Source:
The Washington Post
www.washingtonpost.com 
By: Mohammad Sajadi and Anthony Amoroso, MD

Mohammad Sajadi, MD and Anthony Amoroso, MD are associate professors of medicine at the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and members of the Global Virus Network.

As physicians and researchers, we have spoken to doctors across the country over the past few weeks and kept hearing variations on this description of the novel coronavirus’s spread: It’s like a chemical bomb went off. One day everything seemed normal, and the next everyone became sick: patients, nurses, family members.

The pattern is scary, but familiar. Seasonal respiratory viruses, most infamously influenza, can act in the same explosive fashion. In temperate areas, every fall and winter, as the weather cools and humidity drops, influenza ferociously takes hold and retains a strong grip until spring. There are four coronaviruses — viruses that are common in humans, usually causing moderate respiratory illnesses — that are also seasonal.

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