Weeks ago the WTO pointed out what any first year medical student knows - a true accounting of mortality is dependent upon an accurate denominator.

And that denominator was expected to be much larger than appreciated - as early as January there were reports from Wuhan that many people had mild symptoms, and by February it was clear many were also without any symptoms.

We finally have some substantial data from South Korea. 20k tests are being done daily, picking up many asymptomatic or mild cases. They report a death rate of 0.7% [1]

The CDC estimates that regular flu has resulted in 9 million to 45 million illnesses, 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 – 61,000 deaths every year in the US alone since 2010. [2]

There are many measures being taken by companies and countries that seem very extreme. There is no toilet paper at the store. The breathless media is milking this for everything it's worth. Why are the lives this is claiming worth shutting down the world, instead of all the other, far more preventable deaths that occur on a daily basis.

This is nuts. What am I missing?

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51836898 [2] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

Postscript: I'm hoping however this wakes everyone to the real danger of much more lethal engineered pandemics and force some preparedness.