Power of Flu Panic
Last year was a hard-press push by the US CDC to ensure doctors require people buy the annual flu vaccine. Yet, numbers of deaths didn't come up to some expectations. So going into 2020, the CDC is coordinating an overly close look at what might happen without a vaccine, and confirm public perception of need to comply with CDC directives.
Now: Is the newly branded Covid-19 just another flu virus? It's not clear whether conventional and social media are being fed good information to focus on the current Carona flu-like virus. Many over-focus on disease effects and take data out of full and proper context. Some news is unreal.
Fear-driving lack of information is not health promotion. Studies of Carona Virus at its supposed source show that the actual Chinese situation differs from news reports and even authoritative descriptions. American style estimates are far-ranging so that doctors act with an over-abundance of caution.. Panic spreads as medical leaders worry about what they say they don't know. This confuses people and corrupts our awareness of actual conditions given this 'novel' and supposedly rare viral infection. .
Like SARS, another Carona virus, Covid-19 is called a 'novel Carona Virus' that seems to produce an oddly disproportionate death toll in countries opposed by the USA, such as Iran and their trading partners. Location to location, cruise ship to shore, diagnostic definitions appear inconsistent. Medical diagnoses fail to match known biological parameters. Actual confirmed incidence numbers do not match population 'infection' rates.
There is an 'ecological fallacy' underlying public reports for this, yet another Carona virus. Official stories from the US CDC promote fear while the Surgeon General tells people that more than 80% of people infected with this 'new' virus will have few if any symptoms. Spread and severity of this virus is not yet as prevalent as other flu conditions under study. There's a difference between big estimates and manageable realities. Like other flu conditions, more lung-affecting viruses have serious effects on older people who are metabolically, and immune vulnerable in the first place. The death rate from Covid-19 is rather small when you realize that news data reports death rates compared to confirmed cases - deaths per 20% or less -- among symptomatic and tested populations. As a result, many published numbers overstate the rate of mortality by >4:1.
Yet, we can not dismiss the potential threat of any well-characterized virus. American observers with long-time focus on odd disease outbreaks, describe another kind of concern. They ask if this recent virus is a new version of SARS and related family of biological weapons. There are strange differences between official information about long and persistent incubation periods versus public health protocols presuming a two-week incubation period.
In any case, news coverage fueled another election year scheme to over-fund the military-based CDC and give it greater authority over American and planetary life. Economic effects are certainly big. Call for over-preparation, isolation and separation over-states and so creates the cost of perceived vulnerability. Mixed messages from those 'in the know' motivates mass fear and defensive investments by elected leaders. Public-private coordination by the U.S. administration quietly moved $8.3 billion in special funding to the CDC and its suppliers -- major private pharmaceutical companies - to theoretically develop a vaccine. Protective innoculations will supposedly not occur for years.
It's most remarkable that public Covid-19 numbers and severity seems relatively small compared to annual flu data. Whether this is another mundane Flu or coordinated pandemic test program, people outside the U.S.A. seem well positioned to serve as unwitting lab animals if not targeted victims suffering this global 'experiment'. Infection news was clearly prepackaged by the CDC for WHO to justify emergency war measures around the world, to remove individual rights in favor of people in military grade bio-hazard gear.
All told, this is flu 'season' again.
Please, keep your hands clean, off your face, on good science-backed data and ready to vote for people-centered leaders who care about health for all, rather than just the profits from war on global populations.