1).

So if we stay an arm's length away from people in trains, buses, rooms, offices etc. that might be helpful. But the enemy is resilient, it survives for quite some time on the surfaces where it has dropped. If we touch the surface where the droplets have fallen, and then touch our face with the same hand, it enters our body. So wash your hands and clean all potentially infected surfaces with disinfectant. The infectious rate of the virus will depend on how many unprotected people come in contact with this virus and varies between 2 and 4. A person who is carrying virus may not have any symptoms for 2-14 days. He/she can still infect others. He/she may develop fever and cough, usually the symptoms are very mild and the person can go on with his daily activities, meet a lot of people in a day. This is a chance for the virus to travel from this person to 3-4 of those who are in "Close Contact" with this person. These 3-4 people can infect 3-4 more each with our even realising. So the number of people carrying the virus go from 3 to 9-27-81-243.

(The growth is exponential....Blue- mild illness, Yellow- severe illness, Red- deaths). Suppose one of these virus carriers decides to attend a party of 300 people, the numbers can escalate quite quickly to thousands. Our enemy has a very intelligent strategy- it will cause only mild illness for 80% of the carriers, it doesn't make them very sick so that they move around in the community infecting others. Since these carriers do not feel sick enough to take rest at home, they "SPREAD" the virus. 20% of these will become sick requiring ventilation and depending on the availability of healthcare and ventilators 2-6% might die. Do our hospitals have enough ventilators? It depends on how many of us get sick together. If we are happy go lucky types, boasting that even coming back from international travel we are not sick. To show off our superpowers, if we also attend a party-we become super spreaders. This will increase the number of people who can then become very sick. So we may be fine, but we affect someone who is "vulnerable". We literally handed our viruses to someone who cannot fight with it. And there the enemy starts winning. It found the weakest link. Too many sick people may overwhelm the hospitals and ICUs. We do not want that. It is not great to hide your travel history, it is nothing great to keep infecting others. What is really brave is that if we have the virus (which is very likely if there was a recent international travel)- we announce our travel, we SELF ISOLATE.

We tell the virus that we are not going to pass it on to my community.Humans are going to win this race against the virus because we have the ability to think beyond ourselves, we care for others, we are kind and compassionate.SELF ISOLATE if you travelled recently, or have symptoms pointing towards infection. Clean your hands and maintain social distance if you are still probably not carrying the virus.Break the human chain which the virus is travelling!

When the numbers are no more overwhelming and cases come slowly, our hospitals will treat and cure most people and we will defeat the virus. If the numbers of cases do not increase very fast, the peak will be flattened and will not overwhelm the healthcare. Changing the attitude will change the course of illness.