"Just the facts ma'am."
Wikipedia -- CDC estimates that
influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000
deaths annually since 2010.
Johns-Hopkins Coronavirus World Map
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html -- 181,00 cases, 7,100 deaths to date.
(Honest question, "Why, with these numbers, is the flu not declared a "pandemic" every year if Coronavirus, with much, much lower numbers is declared a pandemic?)
There is no question public policy officials grossly overreacted to the Coronavirus outbreak. Do we shut down the entire world economy every year when the flu breaks out?
People die from infectious diseases -- flu, Ebola, HIV, Coronavirus.
And then there is this to consider, "... no country can simply quarantine its way out of the
covid-19 crisis, Wendy E. Parmet, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University, told me. “There are reasons to be skeptical of the efficacy of quarantine for respiratory diseases like coronavirus.” Quarantines can be a useful tool when done well. They can lower infection rates “a bit” and buy time, she said. But they have been done historically in discriminatory and haphazard ways that provide “a seductive illusion of containment.”
It is obvious this "quarantine" has been haphazard. Cancelling college classes and disbursing all the students -- infected, healthy, or carriers -- from a college community of low risk young people to spread the disease across the country; creating a panic that sends people to mob Costco and grocery stores to hoard goods and pass around the Coronavirus in the checkout line; pack multiple plane loads of people from various countries with raging Coronavirus outbreaks into O'Hare airport to wait for hours literally shoulder to shoulder so that all of them are exposed to the virus, and then they get on connecting flights after clearing customs to destinations across the country.
And now, after all these weeks, the Keystone Cops are starting lock-downs, which did nothing to stop the spread in China and on to the rest of the world?
So we traded the world economy for what looks like just another run-of-the-mill viral infection. A very bad trade, imo.
“a seductive illusion of containment.” is right.