[If the flu is worse then how come all governments on earth (50 something at last count) have instituted dramatic quarantines, blocked off armed cities with armed guards, banned travel to affected areas, banned travel to and from areas where it is present and in general have done everything humanly possible to keep the virus out of their countries?
They don’t do this for the flu. Why for this virus? ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_medicine
To the extent that the infection numbers in China are accurate, I expect they have been exacerbated by the Chinese preference for communal dining, using chopsticks to touch the food directly instead of spoons/ladles as an intermediate utensil. Then theres the custom of substituting Chinese quackery for modern medicine because of a sincere belief that double blind-tested modern drugs with decades of user feedback are harmful, whereas baggies of unfamiliar-looking herbal combos are balanced because traditional Chinese medical expertise has thousands of years of recorded history behind it. (And yet somehow this expertise somehow failed to cure smallpox, TB, polio or measles). Bottom line? There might be unique elements in the Chinese mix that have made the outbreak worse than it should be, including a sincere belief that modern medical methods are literally life-threatening.
On the other hand, theres whats happening in Italy and Iran, where random people are getting infected who should not be infected. They presumably arent personally-invested in the idea that modern medicine will get them killed, and Chinese-style communal dining is presumably foreign to their traditions. And yet people are getting infected, and some are dying. Whats more - random people who shouldnt be getting infected are now showing symptoms.
Even so, the numbers outside of China just dont seem to justify the hysteria. Maybe were in a zero defect society. Stalin is alleged to have said One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic. Its possible that the hysteria is focused on the coronavirus because people cant comprehend that statistic that 80,000 people stateside are alleged to have died of the flu in 2019, whereas the dozens of people infected by this coronavirus (and the common cold is just a grab bag of random coronaviruses) are a number with comprehensible dimensions such that its taking up everyones attention at the expense of the much bigger danger that is the flu. Its like when a single mass shooting by a white guy with a long arm drowns out the daily handgun carnage involving aspiring rappers that, in total, kill 100x the people per year.
The Israelis are not known for being hypochondriacs and needless worriers.
If they are concerned, I am concerned.
I already knew the answer. It was evident in the first videos coming out of Wuhan.
Virtually everyone agrees now that 80% of the cases are mild. That means 20% are NOT mild and require some form of medical help. The virus spreads easily because mildly sick people are mildly sick for a week to ten days or longer. They spread the virus around. The more people get infected the MORE that need hospitalization.
So here's the deal. There are 964,000 total hospital beds in the US. If only 3,000,000 people get infected that's what...6000 beds? It would take less than that to overwhelm the healthcare system.
That's why governments are trying to stop it. Once it becomes widespread the health care systems essentially collapses. That's what is happening in China. That's what's going to happen in S Korea. And Italy.
BRAVO...great post!
L8R