100,000 Americans died of the flu in 1969 and a million worldwide.
80,000 Americans died of the flu the winter of 2018.
We didn’t shut down the world then.
Why now?
We didn’t shut down the world then.
DUH...because that wasn't a Presidential Election year?
Why now?
We have not seen a virus this deadly since the 1917-1919 H1N1 influenza virus that killed 50 million people around the world. Also, people who have Covid-19 are contagious before symptoms appear, meaning that even if you avoid obviously sick people, you could still catch it. Furthermore, there is no vaccine for Covid-19, and not likely to be one soon.
We need to get rid of Covid-19 now, before it becomes entrenched in the population. We still have a window to do that.
Something to take into account...those flu death numbers are for “flu season” which is 6 months - the latest figure I’ve seen for Covid-19 deaths in U.S. is over 97,000 in about 1/2 a flu season.
.....80,000 Americans died of the flu the winter of 2018.....
Most of us got vaccinated (herd immunity!), stayed healthy, and didn’t even notice!!!!
“We didn’t shut down the world then. Why now?”
There’s herd immunity with influenzas because some strain has gone around every year from time immemorial. And we have vaccines to help break the chain of transmission.
There was close to zero herd immunity when Covid-19 struck because the only other known SARS outbreak was the one in 2003. That SARS outbreak killed over 8% of confirmed cases. That’s all the data that CDC had to work with.