This is what is important about that snippet:
On private health care phone calls, they knew that child was close to death and they were notifying medical professionals that this is serious, folks. That child was on their radar BEFORE it died. Now we all know he has in fact died... But they were concerned enough about his case (and the other one mentioned) to alert all medical professionals that they need to take this seriously here in the US.
Additionally, in one of the articles or news alerts in the last two days, there was a stat that said we have LOTS of cases here in the US who are HOSPITALIZED with this already. I’m on a blackberry so I can’t search/find that right now, and I don’t want to misquote the numbers for others to take as fact, but the gist of it was something like 25% or more of our US “confirmed” cases were in the hospital. So that is either an abundance of preventive measures to ensure they don’t die, OR, a huge percentage of the confirmed cases are seriously ill.
AGAIN, don’t quote me on that percentage... I could be mis-remembering.
A quirk of statistics. The most severe cases are seeking medical care, getting tested, and confirmed. The open end on the numbers comes from not knowing how many mild cases there are out there who were not tested and not confirmed.
Without knowing that, (because people with a mild case may not seek medical attention at all), the numbers will make the disease look more deadly, and less widespread at the same time.
Keep in mind that there are more people killed per day in car accidents in the US than this desease had killed worldwide.