If I catch winter flu (which kills thousands of people in the UK each year) nobody would bat an eyelid. But as soon as someone mentions Coronavirus, its panic. Why is that? Is this all being blown out of proportion?
In the UK, hundreds of people (not thousands) usually die from flu each year.
You can get a vaccination which reduces your risk, and about 70% of people in UK over retirement age have the sense to take it.
"Influenza (flu) is a very common, highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It can be very dangerous, causing serious complications and death, especially for people in risk groups. In rare cases flu can kill people who are otherwise healthy. In the UK it is estimated that an average of 600 people a year die from complications of flu. In some years it is estimated that this can rise to over 10,000 deaths (see for example this UK study from 2013
, which estimated over 13,000 deaths resulting from flu in 2008-09). Flu leads to hundreds of thousands of GP visits and tens of thousands of hospital stays a year."
https://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/vk/influenza-flu
The number of people who have been confirmed to have died as a result of the coronavirus has now surpassed 2,700. Most of them are in and around Wuhan, which is a city the size of London. It has taken about a month and the number of cases continues to rise.
The disease is more infectious than flu, and has a higher death rate. It might be around 3%, and men seem about twice as likely to die as women. Severity seems worse in older people than in young, and worse in people with underlying health conditions, possibly including smokers.
There is no vaccination, and no drugs to cure it. The number of infected people exceeds the capacity of hospitals. Looking on the bright side, the total number of recovered cases has now reached 30,311, and I like to think that these people will have immunity so they can be used in patient care and body disposal.
Do you feel lucky?