The fact is, influenza is an illness that is far more deadly but also far more familiar to us. The current coronavirus outbreak, which originated in China, serves as a surrogate for a good deal of xenophobia and fear of the country itself.
https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-virus-and-the-reality-of-the-flu
UPDATE - 2020/02/14
At present there are more people dying of the flu every day than have died from the novel coronavirus strain since the outbreak began. This from worldometers.info – I’ve provided links to the source of their figures below.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1213-flu-death-estimate.html
https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2017/flu/en/
ORIGINAL - POST 2020/02/05
Here we go again, it seems. This time around the boogeyman is the Wuhan coronavirus.
At the time of writing (5 February 2020), this terrifying new pathogen has so far claimed around 492 lives in China, and 1 elsewhere, and news of it has thrown global markets into disarray.
Moving on to other less spectacular news, the CDC has just put out its estimates for influenza mortality since the beginning of 2020. Their best guess is that as many as 10,000 Americans have already died from influenza this year. One of the leading causes of influenza, bronchitis, SARS, MERS, the common cold and a multitude of respiratory ills is, you guessed it, coronavirus, but it’s only newsworthy if it’s of the Chinese variety.
The Yankee coronavirus, which has taken 20 times more lives in the USA alone in the same period, is nothing to worry about. The markets don’t give a hoot.
This is looking like nothing more than another pot-shot at China in the ongoing economic war.
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