Regarding Covid-19

Social distancing seems to be working to control the spread of this not-very exotic virus. Nothing wrong with preventive measures; they make a good deal of sense to anyone who has a working brain cell.

Statistics are available at the link below, and can be found elsewhere, such as at WHO’s site.  It is clear that the numbers of those recovering dispute this deadliness of this virus, as in well over 70, 729 people recovering from Covid-19 versus a to-date death rate of 51,177 this morning worldwide, with an infection rate of 139,089 in a global population of 7.7 billion humans. Something’s working the way it should. The link below has regular updates on these statistics, if you’re interested.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

And let’s do remember those panic attacks over the Zika virus, which physically affected only infants and was not a threat to anyone older, except as a fever. You’d be at more risk if you contracted Eastern Equine Encephalitis or cat scratch fever, or got spit on by a rabid fox, for Pete’s sake! Tick fever is a real threat, with hiking season starting up. Better have Off! sprayed on your clothes. You really to not want Rocky Mountain spotted fever or Lyme disease, both of which are spread by ticks, those sneaky little buggers that cling to your clothes and sneak up on you because they smell mammalian blood.

The statistics on seasonal flu deaths should alarm us far more than those of Covid-19. To date, they are far higher at 22,000+ in the USA than anything the corona virus has produced here. Seasonal flu this time around not only showed up, it came back around, and being chastised by your doctor for not getting your flu shot (naughty, naughty!) in the first place is appropriate.

https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html

The seasonal flu has a current death rate of about 0.1% of the population in the USA.

So far this flu season, about 1% of people in the United States have developed symptoms severe enough to be hospitalized, which is similar to the rate last season, according to data from the CDC. – Article

While the seasonal flu this time around is much more aggressive than the corona virus-19, both of them are respiratory bugs. As always, the statistics on death rates may seem to have to do with youthful vigor and general good health, as well as sedentary lack of mobility by some senior and physically impaired citizens, so those daily walks you may have been avoiding might do your sorry carcasses some good.

The available death rates from China indicate that mortality has a good deal to do with crowding people together into their heavy local population densities, than anything else. Since the Communist Chinese government doesn’t like bad stuff being spread about its ineptitude in handling something like this, our precautions here at home (which are also underway everywhere abroad) are certainly in our favor. No one should be alarmed by any of the things we’re doing. Common sense tells you if the seasonal flu is going around and it’s nasty, you avoid crowds, right? Right? So use the same attitude on this bug.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being cautious about this Covid-19 bug, since not all of its variables are yet well-known, and by variables, I mean how many mutations might it generate before it fades into memory. I will emphasize again: it is a respiratory bug, not a bacterium, and the symptoms evinced by someone showing up with “I don’t feel good” may indicate seasonal flu instead of the Covid-19 virus. So did you get your flu shot yet?

If you’re going to stock up on anything, don’t hoard cleaning supplies. And no, don’t bother with MREs. Get real food. Who the hell wants to trade a loaf of bread for toilet paper, for Pete’s sake???  Get stuff you like and you know you’ll consume. It ain’t even close to the end of the world, no matter what idiotic tripe someone will drop here.  It’s a good time to try things you might not ordinarily put on your shopping list. Why else would I buy fish and find a way to cook it so that it’s user-friendly for me? Buy some seeds for herbs and veggies. You can grow that stuff in pots. I have two large ones that are coming back from this past winter’s cold and can’t wait to get going with them.

If you’re going to hoard stuff, try chocolate and ice cream and popcorn, and some of those really good canned things the way people did when the Y2K panic attacks started up.

Remember them? The banks were all going to shut down because –/–/– would send us all back to 1900 instead of into AD 2000, and this was when all those retired COBOL programmers were called back to work to go through every confounded line of COBOL code to add TWO spaces to the date line. Every confounded bit of COBOL PROGRAMMING CODE with the date line had to be fixed so that it read –/–/—-.

I hope they were well-paid for that gig.

Despite CDC’s ineptitude at addressing this in the beginning, things seem to be calming down. Schools at all levels are putting their classes online to keep things going. Baseball and basketball are not dead yet, just on hold, and some teams are still at practice sessions. People are working online from home, to avoid the crowded confines of commuter bus and rail services. The geese are already arriving at their home ponds and lakes and unless things are souring the fun, local fishing spots are going to be restocked, period. I may go fishing myself in a few weeks. There are rainbows and speckles and brownies in that fishing hole, and some of them are escapees from prior years of crowded fishing.

Despite the Doomsday Dissonance from various corners of the room, the containment efforts and testing/screening processes are worthwhile, working, and not to be ignored, and I will repeat: you are at more risk of getting the seasonal flu if you didn’t get your flu shot than the likelihood of contracting this bug. They are both respiratory bugs, both carry the same symptoms, and how will you know who coughed on you on the bus, anyway?

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", China, Reality Check