[Old Dog New Trick]

You guys aren’t answering my questions, just regurgitating what’s recently being said. Said mostly by the “experts - speculating without facts” which is nothing more than a “Wild Ass Guess” which is what they are doing with COVID-19, making WAGs and assumptions based on different circumstances worldwide. You see, we really don’t know what happened in China (again speculation and assumptions based on hearsay and misinformation) and the Diamond Princess was a disaster! But even from that “Petri dish” only a small handful of people have died. Many not receiving more than symptomatic care, common remedies and recovering with rest.

Here, I’ll help you out with the influenza questions (these aren’t exact numbers but wildly known facts about influenza.) It is suspected that between 40 to 50 million ‘Americans’ get the flu every year and of that 16 to 34 thousand die from it every year in ‘America.’ And that’s just what’s reported for statistics. What if half the American population (170 million people) actually gets infected with the flu but self medicate and don’t report their illness to any ‘record keeper?’ Your 0.1% mortality rate gets skewed, doesn’t it? Almost enough so that we can continue to freak out over motor vehicle and gun deaths each year, but I digress. What is the world population percentage of influenza morbidity v. mortality and are certain places more likely to have a higher mortality rate than others? My guess is yes, we just don’t follow it unless it’s something new, like SARS, MERS, or something with a catchy name - Novel Coronavirus. Right now there is a worldwide issue with Dengue Fever but you wouldn’t know it from the news. Thankfully most people recover from it. Remember Zika?

Remember, some, if not all sources are biased of their own medical opinion or political bias (depends on which sideline you stand and what financial backers you receive support from - don’t cut the hand that feeds you. Or, “Don’t pick a fight with the President.”) It’s far too early to tell what kind of global death rate will be attributable to COVID-19 based on the known and unknown numbers of suspected cases of infected people. Right now the experts are guessing for whatever reasons they have (self aggrandizement or political ideology.) Most have caused panic and fear than calm and rational responses so far. I suspect that >~<50% of the elderly hospice patients in Washington will die from this but we will learn much from their sacrifice.