The question I always ask with these reports: How do these figures compare to the average number of cases — and deaths if that’s the topic — of the “regular flu” over the past, say, five years?
300 cases or so were discovered in a meat packing plant.
The plant employees over 3700 employees and is considered an essential business, so no shut down would have changed what happened in that plant.
They test heavily in the plant, any elevated temperature of cough gets a test. They are setting things up to open the pork plant as fast as possible.
South Dakota has a total of 6 deaths, and has tested more heavily than any of its neighbors. LIkely the testing was what caught it at this plant — which would have been open under any state’s guidelines.
This started with a Washington Post article that was a hit job on a GOP Governor
Looking at ALL deaths in New York in past 20 years(follows a pretty stable pattern and no games with how cause of death is coded) about twice as many died in this past month as in the same time period in previous years. It definitely has had far more impact than the regular flu in terms of velocity.