Posted on 04/29/2020 6:47:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
An I’m-so-cute-and-clever reporter recently asked the president if he deserved to be re-elected given the number of deaths from coronavirus, noting that the number is greater than American fatalities from the Vietnam war.
People can always find something as a point of comparison as if that automatically adds weight to what they are implying. No doubt this reporter thought stats from the Vietnam war added gravitas to her query.
In any case, her disrespectful and rude question didn’t deserve to be dignified with an answer. But Trump answered her anyway. Unfortunately, he didn’t use the opportunity to his advantage by giving her a little history lesson, as discussed at The Daily Wire:
…She may have been unaware that at the height of the Vietnam war, there was something that killed more Americans than the war did, and it was a similar virus — and no one questioned whether a president should be elected or not because of the virus, known as the Hong Kong Flu.
In 1968-69, the Hong Kong flu ravaged the world; it wound up killing more than one million people worldwide, over 100,000 of them in the United States. No lockdowns were imposed and people still went to work, albeit lessening bus travel and implementing social distancing and more washing of their hands.
The Wall Street Journal explained. “The novel virus triggered a state of emergency in New York City; caused so many deaths in Berlin that corpses were stored in subway tunnels; overwhelmed London’s hospitals; and in some areas of France left half of the workforce bedridden.”
As John Fund notes in National Review, the Hong Kong Flu “was an especially infectious virus that had the ability to mutate and render existing vaccines ineffective … Hundreds of thousands were hospitalized in the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Fund notes that a retired professor of medicine, Philip Snashall, noted in the British Medical Journal that his two-year-old daughter was the first known case of the Hong Kong flu in Europe. He wrote, “How things change. The stock market did not plummet, we were not besieged by the press, men in breathing apparatus did not invade my daughter’s play group.”
In 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated
In 1968, Over 30,000 were killed in Vietnam
In 1968, Nixon won the Presidential Elections
And since, the Hong Kong flu lasted till 1969, Mankind ( via the USA ), landed its first man on the moon!
I do remember it.
And, strangely enough, not dead.
Goes to show how big this disinformation campaign is.
SOURCE:
https://www.biospace.com/article/the-1968-pandemic-strain-h3n2-persists-will-covid-19-/
For the Hong Kong Flu caused by the H3N2 Virus, Globally, about one million people died until the outbreak faded during the winter of 1969-70. In the U.S., the death toll was approximately 100,000 – three or four times the average annual death toll for flu since 2010, according to CDC figures. Most of those deaths were among people age 65 or older.
Like so many viruses implicated in 20th century pandemics, both the H3N2 virus and the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes COVID-19 exhibited cross-species transmission, appearing first in animals before jumping to humans and, sometimes, back to animals. A canine outbreak occurred in late 2017 in Ontario, Canada and persisted until October 2018.
H3N2 is considered one of the most troubling flu strains because, like COVID-19, it is highly contagious.
With the seasonal flus, like H3N2, antigenic drift is continual. The accumulated effects of antigenic drift, however, can result in viruses that are so different from the original virus that the immune system doesn’t recognize them. Whether it will play a role in COVID-19 is still unknown.
Because H3N2 was closely related to the 1957 pandemic, many people were immune. This kept the 1968 H3N2 flu epidemic relatively mild, especially when compared to the 1918 Spanish flu. For some reason, however – possibly antigenic drift – the second wave of the H3N2 flu that struck in 1969 was more deadly.
Differences in immunity are evident as the virus mutated during its global spread, as shown by the different patterns of infection and death.
I bet they were throwing live corpses into incinerators, too.
I got it in April 69. I’m guessing that it was that flu cause I was sick during my Easter vacation (that’s what we called it back then). I’m still here. Dang.
I do remember the HK flu!
This seems to be mostly a progressive rhetorical device. Conservatives think about what they write and say. They know when a comparison is valid or not, and when it is not they don't use it. However, the rhetorical device works on low-information voters. I've been trying my best to break the habit of limited my comparisons to something meaningful. Hyperbole works. It leads to invalid comparisons and persuasive arguments that work. Those that already agree with the point of view will still agree, but just not on the argument used.
We could never fight and win another WW today. Too many Americans are panicky and too many beta males. The root of a lot of it is selfishness.
Bookmark
Today, the government has assumed responsibility for all aspects of the individual’s life - just do what you are told and they will keep you safe. Many, many Americans could not handle it if the government told them it was their own responsibility to avoid getting sick.
Support for collectivists comes largely from people who think even the small amount of obligation one still holds toward determining his or her own fate is too much.
My parents and aunt had it (all in their mid 20s and early 30s). My mom said it was horrible, they had to crawl they had no strength to walk.
I’ll bookmark your bookmark!
If you had died like many did, you’d not be here remembering it.
Survivorship bias.
“Before I answer your question, answer mine: should cars be banned for similar reasoning?”
Her Name is Olivia Nuzzi (born January 6, 1993), works for New York Magazine. Interesting write-up in Wikipedia
Now this article actually passes for journalism.
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