The black plague, the influenza epidemic of 1918, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, H1N1, Obama. Shit, the world has survived pestilence and plague forever and we, at least some of us, are still here. Go figure?
Even speaking to my personal experience, I have survived horrendous sand storms, racial tension, public education, Vietnam, hurricanes, floods, influenza, Ebola, and the worst divorced-dad prejudice in the existence of the world.
Coronavirus? This is a piece of cake. This is like the end of the world. Right?
Coronavirus is a RNA virus. In layman’s terms, that means it is less sophisticated, less predictable and less organized than DNA viruses, but not. The influenza virus, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and coronavirus are RNA viruses. For comparison, influenza and HIV are similar but very different. Influenza virus mutates at an extremely high rate, but on it’s surface. This makes it very difficult to predict things like contagiousness, whereas HIV mutates rapidly, but not on it’s surface, making it much easier to predict. We don’t know, yet, how this new coronavirus is going to act.
In February of 1918, a new (probably) influenza virus developed in Haskell county, Kansas. From there it spread around the world, killing an estimated 150 million people. Read the previous sentence again and think about that number a minute. That was the worst pandemic, ever. It killed more people than AIDS, the black plague and every other disease and war man has ever known.
So, what about coronavirus (COVID-19). At this very moment (3/16/20), we don’t know. As of March 14, 2020, there has been a very steady mortality rate of 3.7%. Seasonal influenza mortality rates range from 15-25%, and pandemic influenza mortality rates range 25-50%. Seasonal influenza means what we experience every year.
But if you watch the news, coronavirus seems to be the deadliest plague to hit mankind, ever. Give me a break. Even the “conservative” Fox News is posting complaints about canceled sports programs, rock concerts, spring break venues and quarantine efforts for old geezers like me. Nothing about it’s mortality, because it isn’t. Right now, there have been 3700 cases in the US with 68 deaths. In 2016, there were over 35,000 deaths due to vehicle accidents, and about that many deaths due to influenza.
The concept of quarantine as a control measure, at this late point, is ridiculous. Locking old geezers up will kill them. They won’t have food or medical supplies for their old geezer illnesses, and will die from those. Unless you deliver their food and toilet paper by medically sterile drones, then you will be introducing coronavirus to a captive audience from the stock boys packaging their delivery! These stupid attempts to restrict exposure, after exposure has already occurred…- we will just let the word stupid stand.
With any respiratory viral illness, who will suffer the most? The largest sub-portion of the population. Right now, that is the old geezers and some of the young. Baby boomers (lots of babies were made when the guys came home from WWII) still make up a very large portion of the population. And, they are mostly all sick with old-people diseases. Cancer, COPD, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc. And, the young not so healthy. The kids that survived birth insult and defects that in earlier times would have died in utero or shortly after birth. They, too, are highly susceptible to respiratory disease.
But at this point, what does it matter. Unlike the flu, there is no vaccine and there is no Tamiflu for the coronavirus. As far as I am concerned, I can’t do anything about it if I do get it. I just wish the news outlets and the government would pony up and quit lying to us.
The real story from your grumpy Uncle Dave.
The Great Influenza, The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, John M Barry, Penguin Books, 2004.
www.foxnews.com
www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html
Want to read more about this, here is Coronalie-2.
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