The World did not stop - Thế Giới chưa dừng lại

During the Obama / Biden administration, from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010 in the United States alone, CDC estimated there were 60.8 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths in the US due to the (H1N1) pdm09 virus. Additionally, CDC estimated that up to 575,000 people worldwide died from (H1N1)pdm09 virus infection during just the first year of the virus.

The media did not blame or criticize Obama / Biden, and sleepy Joe did none of the things he claims he would do now.

The world did not stop, countries did not shut down, businesses and shops did not close, the markets did not crash, the FED did not cut rates by 100basis points down to 0%, travel was not halted, businesses did not close, the Supreme Court did not shut down, public and private events were not banned, people did not go home from work, etc. The same can be said about the 1957 H2N2 pandemic, and the 1968 H3N2 pandemic.

The world is in a panic over the novel virus, a coronavirus. The panic itself is devastating the world’s economy without proper perspective of the threat. Further, we may be doing more harm than good by our feeble attempts to protect people.

Consider for a moment that mankind has evolved with viruses over millions of years. Virus actually are part of our DNA. Some estimates range up to eight percent of our DNA. Viruses are not really alive by the definition of life. They are essentially floating RNA or DNA that infiltrates the hosts cells and uses the host to replicate the virus. You could say zombie genetics.

Our body’s immune system has developed specific defenses against viruses that science does not fully understand. One of the body’s key defenses are t-cells that combat viruses by killing infected cells. Personally, I like to think of t-cells as terminator cells as they are very relentless in seeking out their targets.

T-cells start out in our bone marrow stem cells and then are sent to a kind of boot camp in our thymus gland where they are further developed into different types of t-cells. Many t-cells do not pass the test and are eliminated. However, the ones that do survive the process are well prepared to do battle and sent into the body to find invaders.

Our immune systems are very efficient and will protect us from viruses. The problems lie with weak immune systems compromised by bad nutrition, unhealthy lifestyles, or simply from aging. As with all our body’s organs, as we age, our organs diminish. Our memory gets foggier, our muscles decline, our vision gets weaker, etc.

As it pertains to our immune systems, the thymus produces less and fewer t-cells as we age. This is why the elderly are most affected by the recent novel virus outbreak. Why should anyone under the age of say 65 be concerned? As in the case of the 21-year-old soccer coach, he was ill with leukemia and did not know it. His body’s immune system was already under stress from fighting cancer. When he contracted the novel virus, it simply overwhelmed him.

Nevertheless, we have to place things in a proper context. Most people will experience mild to no symptoms as their immune systems easily handles the virus. Here in America, at this writing, only about one hundred people have died. About the number of people that die every day in auto accidents and far less than those that die in one day from the flu.
 
We must ask ourselves is it really necessary to tank our economy to delay the spread of a virus that can be better handled by common sense. Simple safety precautions will help save lives. Washing hands frequently, staying home if you have symptoms, not visiting the elderly, etc. And if you are at risk, then avoid other people until the threat passes.

There is a bigger question. Are we causing more harm by not exposing young people to a coronavirus? Did my exposure to SARS (the novel virus’ cousin) a decade and a half ago help my immune system deal with these coronaviruses? If those under forty are not exposed to the virus, will they be ready for the next coronavirus in a decade or two? Are we creating a plaque situation like that which killed a third of Europe in the fourteenth century; because Europe had never developed immunities to it? Or how Native Americans were susceptible to smallpox brought by Europeans to the new world. Science, in all its knowledge still does not fully understand the interrelations of the world.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the flu causes up to 5 million cases of severe illness globally and kills up to 650,000 people annually.
we deal with that annually just fine....right now we are at 260k cases and just under 9,000 deaths. So if 4.74M cases and 641K deaths occur in the next few months then maybe not, if COVID 19 falls short of that then probably overreacting. But even if it doubles the flu's numbers still think its overreacting for what would typically be called a bad flu season. To match the "actions/panic" we have seen would think we would need 10M+ worldwide deaths