Monday, March 2, 2020

Covid-19 vs. Influenza

Today, on Good Morning America, their resident doctor, Jennifer Ashton, said that we should keep in mind that 37 million people got the flu this year and 18,000 died.

These are the statistics from the CDC.

18,000 dead is not a small number, but that is five hundredths of a percent of those who contracted the flu. It may be as high as a tenth of a percent.

It's not 2%, which the DHS secretary thinks that it is. At two percent, we'd be losing close to a million people a year.

Two percent is right up there with the Spanish Flu.

I'm not suggesting that Covid-19 is going to spread as widely as the flu.

But this:



Is beginning to look like this:


At a time when trust in government would help manage a possible crisis, Trump has no reservoir of trust to draw on. Nobody, other than the Kool-Aid-drinking Trumpanzees who are welded to Fox News and OxyBoy's radio show, believe anything that Trump says. If a single lie was a person, Trump could now fill an arena.

From the budgetary actions of both George W. Bush and Donald Trump, one might think that pandemics are good for business.

5 comments:

  1. But none was forthcoming from Grayson — a freshman Democrat from a competitive district — who said the first part of the GOP approach to health care is: Don't get sick.

    "If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly," he said.


    https://www.politico.com/story/2009/09/grayson-gop-wants-you-to-die-027726

    ReplyDelete
  2. Doesn't really matter who believes him. He still wins. Diehard Trump supporters are what 40%? He'll still win any election he allows to happen. He could do a lite sort of takeover. Declare a "state of emergency" in every blue state and simply not count the "fraudulent " voters. By fraudulent, I mean anyone who didn't vote for him.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A solution to the aging but ferociously oblivious GOP base of true believers: COVID19. Obviously, this is all fake news and Rush tells us that is just the common cold. Make sure to catch it. Also, don't look before you cross the street; you have the strength of ten because your heart is pure

    ReplyDelete
  4. Be over a certain age,
    Eat crap,
    Work in a high stress environment,
    Travel a lot,
    Entertain international crowds,
    Hang out in arenas with huge crowds.

    Anyone we know?

    The problem may solve itself in ways not expected.

    Eck!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Iran is suffering from a similar mistrust of government information and the virus appears to be hitting them hard.
    When accurate information about effective precautions against a deadly disease gets harder to come by, more people die.
    You can apparently still get real info on the CDC website, but do any Republicans trust such deep state actors as CDC scientists?
    While a self-selection scenario may be a mildly amusing thought, it's not really the way an epidemic behaves, so I guess wash your hands a lot?

    -Doug in Oakland

    ReplyDelete

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