“Meanwhile, the death toll from the common flu continues without media coverage.”
How many cities/countries have been shut down due to the common flu this year, or any year? We react to what we see, and really don’t let the media dictate what we believe.
Governments aren’t reacting to the virus, politicians are reacting to public alarm caused by media coverage. [As they always do.]
Ask yourself who benefits if the economy temporarily slows down because this is driven not by a bug, but by someone wanting to use panic to damage the global economy or at a minimum to slow investment at least through the election season. A slowdown in the global economy, for example, would bring a drop in the price of oil; a drop in the price of oil would make US oil production less profitable because it costs more to extract it here than it does in Russia and the Middle East.
180,000 Americans were hospitalized in the US because of the ordinary flu [which has never been a laughing matter] and about 10,000 have died this season because of the flu in the US alone.
When 10,000 or even half that number of Americans are killed by this bug this year, then be concerned.
This panic should remind people of the 2008 panic that put Obama in the White House and enabled the left to eliminate thousands of car dealerships and profit from bailouts.