This alleged coronavirus epidemic has hogged the headlines for about a week now. The first four or five minutes of every CBC news report is coronaviruscoronaviriscoronavirus.
Then you'll inevitably meet one or two experts between the hourly newscasts whose job it is to fan the flames of this alleged epidemic. This afternoon they had a guy on who mentioned that the coronavirus doesn't seem any more infectious or deadly than your standard flu.
Hmm... well, we don't consider your standard flu newsworthy. Why not? According to stats from the Center for Disease Control, your regular garden variety flu which comes around every year in "flu season," has killed between 12,000 and 80,000 people, just in the US, every year since 2010.
So far coronavirus has claimed just over a hundred people, all in China. How does that rank as a global health emergency?
We're told that this is the deadliest outbreak since SARS, which at least got Toronto a Stones concert. That too was a massively over-hyped media confection.
Total deaths worldwide from SARS? Under a thousand.
So relax, folks!
No comments:
Post a Comment