I see all the flu comparisons. There's an article on the possibility of the NCAA tournament being cancelled and the comments are all full of "But Michael Jordan's flu game!" etc.
Yes, the stats say that people under sixty should be relatively safe, and I thank God that this virus has a very low effect on children. What people are glossing over is that you can walk around infectious but without symptoms for a week, spreading contagion everywhere you go, everywhere you touch. Most healthy younger people still have older people that they'd rather not die just yet - parents, grandparents, former teachers, their priest, folks at their church, whoever. So scoff at it, minimize the risk if you wish, but the risks remain real. Read the news out of Italy.
I just love how people are so certain that this is going to be a nothingburger when damn few have seen its effects yet. You take precautions in advance in order to prevent as much damage as possible, praying that it fizzles out and is nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Concluding that there is little risk and ignoring those precautions and the advice of infectious disease scientists and doctors is rolling the dice with your loved one's lives as well as that of people you don't know and will likely never even see, but you might kill.
My wife has an IgA deficiency. This means that she has little to no resistance to infections that cross the mucus membranes, like your mouth, nose, and lungs. Forgive me if I take the threat seriously. We barely have tests yet, they are actively refusing to test sick people who have symptoms that match unless they have travelled or have a documented contact with a sick person. South Korea was testing 10,000 people a day last week. Hell, S.Korea has
drive through testing.
To clarify - it isn't a political attack to say that our government's response has been suboptimal.
Edit - "NBC NEWS: The attending physician of the U.S. Congress & Supreme Court, Dr. Brian Monahan, briefed Senate Staff yesterday in a closed-door meeting that he expects anywhere from 70 up to 150 million people in the U.S. to contract coronavirus, per two sources @JulieNBCNews".
Read this:
https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1...0381801475