<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/16/2020 6:06 PM, Jeff Scarbrough
via Shop-talk wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAO8Q7COma7k6Q-9FpX21kN-Mw3A64G=wmqAvspmRd9gM1b1Tug@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Mar 16, 2020 at 7:43
PM someone wrote:<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font size="3"
face="Calibri">This is no different then swine flu, bird
flu, Sars, or any of the other types of outbreaks we have
recently had.
But this one has the media waging the dog.</font>
<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I am not an epidemiologist. But I do help to keep a
high-containment infectious disease lab running, so some of
this has rubbed off...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is, of course, very much like SARS - they are
cousins on the virii family tree (Coronavirus is also called
SARS-CoV-2). It is like swine flu and bird flu, in that it
seems to be transmitted as an aerosol.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What makes it different is that it is a novel
coronavirus. That means we haven't seen it before.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm thinking that history doesn't repeat itself, and doesn't
rhyme (as Mark Twain averred) so much as it coughs up the same
sort of phlegm every once in a while for the same reasons. It's
now right around 100 years ago that the "Spanish" flu killed an
estimated 50-60 million worldwide, when the world population was
about 35-40% of what it is now. There <i>are</i> pandemics, and
some of them have rather high death rates. The rate of death from
the Spanish flu was about 2%. The CDC is estimating a rate of
death from this virus of 3%, so it's nothing to sneeze at. In
hard-hit regions, the death rate is around 4-5%, probably because
in those populations, malnutrition is higher and access to care is
less prevalent, and people are dying at a higher rate from
opportunistic secondary infections, such as bacterial pneumonia.
The death rate in this country each year from garden-variety
influenza is about 0.1%, so we are dealing with something that is
more virulent and has a much greater potential for harm, so, all
in all, warnings to behave exceptionally because the threat is
exceptional are appropriate. Does the media magnify the threat?
Yeah, because getting eyeballs is the core of the business. But,
if the advice comes from reputable sources, best to listen to it,
instead of the nitwits.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Cheers.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> <br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Michael Porter
Roswell, NM
Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....</pre>
</body>
</html>