Journal of psychiatric practice
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The goal of this column is to help mental health care professionals understand coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) so that they can better explain the complexities of the current crisis to their patients. The bottom-line of this column is that, while COVID-19 can infect virtually everyone in the human population, only about 5% are susceptible to severe infection requiring admission to an intensive care unit and/or causing a fatal outcome and this population can be identified on the basis of comorbid medical illness and/or age. These numbers are based on experience in China, the United States, and Europe. ⋯ Taking the data on high-risk individuals into account would allow for a gradual lifting of restrictions on the majority of the population while maintaining more stringent safeguards to protect the vulnerable portion of the population. Nevertheless, the entire population would need to continue to practice good hygiene and social distancing while simultaneously-and perhaps even more vigorously-focusing on sheltering the vulnerable population until adequate community immunity has been achieved to prevent the spread of the virus, whether that is accomplished through natural exposure alone or with the addition of safe and effective vaccine(s) which may not be available for a year. Continued widespread testing for antibodies will help determine how far or close this country is-and other countries are-from developing effective community immunity.