GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A panel of experts discussed the global response of the coronavirus on UW-Green Bay’s campus.
The UWGB Global Studies program hosted the free, roundtable discussion Thursday.
The panel included campus nursing professors, Christine Vandenhouten and Rebecca Hovarter, along with Brian Merkel, professor of Human Biology and local organizer of the Tiny Earth event to discover new antibiotics.
Merkel says as he often tells his students, microbiology is a mirror for how we’re living on this planet and unfortunately we often don’t like what we see.
“Many viruses don’t have borders because you can be asymptomatic, get on a plane, we can circle the globe in less than 24 hours and one of the tried and true philosophies in terms of public health is that we don’t appreciate, and we don’t prepare for is this. When diseases are anywhere, they can always be everywhere.”
He said there’s a lot we don’t know about the contagious respiratory virus and more we need know. There’s also a lot of false information being spread about the virus which can create panic.
Vandenhouten says a lot of the things you do to protect yourself from influenza work to help you protect yourself against the coronavirus, like frequent hand washing.
Worldwide, there are more than 60,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with at least around 1,350 deaths. As of now, the virus is contained to more than a dozen confirmed cases in the U.S., with one of those cases being in Madison.
