Why coronavirus in Lebanon is no reason to panic

ENAR

A video shared on Twitter by Sky News Arabia’s Larissa Aoun shows an adult, clad in full protective gear, spraying an unknown substance over school age children as they walk in line into their school. Aoun notes in her tweet that spraying alcohol or chlorine will have no effect on viruses already in your system, but can be harmful in of themselves, particularly to mucous membranes such as the eyes and the mouth. Since the announcement on February 21 that the first case of the novel coronavirus had been discovered in Lebanon, reactions have skewed toward the panicked and misinformed, with some Lebanese donning surgical masks or gloves in public, and the more extreme case as cited above. This is not to say that the novel coronavirus—officially known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the disease of which is called COVID-19—should not be treated seriously. Since it was