Do you remember the MSM announcing the death count every day during H1N1 epidemic, death by death by death?
I don’t recall it, and you probably don’t either, because I don’t think it ever happened. The pandemic was covered by the press, but not in anything like the way the COVID-19 illness is being covered now.
Because Obama was president, and therefore there was no need to intentionally stir up alarm and panic in order to hurt him.
Obama waited until late October of 2009, about 6 months into the pandemic, to declare it a national emergency. By that time, at least a thousand and perhaps many more had died in this country (I’ve had some trouble locating the exact figure). And one of the hallmarks of H1N1 was that it tended to kill younger people more often than older people:
Deaths relating to this new strain of influenza began appearing in the US in late April, and by early June 15, states had reported fatalities related to or directly occurring from the virus. These deaths totaled at 4,000 as of November 15, 2009…
On October 24, 2009, President Barack Obama declared Swine Flu a national emergency in the United States. On November 12, 2009, the CDC reported an estimated 22 million Americans had been infected with 2009 A H1N1 and 4,000 Americans have died. On December 10, 2009, the CDC reported an estimated 50 million Americans or 1 in 6 people had been infected with the 2009 A H1N1 Virus and 10,000 Americans had died, by which time the vaccine was beginning to be widely distributed to the general public by several states. On December 23, 2009 the CDC reported a reduction of the disease by 59% percent and the disease was expected to end in the United States in January 2010.
On January 15, 2010, the CDC released new estimate figures for swine flu, saying it has sickened about 55 million Americans and killed about 11,160 from April through mid-December. On February 12, 2010, the CDC released updated estimate figures for swine flu, reporting that, in total, 57 million Americans had been sickened, 257,000 had been hospitalised and 11,690 people had died (including 1,180 children) due to swine flu from April through to mid-January.
That’s just in the US, and it involves about eight months. I recall it being reported in the MSM in a rather general way, but I don’t recall any criticism of Obama and it certainly wasn’t an issue in the 2012 election.
Here’s an article from CNN that covered Obama’s declaration of an emergency. It’s very straightforward – just the facts, ma’am, just the facts. Nothing critical of Obama and nothing especially designed to stoke fears or to especially allay them. Here’s an NPR article from September of that year. Similar.
I’ve tried to find something critical of Obama for the delay while the deaths mounted up. I’ve tried to find articles during that period giving a day-by-day count of the mounting deaths.I haven’t been able to locate anything like that, although that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The articles that I have found are typically factual and sober, and even minimizing, such as this one from NBC:
“I think the term emergency declaration sounds more dramatic than it really is,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a research professor and chairman of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University. “It’s largely an administrative move that’s more preemptive …” He said such a step would give emergency rooms and hospitals the flexibility they need.
The national emergency declaration was the second of two steps needed to give Sebelius extraordinary powers during a crisis…
“As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic,” Obama wrote in Saturday’s declaration.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
I’ve never seen anything like the fear mongering happening right now. It is really dangerous and irresponsible when done by media and government types especially. I’m not saying there is no reason for precautions and common sense measures but a lot of this is getting out of hand. At the rate we are going the entire country will be shut down in a week.
The two biggest differences between now and 2009 is who is president and the exponential growth in impact of social media, especially twitter, in driving media narratives.
I not sure how relevant this is without considering this material fact:
Sounds like the Obama Admin was on top of things. That’s probably why the Market didn’t crash.
Sounds like the Obama Admin was on top of things. That’s probably why the Market didn’t crash.
You mean they’re ‘on top of things’ when there are 20 cases, but Trump’s not when there are 15 cases and international travel is curtailed.
Correct-the-record is not sending us their best.
Maybe someone can get the Iranian leadership to visit the headquarters of the MSM newspapers and tv outlets. Quarantine them all in their buildings for 30 days until there’s no danger of contagion from them. The reports would be hysterically funny after about three days.
manju,
You are aware of what was going on in the economy and the stock market in the first half of 2009, right? The market bottomed out in March 2009 from the financial crisis so the swine flu was the least of the problems that the market was looking at.
Now, on the other hand the market was at all time highs prior to this and was widely believed to be priced for perfection thus making it very susceptible to a shock like this. Another factor is for various reasons the market seemed to shake off worries about the Corona Flu for the first half of February and hit it’s last high on Feb. 19. In reality the market should have been down more prior to this which would have made this drop look less dramatic.
When you are at all time highs you have more ground to give as opposed to 2009 when the market was at it’s bottom. And it also should be said that the economic data reported the last couple weeks has continued to be strong so hopefully the impact of this can be absorbed somewhat by a very strong economy.
I caught swine flu on a visit home in the late spring of 2009. I remember hysteria in Egypt, to which I returned, but no hysteria here. I was pretty sick for a week, recovered, and then got pneumonia.
Manju jumps the Montage.
Manju:
Once again, you manage to demonstrate a combination of truth-twisting and a refusal to understand what a post is about.
This post is a criticism of the media for not reporting the death by death by death count day by day back in 2009, or rather for reporting it now and not reporting it back then. For being completely inconsistent, in other words – trying to stoke panic now and doing the opposite back then.
As far as Obama goes and whether he did what you say he did, the truth goes like this (the article appeared on April 26, 2009) [emphasis mine]:
This was primarily health officials following their own protocols, not Obama. Nor did Obama impose a travel ban then. And there were apparently no quarantines at that point.
More:
There really is no analogy to what Trump did early in the game. And a lot of people died in this country from H1N1, and the MSM did not criticize Obama.
By the way, the word “Obama” doesn’t even appear in that lengthy NY Times article, the one I just quoted, and the one on which that Snopes article to which you linked relied on. The article was all about the CDC and what it was doing, and the administration’s spokesperson, Janet Napolitano, said it was just preparedness in case.
And I do think it needs to be called the Corona Flu. Scientists can call it whatever they want but for common usage Corona Flu serves the purpose of letting people know what is being talked about while also adding some real world context.
The clickbaity phrases like ‘deadly virus’ drive me nuts. If we put ‘deadly’ in front of everything that kills a few thousand people it would be a strange world.
I drove to work today in my deadly car all the while deadly wind and deadly lightning were all around me. I then went up deadly stairs on my way to the office. Deadly, deadly, deadly, everything is deadly.
We’ll have to see how this plays out, but one thing is different this time around. The Trump economy was humming going into this media scare. The market can give some back and the economy and jobs numbers can give some back and we will still be better than we were three or four years ago. The rest of the world is not so lucky. They were bouncing off of recession before this started. That’s why money is flying into the U.S. treasury from around the world. The Trump haters want this to be his Waterloo but it will be another big win.
I have particularly vivid memories of the H1N1 epidemic for reasons I will explain in a comment that will likely go on way too long.
My wife, who is an NP and worked in a hospital, was pregnant with twins. It was already a high risk pregnancy due to previous difficulties with fertility, gestational diabetes and carrying multiples. She was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia in mid April 2009 and put on bed rest.
Two days later, she went into labor. The twins’ due date was still 11 weeks out.
I brought her to the hospital and, due to distance from a hospital with a NICU, the doctors put her on a helicopter. I drove as fast as I could to get to that hospital. I was pulled over by a State Trooper. I explained the situation and forgot to show him my agency ID. I was terrified in a way I had never been in some of the most dangerous situations I can remember. At first the trooper looked dubious. But he went to his car, got on the radio and, apparently, confirmed my story that there was a medical helicopter transporting a pregnant woman to a NICU.
He came back and told me to follow him. I did. He got me to the hospital quite fast.
The children were delivered by cesarean. They were premature but healthy and taken away to isolettes in the NICU to be intubated. As it turns out, they didn’t need the intubation and the tubes were removed 6 hours later.
Things I remember like yesterday:
-The OR surgeon who delivered my children seemed to be somewhere “on the spectrum” as they say. He told me my children’s genders, weight and time of birth. And announced on his way out of the OR, “Oh yes, they were born on Adolf Hitler’s birthday.” Even as premature as they were, they were quite large; baby A was 5 lbs on the dot. Baby B was 5 lbs 10 ounces. Both were 21 inches long.
-The H1N1 epidemic was big, big news in that hospital. I remember having to remove my watch and wedding ring (as they are disease vectors), put on a mask and eye gear, and wash my hands with this red soap that came impregnated in a sponge. You tore into a foil package to get to the sponge. A nurse watched me prepare to enter the NICU, every single time. I had to wash my hands and arms to my elbows.
-The NICU was staffed with what I can only call some of them mostly calmly competent people I have ever met. Amazing.
-I saw two instances of CPR given to newborns in the time there visiting. Both children lived.
-The security around that NICU rivaled any place I have ever visited. Selling children stolen from hospitals is big black market business and this hospital took it very seriously. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to see my children. But I really appreciated how seriously they all took their job.
-I had to give reports to my wife who was stuck on a hospital bed. She was in bad shape for about a week and couldn’t walk up to the NICU. She couldn’t hold her children for a week.
-I remember reports from the staff, spoken out of earshot (or so they believed) about people being admitted elsewhere in the facility for H1N1.
-I remember the news talking about babies and pregnant mothers being particularly at risk, even before the kids were born. I was nervous even then. I was even more anxious as I heard things whispered in the hospital.
-I remember the Ronald McDonald House (we lived two hours from the hospital) taking very strong measures regarding cleaning procedures while we stayed there for a month.
-I don’t remember anyone making it political. At all.
I can’t help but filter all that I read about COVID-19 through all I remember about the first year of my kids’ lives.
Sorry about the lengthy comment Neo! This post brought back some strong memories.
“I don’t remember anyone making it political.”
I care less about the Democrats making it political than I do about how quickly they’re doing it. This is like trying to attack George W. Bush the day before Katrina made landfall.
The Democrats and the media going after Trump on the coronavirus aren’t doing so in some clever, coordinated attack carefully designed and calibrated to inflict maximum political damage. They’re just lashing out in a non-rational and reflexive manner. To paraphrase the old SNL skit, these people have a fever and the only prescription is more Trump-bashing.
Mike
Griffin:
Isn’t it also the case that since 2009, during the ensuing years of the Obama administration, our country became more entwined with China rather than less, something Trump has been trying to reduce? What’s more, the H1N1 flu didn’t come from China, it came from Mexico.
Not only that, but we don’t really know how high the death toll was from H1N1. This 2013 article, for exampe, indicates it was much higher than originally estimated.
Here are some more statistics about the disease’s impact during the year it was at its strongest:
It is really astounding and remarkable that the panic in the US back then was exceedingly muted compared to the panic now.
In addition, some of the stock market panic has reflected fear of a Sanders nomination or possible presidency.
You are aware of what was going on in the economy and the stock market in the first half of 2009, right? The market bottomed out in March 2009 from the financial crisis so the swine flu was the least of the problems that the market was looking at.
You’re expecting Manju to have heard of p/e ratios or understand the influences on securities prices.
Art, you mean like Obama’s grasp of the Profit To Earnings ratio?
Mollie Hemingway, twitter, addressing a video tweet by Tom Elliot — which see: “One problem with this media narrative is that it’s obvious they chose it weeks ago and will push it no matter the facts. And after the hysteria of last three years, it rings hollow outside Resistance echo chambers.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1236410616459538433
These MSNBC people in the vid are genuinely sick fucks.
neo,
1) As for China the supply chains had started going there more and more prior to 2009 and that has increased until the trade kerfuffle of the last couple of years but what has really grown is the importance of China as a consumer market for US businesses. China experienced explosive growth after the financial crisis and it has led to companies like Nike now getting something like 15% of there sales from China and Starbucks has about 10% from China and has thousands of stores there and others like Apple are in similar positions.
One of the most important developments of the Trump era has been the confronting of China and this needs to be a major issue for Trump in the election if it’s against Biden (Bernie might actually think like Trump on China). It’s a fine line because the China market is important for businesses but it needs to be made clear that the dependence on China for goods has to be cut back.
The same argument is obvious about illegal immigration on the southern border. If all these people are going to freak about the Corona Flu then surely they don’t want unknown people carrying unknown diseases with them coming into the country. Right? This needs to be hammered constantly. It is a no brainer issue.
2) As for the market fall, yes, I think the thought of Bernie being the nominee played into the market decline especially week before last which was coming after Iowa and New Hampshire and all the talk was Bernie was unstoppable. Further proof of this was Wednesday after Biden’s Super Tuesday triumphs the market was up 4-5%. Of course that makes no sense but that’s beside the point.
They’re talking about it because they’re rooting for it.
MBunge on March 7, 2020 at 6:19 pm said:
“I don’t remember anyone making it political.”
I care less about the Democrats making it political than I do about how quickly they’re doing it. This is like trying to attack George W. Bush the day before Katrina made landfall.
* * *
From sdferr’s link to Hemingway’s Tweet:
The Democrats continue to do things like that because they got enough idiots to believe their spin on Bush, then and still today. If you reward certain behaviors, you get more of them.
That’s why conservatives elected Trump: he calls them out instead of caving in.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/03/during-town-hall-trump-explains-why-he-wont-turn-the-other-cheek-on-his-critics/
neo: Two differences between H1N1 and Covid-19 come to mind:
(1) With H1N1 we didn’t see one of the largest economies in the world report shocking levels of infection and death, then quarantine fifty million people in a matter of weeks. (And I’m still not taking the Chinese numbers, bad as they are, as gospel.) That’s drama; that’s news. That gets reported, no matter who is POTUS.
(2) We’re not sure where the mortality on Covid shakes out, but it looks considerably more lethal than H1N1. According to wiki:
However, with about 150,000–575,000 fatalities, [H1N1] had a much lower case fatality rate [compared to the Spanish Flu] of 0.01-0.08%.]
Which puts H1N1 in the same ballpark as regular flu, even weaker.
However, going by current raw numbers Covid’s fatality rate is ~3.5%. I too suspect that number is inflated by mild cases not being included in calculations, but still it’s reasonable to suppose that Covid is ten times more fatal than H1N1.
To be sure Democrats are now jumping on Covid as a lever to topple Trump. But there was plenty of realistic concern about Covid before that lever looked promising.
“With H1N1 we didn’t see one of the largest economies in the world report shocking levels of infection and death, then quarantine fifty million people in a matter of weeks.”
I’d agree that part of this flows out of Western Elites BEYOND schizophrenic attitudes toward China.
Mike
One of the unexpected benign outcomes of the current Covid-19 epidemic could be: 1. Infection in the homeless and their encampments, and probably government homeless shelters. 2. High mortality and high morbidity in these areas. 3. These places have very high viral loads and become like living fomites to surrounding cities, infecting policemen, firemen, first responders from hospitals, cleanup crews, philanthropic NGOs. 4. Because of Emtala laws—requiring hospitals to accept all comers into their ERs and to keep these patients until stabilized—hospital costs become unsustainable and many hospital personnel become ill, hospitals have to lease or buy more and probably-separate bed space, all resulting in exhaustion of medical care resources. 5. Government has to respond by devising methods to lower prices, obtain lower drug prices and use less costly labor, perhaps people with more focused, but less costly education. Like folks with one or two years of college. 6. Accordingly, through force of circumstance and evolution, the US finds itself developing an entirely new medical care system, much cheaper and using many less trained and less costly personnel and devising lower costs in new international drug supply chains.
huxley:
In this post I’m mainly talking about the one-by-one-by-one reporting of each death, which absolutely did NOT happen with the MSM when Obama was president. But I also believe that although the beginning – the Chinese part – of COVID-19 would have been reported if Obama had been president at the time, it would have been reported very very differently. Minimized probably, and whatever it was that Obama did would have been praised as just the right thing to do.
You write that “shocking levels of infection and death” occurred in China. Actually, not really (divide the number of deaths in Wuhan by the population of Wuhan and you’ll see what I mean). It’s only shocking because they acted to quarantine large numbers of people as a result. While Obama was president, there was a large outbreak of H1N1 in India that got almost no attention, for example:
That was over a very short period, and also apparently represented a new strain. But we didn’t hear about it.
China is of course more economically connected to us, and that’s part of why we heard so much about this recent outbreak there. But I would bet a lot of money that, as I said earlier, if Obama had been president we would have heard a lot less about it, and a lot more about how great he was doing.
H1N1 was actually a more frightening disease than COVID-19 (at least, so far; that could change of course) in terms of statistics. First of all, like the 1918 flu epidemic, it affected young people more than old, including and young adults in the prime of life. I’m old, but in terms of a society, that’s more frightening and far more unusual than a disease that kills mostly the elderly, like COVID-19. Not only that, but H1N1 is a form of the same virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, which was another form of H1N1. That’s very scary, too.
And COVID-19 may have begun in China, but H1N1 began in this hemisphere very close to home: Mexico. You think that wouldn’t be bigger news if Obama hadn’t been president? And it spread to the US very quickly.
Here are some relevant facts about H1N1:
Scary. And this is of particular relevance. Compare this to what happened in China, and take note of the fact that this was next door to us, in Mexico, a country we also have many economic ties with (emphasis mine):
Who remembers this? We probably don’t remember because it wasn’t made such a big deal of, although it certainly sounds like a big deal. And by the way, Wuhan and Mexico City are both very major cities. Wuhan is a little bigger (11 million people) than Mexico City (about 9 million).
With H1N1, China actually quarantined people returning from travel to infected nations (Mexico, for example) quite early in the epidemic.
As for the mortality rate comparisons, we simply do not know enough. We have little idea what the true mortality rate of H1N1 was; many reports say a lot more people died in Asia and Africa that went uncounted, and so the rates were higher than the final reports. In addition, initial reports of mortality are almost always high. If right now initial reports are of 3.4% mortality for COVID-19, compare that to initial reports for H1N1:
So initially, H1N1 was even scarier.
In Washington there have been 16 deaths now. 15 in King County (a Seattle) and one in Snohomish County. Of the 15 in King 14 were residents of that nursing home. This is horrible obviously but seems to be pretty standard for the deaths from this thing pretty much everywhere from China to Korea to Italy (who knows with Iran).
Politico and other MSM propaganda outlets continue to blame Trump regardless of what he does.
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/03/07/politico-blame-trump-for-coronavirus/
IMO, I think the President should say more about his rally-goers taking reasonable precautions, rather than just saying “come ahead,” but when someone at a Trump rally gets sick and Politico lays all of it at his feet (people aought to be smart about their own health), remember that Bernie is still holding rallies as well.
https://www.breitbart.com/news/trump-refuses-to-halt-rallies-as-coronavirus-surges/
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/07/bernie-sanders-draws-crowd-of-15000-in-chicago-trump-is-moving-this-country-into-an-autocracy/
MBunge,
‘I’d agree that part of this flows out of Western Elites BEYOND schizophrenic attitudes toward China’
Yes, it was seen with the trade war also where some said China would crush Trump and the US while others said the exact opposite. They are secretly jealous of the Chinese authoritarians while knowing they can’t come out and say it (except for Tom Friedman I guess)..
This also happens with the US. The tariffs were going to kill our economy said the smart people and the newest version is there is no way the US can handle this Corona Flu like China.
Level of self hatred on display me thinks.
Dnaxy on March 8, 2020 at 12:34 am said:
One of the unexpected benign outcomes of the current Covid-19 epidemic could be
* * *
I followed your chain of reasoning, and I wouldn’t exactly call that “benign,” no matter how salutary the eventual outcome.
However, one positive consequence of the extensive precautions being taken is that deaths from normal flu may go down this season, because fewer people get infected and “share” with the rest of us as a matter of normal daily interactions.
We should all quit shaking hands indiscriminately and breathing in each others faces, and stay home when we are sick, regardless of whether or not there is a new virus or a pandemic.
AesopFan,
Wait a minute are you saying the normal flu hasn’t stepped aside for the ‘deadly virus’? By listening to the hysterics I thought everyone that coughed had the ‘deadly virus’.
Seriously, I wonder how many that they have tested are coming back completely negative or positive for a previously known flu virus.
neo: Much of this discussion is within the bounds of conjecture. Are these apples enough like oranges for comparison?
Nonetheless, I believe my point stands that a huge difference between H1N1 and Covid is the massive, unparalleled, Chinese response to the latter disease. Whether one is Chinese or not, unfavorably disposed to Trump or not, that catapulted Covid into the news.
So if we are going to compare the media coverage of the two, we must start with that distinction.
I would argue that, similar to celebrity, there is a threshold effect in news such that once a person becomes a celebrity or a story becomes news, the media is likely to continue to feature that celebrity or story on the basis of exceeding that threshold. Momentum.
As you point out, H1N1 never cracked that threshold. IMO it’s not all that mysterious that Covid has received far more coverage — while granting the American situation in which the Democrats/MSM have a local agenda to pursue in hammering on Covid.
Furthermore, on account of the massive Chinese response, the rest of the world has taken Covid much more seriously than H1N1.
What if the Chinese hadn’t locked down so hard and startled the rest of the world into awareness of Covid? What if the disease, like H1N1, had largely circulated below the average person’s radar? Where would the Covid numbers be now?
Higher is my bet. I’m sure washing my hands more in 2020 than in 2009.
IMO Covid is no longer containable, if it ever was. Nonetheless, we have retarded its spread. Which means fewer infections, fewer deaths, and fewer further infections.
We have bought time. Time for warmer weather (perhaps) to send Covid into dormancy until next flu season. Time to develop a vaccine, maybe in time for next season. Time to develop new habits — better hygiene, more telecommuting, self-isolating when ill — to reduce contagion.
Covid is already a different scenario from H1N1.
“…massive Chinese response…”
(After waiting six to eight weeks to try to cover it up.)
“What if the Chinese hadn’t locked down so hard…?”
(After waiting six to eight weeks to try to cover it up.)
Gosh, why might the Chinese have tried to waited for such a long (and fatally decisive) period to cover this thing up?
To be sure, some might insist that such queries are “not germane”, or “relevant” or “helpful” to the discussion at hand.
Though I do find it rather odd—strange? suspect? amusing?—that China has become the recipient of so many congratulatory messages over how that country’s leadership has handled this “problem”.
(And, as should be expected, China—together with Iran—are now trying to “massage” the narrative so that the fault of the pandemic clearly lies at the feet of the United States.)
Clearly but then this is already clear—shameful perversity is not only a feature of the DPUSA (and its MSM and academic cohort).
Related (to CCP perfidy):
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/chinese-doctors-say-coronavirus-like-a-combination-of-sars-and-aids-can-cause-irreversible-lung-damage/news-story/f58f19c5eeae99b845c54e2d2b9305ca
H/T Instapundit
Note the following graf, in particular, “after” (which should really read, “only after”):
“….reported on by Communist Party mouthpiece “the Global Times” on Friday, after a paper by Wuhan doctors published in the Journal of Forensic Medicine earlier in the week went viral on Chinese social media.”
Indeed, the cover-up continues. Ruthlessly.
AesopFan: “We should all quit shaking hands indiscriminately and breathing in each others faces, and stay home when we are sick, regardless of whether or not there is a new virus or a pandemic.”
It turns out that as an introvert I’ve been right all along. I don’t like the imported European habit of the kiss on the side of the face. Now I have an excuse to merely smile at people and not even shake hands!
So what’s next? Unisex chadors for the “noli me tangere” crowd?
(Also practical for shoplifting, holding up banks and other establishments—people, too!)
Sean Davis, commenting on twitter: “Those numbers are insane and not even internally inconsistent. To get to 96 million cases in just 2 months, assuming doubling every 7 days, you’d need to already have 375,000 infections right now. According to the CDC, there are 164 total cases in the U.S.”
What Sean was seeing:
sdferr,
Read the article. That is one guys projection not American Hospital Association’s best guess as that guy called it. AHA specifically says this is not there view just one persons. It’s this kind of hysterical irresponsibility by people on social media that is so dangerous.
Sean Davis has done great work on a lot of things but he hurts his credibility by passing on very questionable information in a very misleading way.
I read the article, Griffin. Neither Davis nor I are “passing on questionable information in a very misleading way”, for derision is all that’s on offer from either of us. No endorsement of that nonsense was put forward, though you seem to misread to insert that where it doesn’t exist, Griffin. Do better.
Neo’s readers, especially us old-timers who die at higher rates, might want to take a look at the coronavirus database maintained by Johns Hopkins. It’s a GIS (Geographic Information System) with a very simple web display for the public.
There are maps and graphs showing cases, fatalities, locations, etc. No analysis, no opinion, just basic data, but they keep it current.
Here’s a link https://tinyurl.com/uwns6z5
“…massive Chinese response…”
(After waiting six to eight weeks to try to cover it up.)
“What if the Chinese hadn’t locked down so hard…?”
(After waiting six to eight weeks to try to cover it up.)
Barry Meislin: All true — including the massive, if belated, Chinese response and hard lockdown.
My point in this topic is the massive Chinese response thrust Covid into the news which didn’t occur for H1N1. IMO this explains much, if not most, of the difference in media coverage between the two diseases.
sdferr,
You posted a tweet that totally misrepresented that organizations position without your own comment and as for Davis his statement is muddled enough that I can’t tell if he believes this or not. If the answer is no he doesn’t then why use his platform to even pass it along? And if he does then he has a responsibility to clarify that this was one guy not the entire group.
In my opinion people with large audiences are the ones that need to ‘do better’ when it comes to passing on info. And Instapundit also linked to this yesterday without comment in another example of his hysteria on this issue.
This is a serious issue that needs to be taken seriously by people that have wide audiences and that means being clear and accurate when passing on info from rando’s on twitter.
Do better.
Cornflour: I’ve been checking the Johns Hopkins Covid page on a daily basis for several weeks. Recommended.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
The steady increase of new cases worldwide and subsequent deaths is discouraging. Containment efforts are working to slow Covid down, but it doesn’t look like the disease is anywhere near burning out.
Containment can’t be a long-term solution for economic reasons. We had better hope the warm weather works against Covid or a vaccine appears super-quick.
I’m not at all a fan of Vox’s “explainer” pieces but their recent one on Covid is decent:
“How does the coronavirus outbreak end?: Governments’ failure to contain the coronavirus means it may be here to stay.”
If the virus cannot be contained, [Harvard epidemiologist] Lipsitch says, the only way for this to get under control is for 50 percent of people to become immune to it.
That could happen if the outbreak truly grows into a pandemic. If enough people get Covid-19, and develop an immune response, “essentially it creates its own herd immunity,” Grubaugh says. “But that’s after causing, you know, millions of worldwide infections.”
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/6/21161234/coronavirus-covid-19-science-outbreak-ends-endemic-vaccine
Health advice from The Week in Pictures.
No, really, it’s mostly good advice.
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/03/IMG_2636.jpeg?w=1392&ssl=1
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/03/Screen-Shot-2020-03-05-at-7.23.32-AM.png?w=1456&ssl=1
https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/03/Screen-Shot-2020-03-06-at-7.09.38-AM.png?w=1574&ssl=1
I saw a very well-done graphic comparing the major epidemics of flu-like illnesses.
Spanish Flu 1918 dwarfs them all, of course, but I think it is an important but somewhat irrelevant comparison now: it was in the middle of a world war; there were no (or limited?) antibiotics, penicillin, aggressive medical protocols, oxygen machines, hand sanitizer gels, even Kleenex!, etc etc etc, to treat the infection; and massive opportunities for spreading it (although we are probably matching that with air travel now).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDD2tHWWnU
There was a virus goin’ around
Papa caught it an’ he died last spring
And now Mama doesn’t seem
To wanna do much of anything
–Bobbie Gentry, “Ode to Billy Joe”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv33eaygVDQ
Bobbie Gentry hasn’t appeared in public since 1982.
“My point in this topic is the massive Chinese response thrust Covid into the news which didn’t occur for H1N1. IMO this explains much, if not most, of the difference in media coverage between the two diseases.”
And the “massive” efforts by China to throw one million Uighur Muslims into internment camps? How much media coverage has that generated?
Having to argue about the most obvious things is one of the most frustrating elements of online discourse. The CDC website says that as of March 7, the United States has had 164 cases of COVID-19. The overwhelming majority of those cases are in three states, California, New York, and Washington. And as of March 7, there have been 11 deaths from COVID-19. That’s compared to 8,200 deaths from the flu this season, according to The Hill.
Given those FACTS, there is no way any serious criticism can be directed at the Trump Administration at this time for their handling of the situation. Yet we’ve got people on cable news calling this Trump’s Katrina.
This isn’t really up for debate.
Mike
MBunge: You seem to think I’m debating some position you care about. I’m not.
And no, the Uighur internment is not apples-to-apples with the Wuhan quarantine.
Pandemics are rare and may affect us. Large-scale abuses of various other people are multiple, ongoing and mostly don’t affect us.
Guess which get bigger news treatment. Explain why you are surprised.
“This isn’t really up for debate.”
Somehow, someone hasn’t learned from the last time he said this.
The latest data just released by the state of Washington is 123 cases and 18 deaths and 1,110 negative results. The last number is interesting.
Bobbie Gentry hasn’t appeared in public since 1982.
Do you mean she retired from performing or she’s holed up in her house?
nope..
but now is the idea of getting rid of trump, and economic malaise from panic is a good start… as is other things… this is not a pandemic of any sort… given the stats and that the first stats are always the most sick and not knowing how many are sick but not enough to go to the doctor and get tested.. (not to mention the lack of testing volume… they cant test everyone)
huxley:
“Millions of worldwide infections” isn’t a problem if the vast vast majority of the infections are mild or even virtually symptomless.
It is estimated that the 2009 pandemic of H1N1 caused the following number of infections:
Sixty million cases in the US alone.
“Large-scale abuses of various other people are multiple, ongoing and mostly don’t affect us.”
How were YOU affected by children being separated from adults at the U.S./Mexico border? That had little to no impact on the lives of the vast majority of Americans, yet received massive amounts of media attention.
But, of course, this isn’t about the amount of coverage. H1N1 certainly got plenty of attention. The issue is the nature of the coverage, namely the bald-faced efforts to assign blame to or amplify criticism of Donald Trump.
Mike
“Somehow, someone hasn’t learned from the last time he said this.“
You only learn from error and I’m not wrong about the principle that SOME things aren’t up for debate. NO ONE would be calling this “Hillary’s Katrina” if she were sitting in the Oval Office.
To be fair, the Right likely would be somewhat critical of Hillary in that situation but they’d be getting enormous pushback and counter-criticism for trying to “politicize” a crisis.
When you combine this Coronavirus coverage with the incredible resurrection of Biden’s campaign, it’s disturbing evidence of how many people still trust voices of supposed authority despite decades of repeated reasons not to.
Mike
huxley on March 8, 2020 at 4:13 pm said:
There was a virus goin’ around
Papa caught it an’ he died last spring
And now Mama doesn’t seem
To wanna do much of anything
–Bobbie Gentry, “Ode to Billy Joe”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv33eaygVDQ
Bobbie Gentry hasn’t appeared in public since 1982.
* * *
I always thought the Ode was one of the closest modern analogues to the old Elizabethan ballads.
Someone hasn’t learned that other people can have reasoned disagreements with his position; it is a general phenomenon, not specific to this thread. Argument from authority.
Pingback:Economic Impact Of Wuhan Coronavirus In Local Communities - Victory Girls Blog