This. Everyone I've heard fearmongering about this disease both here and in my day to day life has done so completely based on lack of information- lack of information that anyone has.
The arguments seem to be that because Italy and Iran are doing so badly, the virus must be worse than we know. China are a bunch of liars, and we haven't tested enough, so all of the numbers are false. The only other place to look is at our officials who are treating this like the damn Second Impact from Evangelion. Therefore, panic, because this is the worst global outbreak we've ever seen.
The other side of the argument says this is no different than the flu or a really bad cold and we shouldn't be acting any different. Sars, MERS, Ebola, H1N1 were deadlier and we didn't do any of this for those, so why are we doing this now?
I feel like the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think it's true that we don't know the actual numbers. I also think we don't necessarily need to know them. We would be seeing a major surge in pneumonia deaths right now if this were really as bad as the panicked voices think it is.
I also think looking to Italy and Iran as the example of how this will play out here is grossly inaccurate. Italy has a huge elderly population and neither of those countries is known for their medical systems.
It's also true that this isn't "just the flu". I get the annoyance with that comparison. It would probably be more accurate to compare it with SARS, MERS or H1N1, but even compared to those standards, this isn't killing anyone near as bad as those did. At least not yet anyway.
All we really have to go on right now is anecdotal evidence from 3 different people who had it (all 3 of whom say it's like having a mild-to-bad head cold), and the John's Hopkins numbers which can only be accurate up to a point.
Again the real problem here is we just don't know enough. So the question is do we panic right now? Do we not panic? Do we treat this like the flu? Do we not worry like we did with H1N1? Personally I'm leaning towards the latter here.
But at the end of the day, the absolute scariest thing here is definitely how effective the media has been at scaring the ever loving crap out of the country. I see this as more of a media flex than anything. And it terrifies me to know it's working.
Panic is worse than disease.
This. Everyone I've heard fearmongering about this disease both here and in my day to day life has done so completely based on lack of information- lack of information that anyone has.
The arguments seem to be that because Italy and Iran are doing so badly, the virus must be worse than we know. China are a bunch of liars, and we haven't tested enough, so all of the numbers are false. The only other place to look is at our officials who are treating this like the damn Second Impact from Evangelion. Therefore, panic, because this is the worst global outbreak we've ever seen.
The other side of the argument says this is no different than the flu or a really bad cold and we shouldn't be acting any different. Sars, MERS, Ebola, H1N1 were deadlier and we didn't do any of this for those, so why are we doing this now?
I feel like the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think it's true that we don't know the actual numbers. I also think we don't necessarily need to know them. We would be seeing a major surge in pneumonia deaths right now if this were really as bad as the panicked voices think it is.
I also think looking to Italy and Iran as the example of how this will play out here is grossly inaccurate. Italy has a huge elderly population and neither of those countries is known for their medical systems.
It's also true that this isn't "just the flu". I get the annoyance with that comparison. It would probably be more accurate to compare it with SARS, MERS or H1N1, but even compared to those standards, this isn't killing anyone near as bad as those did. At least not yet anyway.
All we really have to go on right now is anecdotal evidence from 3 different people who had it (all 3 of whom say it's like having a mild-to-bad head cold), and the John's Hopkins numbers which can only be accurate up to a point.
Again the real problem here is we just don't know enough. So the question is do we panic right now? Do we not panic? Do we treat this like the flu? Do we not worry like we did with H1N1? Personally I'm leaning towards the latter here.
But at the end of the day, the absolute scariest thing here is definitely how effective the media has been at scaring the ever loving crap out of the country. I see this as more of a media flex than anything. And it terrifies me to know it's working.
It’s a freaking mind virus at this point.