It is not the coronavirus

I'm sorry, but it bothers me.
You cannot catch the coronavirus. No one has the coronavirus.

When the virus currently spreading across the planet first arose back in December it was referred to as a novel coronavirus. Coronavirus is the family of viruses it belongs to because of the shape of the virus. It was novel because is was new, that's what novel means. It was a new virus that fit into the family of corona(viruses).

Back in 2002 a coronavirus appeared that was quite deadly. The disease it caused was called SARS, that is, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and the virus that caused this disease was called SARS-CoV meaning Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - CoronaVirus.

This new virus we have now is similar, it is a coronavirus, and is similar to SARS-CoV and so was named SARS-CoV2.
The disease that people get when they get infected is call Covid-19, that is, Coronavirus disease 2019.

So, the disease is Covid-19, the virus that causes the disease is SARS-CoV2.

Do not call it the coronavirus.

(Maybe if we'd called it SARS 2 from the beginning people would be more wary of it)
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