Posted on 02/29/2020 8:15:18 AM PST by datura
More than a month after Hong Kong reacted to the coronavirus and closed its border to neighboring China, the overall damage of the virus is not nearly as severe as originally feared, and compared to the common flu, it is minuscule.
As reported yesterday:
News of the coronavirus reached Hong Kong and the world in early January. Hong Kong citizens were curious at first and then almost hyper-reactive. The Wuhan coronavirus was a big unknown and still is. Hong Kong did very little at first other than observe the actions of the Chinese government in Hubei in response to the newly discovered coronavirus.
By the end of January right before the Chinese New Year, the government of China took the unprecedented move and shut everything down in Hubei Province in China. Road blocks were erected and people were forced to stay home in Hubei Province. After the Monday and Tuesday holidays, all businesses were shut down in Hong Kong and throughout China.
Schools were closed until the end of February in Hong Kong and the following week businesses opened but with the option to work from home. Most companies followed the Hong Kong government’s practices with civil servants and kept their employees home. This has continued throughout the month of February and schools in Hong Kong next announced they would be closed till mid-March and then until April 20th.
Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas on earth with a population of around 8 million people. As of this morning there are 94 coronavirus cases confirmed and two deaths in Hong Kong. The percent of confirmed cases to total population is minuscule at 0.001%. Deaths as a percent of the population are thus far at 2 deaths in 8 million.
China has a population of around 1.4 billion. The number of coronavirus confirmed cases stands at 79,251 with around 2,700 confirmed deaths. The percent of confirmed cases to the population is also minuscule at 0.0056%. Deaths as a percent of the population are basically nil. These numbers are based on reported cases which may or may not be accurate.
The US has reported 64 confirmed cases to date of the coronavirus and no fatalities. With 350 million Americans the number of confirmed cases is also at amounts almost nil with no deaths.
Since the beginning of the year the flu in Hong Kong has been much more consequential than the coronavirus:
The Centre for Health Protection announced today that the winter flu season has ended. During this period, 113 adults died of influenza and no deaths from children were recorded. The Centre reminds the public that although the winter flu peak period has ended, citizens should continue to maintain personal and environmental hygiene to prevent respiratory diseases.
So far, the new coronavirus, dubbed COVID-19, has led to more than 75,000 illnesses and 2,000 deaths, primarily in mainland China. But that’s nothing compared with the flu, also called influenza. In the U.S. alone, the flu has already caused an estimated 26 million illnesses, 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Of course, the MSM will continue to parrot Democrat talking points that the coronavirus is the worst crisis since World War II. The data simply doesn’t show this and to date the common flu is much, much more deadly.
Deaths/cases as a measure of severity says this virus is far more deadly than flu.
But . . . people are looking at the wrong thing. Go to the worldometers site. There you can get more than the headline number of cases global.
You can get Active Cases. This is total cases minus recovered and dead. Active cases remove resolved cases.
Active cases have been in decline for 2 weeks globbally.
Containment measures are working. Total cases are only going to be interesting to future historians. It is active cases that determine how society should change behavior, and they are in decline.
The lesson from Hong Kong is that it if your take it seriously (it literally says citizens were “hyper-reactive”), then you mitigate the damage. But handwaving it, ignoring it, and denying it is literally the antithesis of that response. It is ignoring the lesson learned from the failure in Wuhan, and the success in Hong Kong. Overreact and declare victory.
Good point. They have some of the worst environmental conditions in the world. Polluted water, polluted air, trash everywhere and horrible sanitation conditions! The same conditions prevail in Russia as a consequence of the old Soviet regime. Remind the left in this country those are/were communist governments that did this to those two countries!
“Active cases have been in decline for 2 weeks globbally.”
Still, the “decline” is due to China’s numbers which make the bulk of the cases. People are dumb enough to accept China’s claim that there were only 8 new cases yesterday in ALL of China outside of Hubei.
“I think the people of China are more vulnerable because of a couple of decades of exposure to air pollution from coal-fired power plants and the fact many Chinese are notorious heavy smokers of cigarettes.”
some freepers are claiming it’s asian genetics, but that doesn’t really ring true to me ... however, what you say is dead bang on accurate ... i traveled throughout the PRC in the early 80’s on business, and the air quality from both unfiltered coal burning, untuned vehicles, ungodly amounts of cigarette smoking, and massive amounts of fine dust blowing towards the eastern cities in the autumn from the Gobi desert, pretty much induced lung problems in the entire population. it was so bad, that it was against the law to spit on the sidewalks because practically everyone had chronic lung issues, even relatively healthy younger people in the prime of their lives ... it really was tragic, but just part of the price the communist government was willing to pay to quickly industrialize, namely sacrifice their people because basically they didn’t give a damn about them ...
Last year in the US 80,000 died of the flu.
Knock off the real data. We only want screams of:
“we are all going to die thanks to the evil and stupid Trump and his deplorables.”
Everybody should quarantined and locked into their homes.
Well, China seems doubtful, but they are hardly technologically backward. They have a lander on the moon right now. They can certainly orchestrate containment procedures.
The curve is clear. Active cases are in decline.
“Last year in the US 80,000 died of the flu.”
All of this Corona virus vs. influenza thing reminds me of the early ‘90s when I was working at a resort in south Maui. There had been an earthquake in the ocean near Japan, and ... YIKES! ... a tsunami was headed for Maui. Sheer panic. People were calling friends and family on the mainland to say their goodbyes. Those who were able to leave the beach areas and escape upcountry did. (It was scary, I admit.)
Then the tsunami hit. USGS (or whomever monitors tsunami) decreed that it had been 8”. Sooo ... the tsunami was 8”, and 90% of waves during history, and forevermore will be, are BIGGER than 8”. So panic over an 8” wave (coronavirus - no deaths in US), but be perfectly OK with, 3’ waves (80,000 deaths in US). (And how did they know the 8’ wave was “the” tsunami wave?)
People need to get a frickin’ grip.
A virus is a virus is a virus. Do what you should have been doing right along. Wash your hands. Wipe your counters with a disinfectant. And if you’re sick...stay home.
Hey knock of the good reality advice.
We only want to hear, “We are all going to die. Thanks to the mean and stupid Trump. All of us should have been locked up in our homes in early February!”
Food flying off the shelves - or not.
“I gotta wonder if the communal dining using chopsticks without intermediate utensils like serving spoons or ladles is a factor.”
yeah, i saw that too (and obviously participated in communal dining that way as well) when i was in the PRC in the early 80’s, and in the really poor provinces we were served civit because it was all they had ... but what can you do? when in rome ...
(i also flew on PRC airlines then as well, and you talk about becoming fatalistic ... just think about how it feels to be sealed up in an aluminum rocket manufactured by the russians and operated by the PRC forty years ago ...)
As diseases go, this one is a wimp compared to other recent ones. Also consider Ebola, sars, etcc., were all news items in political election years.
Knock off the reality posts.
We only want Freepers running and screaming in the streets with their hair on fire, hollering, “Trump killed us by doing nothing!”
I was one of the original fear mongers in here, as I watched what my relatives were enduring in China.
We prepped during Lunar New Year, bought some P100 masks, MREs and ammo back that far.
Using China’s bogus numbers, the first case here in Washington should have resulted in nearly 1,000 cases by now. We have 4 now.
OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! Should be the theme words for Reddit.
Having a lander on the moon does not correlate with proper/advanced healthcare. India has nukes, but mostly lacks indoor plumbing.
The curve is from China. GIGO.
Yeah, well, hopefully the coronavirus will prove less a health problem then a typical flu. But I think all these comparisons are pretty meaningless until there is more information and stats about the coronavirus, and from nations other than China.
Right now, it’s a be vigilant and use common sense situation and we won’t have a really reliable assessment of the coronavirus for a few more weeks.
“If you want Homeland Virus or whatever to be able to quarantine you and your family”
i totally agree ... unfettered air travel between even the sickest portions of the world is a Constitutional right, and NO ONE should have their Constitutional travel rights compromised by screening for illness and quarantining infective travelers for a couple of weeks to protect the rest of us ... the rights of the individual ALWAYS reigns supreme over the rights of everyone else, particularly the right to indiscriminately spread ones personal diseases to ones friends, neighbors, family and coworkers WITHOUT government interference ... right now, even the Democrats are agreeing with the outrage of screening for illnesses at points of entry and quarantining infective people ...
” I don’t accept the truthfulness/accuracy of anything coming out of China (and yes,despite what some might claim,Hong Kong is *absolutely* part of China). The only figures I’d be inclined to believe are those coming from Japan,South Korea,the EU countries and the United States.”
hey, you’re smarter than you look!
(just kidding ... i have no idea how smart you look)
You shouldn't try to make your argument using a government reaction, such as the closing of schools.
Try using real data.
Number of deaths, death rate, contagiousness...etc.
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