UPDATE: Just to keep the coronavirus in some perspective, 10% of the US population (25 million) gets the flu each year and 36,000 die from it on average
NOTHING NADA ZIP ZILCH RIEN
It has been less than two months since this new virus has become a house-hold word and yet during this relatively short time 'The Experts' & 'The Politicians' have gone all the way from saying "nothing to see here...move along" to Henny Penny's famous running about proclaiming "the sky is falling".
And all the while entire cities have hunkered down indoors leaving streets abandoned while the world's commercial network has virtually come to a stand-still.
So what began and still is a health matter has morphed into a social and economic catastrophe.
So how did we get where we currently are?
In the beginning the danger of this virus was sorely downplayed while today is it grossly overblown.
The Experts are calling for hospitals to "stock-up with medications" while the Politicians are telling us to "stock up basic supplies" such as food and water.
Exactly what 'medications' hospital would stock-up on is a mystery to me since no medications exist yet for this new virus.
It is all over-kill and only serves to spread panic throughout the world which they have been very successful in doing.
Which leads me back to today's solution - We Should Do Nothing.
The virus is less serious than the flu which we have contended with since the early 1700s and every year sees outbreaks of this old virus all over the world. And yet we do not shut down whole cities and discontinue international commerce in its wake. Granted, vaccinations exist for the flu but the same will apply soon in the case of the coronavirus virus.
Fatalities are less than they are with the flu - something around 2% and then mostly affects the elderly - which though bad enough - if the numbers were reversed...if the survival rate was 2% and the death rate 98% then I could understand the need for panic. But it is not.
So here we have a medical issue but you and I are needlessly turning it into social isolation and economic decline. We are shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot. It is like going into a hospital with and earache and asking for castes to be placed on your hands and legs. How to make it a bad situation much, much worse. Have we become so soft in the 21st Century that we are willing to stop living just because we might come down with flu like symptoms?
During World War Two - Londoners went underground as their City was bombarded - buildings obliterated, citizens killed and wounded. And yet come the morning sun, they dusted themselves, stayed calm and carried on.
We, indeed the World, have been given the rare chance to emulate their courage...are we up-to-it?
As I See It...
K.D. Bell
