This Is It We're All Going To Die?

Stolen from Irish's place:

Here are some thoughts, feel free to yell at me.

What is weird to me about the Corona Virus is that it has been covered and reacted to in a way I have never seen before.

We can quibble about infection rates and how deadly it is, but a few things are not debatable.

This article for example.

The premise is that a patient has recovered after getting HIV treatment. GREAT.

But at this point I would assume that tens of thousands have recovered, because somewhere between 97% and 99% RECOVER.

Why is this being treated as a miracle, the article doesnt list the patients condition when he was admitted or hint that he was brought back from the brink.

The article seems tailor made to aid in the panic.

The Virus originated in China, and millions were quarantined, which was unheard of and shocking.

Manufacturing shut down, media blackouts, etc.

We had no choice to assume that something truly awful was going on.

But the virus is out now, we can see its effects around the world without the thumb of the Chinese government on it.

I am not panicked by what I am seeing, but yet I am seeing a panicked RESPONSE.

Global markets are fluctuating, supply lines are broken, etc

But it all feels surreal, because the underlying reason doesn't compute.

People are recovering unaided, most of the overwhelming of the system is due to panic, not inability to treat the sick.

I have no idea if the Corona Virus is "the big one" or not, but what I will tell you is that the effect does not match the cause.

Something is off about everything that is happening.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that based on the geographic spread of this thing and the total lack of effective isolation of people who've been where confirmed cases have been seen that it's among us and we're not noticing because it's not that serious a disease for most of us.

If it presents as the flu and you act like you have the flu and get better, you're never going to get tested are you?

Speaking of the flu, which you're not scared of or panicking about, it's managed to snuff about 20k people in the US this season.  This is after the second year in a row where the flu-vaccine missed the strain encountered too.