Maschera N99
maschera n99, Editor's note: This column first appeared in the Washington Times. The coronavirus issue is obviously important for many reasons. None of us want to get sick with any illness, let alone a respiratory virus that disrupts our lives and can even pose a threat to our lives. But after weeks of watching this chaos unfold out of China, perspective is still almost as much in short supply as face masks. Naturally, we fear the unknown and the uncertainty it brings. But there is plenty we do know about the coronavirus, at least enough to realize this is not the End of Days virus that some have imagined.
maschera n99 - Reports continue to unfold around the world that this new virus was spreading possibly longer than initially believed and that many more individuals have been infected without even knowing. Doctors in various countries have noted that some of the known cases are severe, but many mild cases exist and even symptomless cases are likely to be found. DRS. AMESH ADALJA AND JENNIFER NUZZO: END CORONAVIRUS HEALTH CARE WORKER QUARANTINES Yet we still see headlines like this from The New York Times, “The virus is deadlier than the seasonal flu but may not transmit as easily, the WHO says.” That death rate is 3.4 percent of “reported” coronavirus cases, according to the World Health Organization, but only later in that same story does The Times informs us, “but the figure came loaded with caveats. Experts, including those at the WHO, say that once more is known about the epidemic the death rate will be considerably lower.”
maschera n99, An emergency medicine physician and instructor at Harvard Medical School wrote in Slate, “If this turns out to be common, it’s a good thing. It implies that the case fatality rate — the number of deaths divided by the number of infections — of this novel coronavirus is likely to be far, far lower than the reported statistics.” Currently, reports are there are over 100,000 known coronavirus cases around the world (more than 80,000 of which are in China), with more than 3,000 deaths worldwide as of this writing.
maschera n99 - You still wouldn’t know that based on the reaction in media and the nature of the news coverage in general. Political opponents of President Trump and the legacy media apparently see the coronavirus as a crisis they don’t want to waste. Consider that flu season has been upon us and continues to wreak havoc, yet there’s never a peep from the bureaucratic establishment. The flu is an inconvenient issue for them because they can’t blame Mr. Trump for it. But something new with some uncertainty attached can be fashioned into another arrow with which to strike the president.
maschera n99 - If the bureaucratic establishment, Democrats and media really cared about the impact of a pandemic on the condition of people’s lives, they would be comparably up in arms over what happens during flu season. ABC News reported “flu deaths are up more than 65 percent so far in 2020, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that 4,800 people have died and 87,000 people have been hospitalized.” Moreover, 18,000 people have died in the United States alone since the beginning of 2019-2020 flu season with 280,000 people hospitalized. The CDC estimates 29 million people have gotten the flu so far, ABC reported. In just one week during the mid-February coronavirus panic, 13 children died of the flu in the United States, according to the CDC.