2019-nCoV vs The Flu
Jan. 24th, 2020 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauradi7dwI have been following updates about the new corona virus as much as anybody, especially interested in whether quarantining Wuhan will slow the spread, but it seems to me to be a distraction from the peril of regular old seasonal influenza. According to the CDC, from October 1, 2019 through January 11th of this year, 6,600 people have died of the flu in the US. I was irritated at the NPR reporter last week who was talking about how hard it was going to be to decide which people to scan at world airports because lots of people would be traveling with the flu anyway, and be feverish. He acted as though this is a normal thing. I suppose it might be, but people with the flu should not spend hours infecting people in a nearly sealed cylinder. Just my opinion.
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Date: 2020-01-24 08:55 pm (UTC)I don't think it's a terrible idea to try to avoid a global pandemic of a new disease, but I'm not thrilled by that flu statistic. It does seem an unhelpfully cavalier way to treat something that is not actually innocuous.
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Date: 2020-01-25 12:05 am (UTC)To avoid the annual flu epidemics, we would need to socialize people that it's the heroic thing to stay home when fluish instead of toughing it out, and follow up with healthcare, workplace, daycare, and other policies to make it feasible.
I was a participant in the 1968 flu pandemic (called the Hong Kong flu at the time)
because many of us in my 8th grade class were putting on a version of "A Christmas Carol," and I guess my deathly ill classmates and their parents felt the show must go on. I was healthy at the time, but spent most of the Christmas-New Year's break in bed. My extended family did *not* want me to participate in the festivities, and I was left alone at home (for several hours, not for the whole vacation) when people gathered at my grandmother's house. My uncle did drop off a laundry basket full of presents outside the house door for me, though. If my parents brought leftovers back with them, I probably didn't feel like eating any.
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Date: 2020-01-25 12:22 am (UTC)That is neat, and fast.
To avoid the annual flu epidemics, we would need to socialize people that it's the heroic thing to stay home when fluish instead of toughing it out, and follow up with healthcare, workplace, daycare, and other policies to make it feasible.
I am very much in favor of a social context that would enable people to stay home when sick rather than half kill themselves and everyone else in order to keep their jobs. Even when it isn't flu at stake.
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Date: 2020-01-25 03:30 am (UTC)