Putting Coronavirus Into Perspective: Trump Posts Numbers, But Left Wants Panic

I am not even a little bit surprised that the Left is seeing this virus, which puts people’s health at risk and causes literal DEATHS to some, to be an opportunity to attack Trump relentlessly regardless of what he does, what measures he takes, what he says and what his response is at any point. These people are fundamentally rotten and view anything that is bad for people as a positive if the current administration is one they do not like. Any catastrophe is celebrated by these people and they want the Coronavirus to be as devastating as the Plague, provided they do not contract it or suffer from it in the slightest.
 
So, when the President, who has been taking the virus seriously and taken measures to mitigate its spread in the country since January in moves that have been attacked by the Left as “too radical” and “based on his racism” or dumb crap like that, tweets numbers that are used to put into perspective how needless the panic driven by the media has been, it’s equally as unsurprising that the Left would have a problem with it. Let me briefly explain just what it was that the President tweeted that has these people reacting so negatively.
 
Recently, Trump tweeted: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
 
Obviously, this has led some on the Left to say that he is downplaying the virus (again, he acted with seriousness far earlier than these people did) and claiming that he is saying that it’s “just the flu” even though at no point did he ever say that.
 
Here are the facts regarding Coronavirus. First, there is no vaccine or medicine that outright prevents or cures it. Efforts should be made towards achieving that, but Coronavirus is nothing like the Plague or anything that would be a threat to our civilization as the Left has suggested. While there is no vaccine that prevents it or medicine that cures it, people are recovering from it just fine, as we will soon see.
 
The incubation period, or the time someone usually has the disease, is 2-14 days with an average of 5.2 days, according to Worldometers’ page on the Coronavirus. The maximum recorded incubation period is 27 days.
 
Second, there are 554 confirmed cases in the U.S. (a few more than the President said, but again, according to Worldometers), with 22 dead (with 15 of those people having died in a single retirement home in the failing communist State of Washington) and 15 people who have recovered. 472 tests have been carried out, though the last tallied test was in March 1st. The cases per 1 million residents is pretty low in comparison to other nations. Cases per 1M residents in the U.S. is 1.7.
 
In Italy, 23,345 tests have been made, 7,375 confirmed cases have been found, 366 people have died, 622 have recovered and cases per 1M residents stands at 122. In Iran, there is no data to be found about the number of tests (because it’s Iran), 6,566 confirmed cases, 194 dead, 2,134 people recovered and cases per 1m is 78.2. In South Korea, 109,591 tests have been carried out, 7,382 confirmed cases, 53 dead, 116 recovered and cases per 1m is 144.
 
These are among the highest in the world, so they are a bit of an outlier, but the U.S. is also really low, so it is also a bit of an outlier. The U.K. has seen 278 confirmed cases, with 3 dead and 18 recovered, with cases per 1m being 4.1.
 
In China, the origin of the Wuhan Virus (which some people on the Left claim calling it that is “racist” showing just how unserious they are about this virus), we find that there are 80,738 confirmed cases, 3,120 people have died, 58,624 have recovered and cases per 1m stands at 56.1. Now, we should take these figures with a grain of salt because the Chicoms likely want to make the numbers seem better than they might actually be so that their markets don’t take so much of a hit, but I doubt these numbers are all that far away from the truth.
 
Third, the mortality rate is rather low, at least for healthy people under 70. Male mortality rate for COVID-19 stands at 2.8%, while female mortality rate stands at 1.7%. By age, those 80 and older have a mortality rate of 14.8%. 70-79, 8.0%. 60-69, 3.6%. 50-59, 1.3% and those younger than 50 have less than half a percentage point of mortality rate. This means that the vast majority of people who contract the virus will be fine, provided they are relatively young and healthy. (Also, rate of infection seems to be plateauing in China and in many places in the world).
 
There have been a total of 3,892 deaths around the world according to Johns Hopkins University. This year, 91,125 people have died from the seasonal flu. Some might try and argue that comparing the two is illogical since one of them has a vaccine, can be treated by antibiotics and statistics are fairly predictable while the other does not have a vaccine, has no known cure and statistics are not predictable, but I disagree that they are incomparable. These are two illnesses that have fairly similar symptoms and can cause health problems and death, but one of them has far fewer deaths, far lower a mortality rate (the flu's is counted as the whole population as opposed to the number of people who get it) and is somehow a bigger story than the other, despite it being far less fatal.
 
I’ve said in the past that I don’t know what will happen with Coronavirus in the future. However, the low mortality rate and the fact that plenty of people are recovering from it tells me this virus is not as bad as the Left and those in the media would want us to think. It’s far from a death sentence, as far more people have recovered (62,392) than have died (3,892) from it. Even if we do not take China’s numbers to be accurate, we can still see decent recovery rates from countries like Italy, South Korea and the U.K., who are not as likely to manipulate their numbers to benefit their economies, so recovery rate should still be good.
 
The point the President was trying to get across is that panic is what is driving the stock market down far more than the virus itself and he is trying to calm people down with some figures because it’s clear that the Coronavirus is not as big a deal as the media and the Left pretend it is. Make no mistake, neither he nor I are saying it’s a nothingburger or that it’s completely irrelevant. People are suffering from it, people are dying from it and it’s affecting plenty of people. However, there are diseases that have affected far more people with far less of an impact on the stock market. Trump sees what this coronavirus scare is for what it is: a scare. A scare that the media is all-too happy to put into people’s lives if it means getting rid of Trump come November (and I predict this entire thing to be over before the summer). And it’s that scare that Trump was referring to when he used the word “hoax.” He didn’t call the virus itself a hoax, but the scare and panic the Left was driving. THAT is the hoax.
 
Trump isn’t downplaying the Coronavirus. Again, he’s taken action to mitigate this in the U.S. since before there was even a confirmed case in the country and the Left was saying he was propagating “racism” with imposing travel bans to and from China and other countries that have the virus. So don’t tell me Trump isn’t taking this seriously or hasn’t been taking this seriously. For crying out loud, Ted Lieu told people not to call it the “Wuhan Virus” because people might take offense to it, despite the fact that naming a virus after the place it came from is common practice (need I point out that Ebola, the Spanish Flu, MERS and a slew of other diseases are named after their place of origin?). If we are prioritizing political correctness, then we aren’t taking it seriously and that is what the Left is clearly doing here (apart from clearly trying to politicize the virus).
 
What Trump is doing is telling those who are panicking to put things into perspective so they stop panicking so much. Take caution, practice good hygiene and avoid going places where you have a high risk of contracting the virus, but don’t pretend this is the Bubonic Plague and panic about what this will mean for the economy. The economy apart from the stock market is flourishing. 273,000 jobs were created in February and almost the same amount in January, despite what the Coronavirus is doing. Unemployment is still at 50-year lows. Oil prices are going down, which will hurt oil companies and states that benefit from oil like Texas and Louisiana, but the consumer and other companies will benefit from lower prices (if oil costs less, manufacturing and transportation will increase, which will increase supply, drive down prices of goods, drive up demand, and drive up profits).
 
Trump is simply fighting back, as he always does, against the narrative the media wants to drive.
 
Ephesians 4:25
“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”