My guess: It might not make _the_ difference whether you _get_ it, but it's not at all unlikely (given all the evidence that has accumulated so far & extrapolation from experience w/ other viral respiratory infections) that it will influence disease severity significantly.
"The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology" by Horace Freeland Judson; a masterpiece originally published in 1979 and based on ~10 years of research, interviews w/ more than 100 scientists &c.
All in all, Eric Lander's 7.00x (Introduction to Biology) probably was the best of all the courses I completed in 2013. Lander is a fantastic lecturer -- it wasn't uncommon that his lectures (or shall I say performances) ended in applause.
Going beyond "just" videos and multiple-choice quizzes, the MITx folks built/assembled an impressive array of mostly web-based tools (e.g. a 3D molecule viewer, a molecule editor, a simplified version of genome viewers used by actual biologists) to support the learning enterprise.
Two excellent technology history books I read in 2013 are _Dream Machine_ by M. Mitchell Waldrop and _Computing in the Middle Ages_ by Severo Ornstein.
_Dream Machine_ in particular tied together many strands that I had previously explored separately; it's a far-ranging, incredibly well-researched work that covers the development of interactive (and, eventually, personal & networked) computing from its origins at MIT's Whirlwind and Lincoln projects, leading, in big part thanks to J.C.R. Licklider's long-term research (management) vision, to the development of the ARPANET, and, maybe even more importantly, the formation of an "ARPA community", where many of the big ideas were first brought to reality and explored in depth (at BBN, SRI, Utah, PARC &c.).
All in all, it's probably the best history of computing-as-we-know-it-today and a clear recommendation for anyone with just the slightest interest in the idea history of the field.
_Computing in the Middle Ages_ is a very personal account, supplying the critically important perspective of someone actually working in the trenches in the time-frame covered by _Dream Machine_.
Severo Ornstein co-designed the ARPANET "Interface Message Processors", essentially the first routers. It's also a wonderful history of the LINC (by Wesley Clark et al.), a remarkable (and remarkably forgotten) machine and the direct philosophical fore-runner of all "personal computers".
http://dminder.ontometrics.com/
I only wish the algorithm used to derive the estimates was public/documented somewhere ...
http://dminder.ontometrics.com/Estimation.html