Why was the city not closed during SARS that year, but it is required to be closed down this time due to pneumonia?

Just entering 2020, our country has faced the severe test of the new coronavirus. Fortunately, we have not been intimidated by its power. Instead, the whole country has united and worked together to fight the epidemic.

So far, less than 20,000 people have been diagnosed with the virus, and the dawn of victory is brighter than ever.

Before welcoming the victory, many people must have had this question: The new coronavirus and SARS virus are both members of the coronavirus family, and the ways of infecting the human body are also similar. Why were no measures to close the city during SARS?

Judging from the current situation, the reasons can be attributed to the following points: 1. The infectivity of the new coronavirus is stronger than that of SARS. Below is a graph comparing the number of people infected by the new coronavirus and the SARS virus.

As can be seen from the picture, even when SARS reached its peak, the cumulative number of cases was only 6,000, while the new coronavirus exceeded this number in less than 20 days after its discovery. This shows how contagious the new coronavirus is.

In order to prevent the epidemic from continuing to develop uncontrollably, it was decided to implement a city closure to limit population movement to the greatest extent.

2. The new coronavirus is still contagious during the incubation period, which was not the case with the previous SARS. The new coronavirus will not show symptoms during the incubation period and is still contagious.

SARS, on the other hand, will have obvious fever symptoms once it is infected, and it can only be transmitted from person to person after symptoms appear.

Comparing the two, the new coronavirus will appear more difficult, because carriers of the virus will inadvertently infect others and cannot consciously isolate themselves, making epidemic control more difficult.

3. The time point of the outbreak of the new coronavirus is at the end of the year. It is said that the infectiousness of the new coronavirus is higher than that of its predecessors.

Moreover, the time point of the virus outbreak is at the end of the year, when the Spring Festival travel season is in full swing.

Trains, buses, planes, all imaginable means of transportation are full of people, which is undoubtedly the best time for the virus to spread.

In these crowded places, unknowing virus carriers infected a large number of innocent healthy people, and both were unknowingly infected by the virus.

In order to reduce the occurrence of this situation, it is necessary to reduce population mobility to the greatest extent.

4. The more people infected, the higher the probability of virus mutation. Regarding this, we must first understand the mechanism of virus infection in the human body.

Suppose a new coronavirus enters your body now. It will bind to specific receptors on the mucosal cells in your body and enter your cells.

The genetic material RNA in your body is sent into your cells. These RNAs deceive the ribosomes in your cells and let them work for the virus, starting to synthesize the proteins needed for the virus to spread in the body, and copying more RNA.

These things are organically combined into new coronaviruses in cells, and are exocytosed outside the cells to infect other cells.

During RNA replication, because RNA is a single-stranded structure, it is less stable and can easily be broken or replaced, leading to mutations.

In other words, the more people the virus infects, the more likely it is to mutate.

Coupled with what was said before about the strong contagiousness of the new coronavirus, the two complement each other and will bring great difficulties to the development of vaccines.

To sum up, the country must have considered various factors before making the decision to close the city.

Of course they know that city closures and delayed resumption of work will have an impact on the economy, but the latter is more important than the lives and health of the people.

All we have to do is cooperate fully, trust the country, and wait for spring to bloom.