If, as the evidence suggests, the Chinese virus is enormously dangerous to people with certain medical conditions and those over 70 years old, but a much smaller danger to those under 70, then shutting down the entire country indefinitely is probably a bad idea.

But even when the time is right — by Easter, June or the fall — there will be no one to stop the quarantine because the media will continue to hype every coronavirus death, as if these are the only deaths that count and the only deaths that were preventable.



What mayor, governor or president will be willing to take the blame for causing a coronavirus death?



We’ll get no BREAKING NEWS alerts for the regular flu deaths (so far this season, more than 23,000, compared to 533 from the coronavirus).



Nor for the more than 3,000 people who die every day of heart disease or cancer. No alerts for the hundreds who die each day from car accidents, illegal aliens and suicide.



Only coronavirus deaths are considered newsworthy.



We’re told by the “Quarantine Everybody” crowd: Listen to the scientists! Unfortunately, most of the “scientists” they present to us are lawyers. (How did Robert Reich, Donna Shalala and Ron Klain become medical professionals?)



Also, the scientists disagree.



Just as, I assume, they did in 1976, when epidemiologists warned of another 1918 Spanish flu pandemic after a few young Army recruits died of swine flu at Fort Dix in New Jersey. Eight months later, the federal government launched a mandatory swine flu vaccination program.



About a quarter of the country was vaccinated before the program was abruptly shut down. No pandemic had materialized. The virus infected a few people, then vanished. But directly as a result of receiving the vaccine, dozens of Americans died and several hundred acquired Guillain-Barre syndrome.



The scientists also disagreed in the 1980s, when the media and government went into overdrive to scare us all about AIDS . (1985 Life magazine cover: “NOW, NO ONE IS SAFE FROM AIDS.”)



