Coronavirus—Calm down

Eighty. That’s the average age of coronavirus fatalities according to Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams. He also said if you’re young you have a better chance of dying of the regular flu than from coronavirus. Your chance of dying from it is way below a half-percent until you hit the age of 50 when it jumps to 1.3 percent. It goes to 3.6 percent when you reach 60, 8 percent at 70, and 14.8 percent when you hit 80. In other words, anyone under 60 who’s in reasonable health has virtually no chance of dying from coronavirus. Think that stops the panic? Not hardly. Why? Because the hysteria from the news media drowns out all else.

They’re amplifying the Democrats like Chuck Schumer who see victory in panic and a tanking economy. Each and every day the Democrats wake up to see what kind of new doubt they can put in the minds of Americans. At a time when everyone should be coming together they’re trying to tear us apart. And all because they know a robust economy means certain defeat in November.

I would love to see a political party just say, “Hey, things are actually going pretty good right now. We don’t see much that needs changing.” Think that’s going to happen? Instead both parties try to tear down whichever one is in power. How about looking out for us citizens? And I’m talking to both parties. But there’s too much at stake. Too much power on the line. I’ve never understood people who crave power. Me? I tend to avoid it. Someone wants to put me in charge I say, “No, thanks.” I don’t want to run things. Am I alone? Ever seen that mild-mannered guy at work go nuts with power once someone puts him in charge? It’s ugly.

You know, maybe we should be putting people in power who don’t want it. Kinda tough to do that, though. If they don’t want it they probably won’t take it. So, we’re stuck with people who run for office who love telling the rest of us what to do. Not all of them, obviously, but too many of them. And that’s what we’re seeing on display right now. We saw something similar during the Obama administration with the Ebola outbreak. Obama invited a good deal of criticism when he refused to restrict travel from African nations. We dodged a bullet on that one. Or maybe the Ebola scare as it pertained to the United States was overblown.

The Ebola outbreak of 2014 afflicted 28,652 people worldwide. Of those, 11,325 died. That’s a kill rate of 40 percent. Only 4 people came down with it in the U.S. and one of them died. What saved us was the disease was confined primarily to Africa. Travel from Africa to the U.S. is low compared to China. Business conducted with Africa is low compared to China. President Trump greatly curtailed travel to and from China in late January. I thought he should’ve done it earlier, but it was the first time it had been done.

What’s interesting is to go back in time and look at the predictions from the World Health Organization on the number of Ebola cases. They predicted in excess of 20,000 worldwide. We got over 28,000. What are they saying now about coronavirus? They’re being pretty quiet when it comes to estimates. Understandable given all the hysteria.

The ordinary flu has already killed over 12,000 people in America alone. Be cautious, but don’t be foolish. The panic industrial complex is playing you.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.