The Cost of Panic
Hey, America, you don’t look good in panic. Let me see if I can reason with you and get you back off that ledge.
“Hi, Mom. You look great. I’m here for you.”
The Wutang Flu is a real thing, but it is something we have met before. We met it — meaning a virus for which we had no vaccine — last in 2009 when the Swine Flu (H1N1 flu) arrived. It, too, was a national emergency.
We ended up with:
60,000,000 people infected,
265,000 hospital stays, and,
12,500 deaths.
Those deaths, like the current situation, were aggregated amongst the elderly and the immune system compromised.
Back in 2009, we did not panic.