If the press continues to dwell on the coronavirus outbreak it may be possible to achieve the same results as would the zombie apocalypse. If their motive is to alarm folks and send them into a tizzy, mission accomplished. Now the financial markets are caught up in the tizzy and I hate to use a Trumpism but here goes, "fake news.” Example: nothing has been reported about folks that have recovered from coronavirus. Does everyone who gets it, die?
Worldwide there are approximately 83,000 cases of coronavirus (.002%) compared to the 41 million flu cases reported in 2019. Worldwide there have been about 2,900 coronavirus deaths (004%) compared to the 646,000 flu related deaths in 2019. So I suck at math and am not trying to trivialize the coronavirus outbreak but the sheer numbers of cases and deaths caused by the flu really makes the coronavirus look a little tame. It's just another one of those things that happens when we don't take care of our health and eat things that are just not meant to be eaten by humans, like the Chinese delicacy bat soup. Given their appetite for all things nearly extinct, I certainly hope the coronavirus outbreak will teach our Asian friends that consuming bats and eating pangolins and other endangered species is a dangerous practice to all of us.
"When we think about the relative danger of this new corona-virus and influenza, there is just no comparison," Dr. Willam Schaffner, professor of preventative medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Kaiser Health News. " Corona-virus will be a blip on the horizon in comparison. The risk is trivial."
Louie Hoffmann
Brainerd
