Vioxx killed 500,000 Americans: a toll that could have been reduced by 90% had the FDA issued a timely warning. Pharmaceuticals, correctly and legally prescribed, kill 140,000 Americans each year, yet most people are unaware of their lethality and do not know how to a prevent being killed this way. Coronavirus deaths are few, its victims are elderly, and prevention is simple. Media report American flu deaths this season stand at 8200 so far, and that’s not newsworthy? 142,000 Americans died due to pharmaceutical drug use in 2016, but that’s not news, either But 100 Chinese–mostly born during WWII, malnourished and carrying a heavy disease burden–have died from a novel virus and that’s an epidemic?

This year marks the centenary of Spanish flu , the most deadly pandemic in human history. It is estimated that five hundred million people contracted it – a third of the global population in 1918 – and that between fifty and a hundred million of them died. Asians were thirty times more likely to die than Europeans.

Every year it kills hundreds of thousands of people on every inhabited continent while globally, many tens of millions catch the flu bug every year. All these many millions of infected people inoculate others at home, work, schools, places of worship, in travel and in every imaginable public place, spreading their viruses across the planet.

The strain involved in the last flu pandemic, the swine flu outbreak in 2009, was highly infectious, but milder than previous pandemic strains. Of the 61.7 million people living in the UK in 2009, 457 died from it – similar to the usual annual death toll for flu. The 1957 Asian flu and the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu pandemics were more serious; the death toll in each case was estimated at around a million worldwide.

Flu Kills 646,000 People Worldwide Each Year while globally, tens of millions catch the flu. All these many millions of infected people inoculate others at home, work, schools, places of worship, in travel and in every imaginable public place, spreading their viruses across the planet.

The mortality rate of ‘severe’ flu infections worldwide is about 13%–about the same as for ‘severe Sars infections. The new virus may be considerably lower.

Western media condition us to a Pavlovian fear of China with maps like the above, while howling to get China’s flu declared an international health emergency and global pandemic but, so far, the WHO Declines to Declare China Virus Outbreak a Global Health Emergency . How could it, looking at the farcical map shown above?

China’s Public Health Service is probably the most efficient on earth, which is why Chinese children will live longer, healthier lives than their American contemporaries. But that’s not news, either.

Says Nature: The speed and openness of the scientific response to the coronavirus has been unprecedented. Ten days after it was first reported in people, scientists in China and Australia released the virus’s genetic sequence. Within hours, research labs worldwide were putting all hands on deck to understand the disease . “This is one of the first times we’re getting to see an outbreak of a new virus and have the scientific community sharing their data almost in real time,” says molecular biologist Michael Letko.

David Ho, the HIV/AIDS medical researcher, pointed out that as of late last week, the mortality rate appeared to be around 2.5 percent, which is “about 3-4-fold lower than SARS,” adding, “The deaths are occurring in people who are old or those with prior medical conditions. If we were to put the influenza figures next to this new CoV, the absolute case numbers and mortality rates would be much greater [for the regular flu]. But we are rather complacent with flu even though it is quite deadly to the very young, the elderly, and those with underlying medical problems.

No deaths have been reported outside of China, corroborating the relatively low mortality rate from official data in China. The

New York Times summarizes the latest international infection situation:

Thailand and Hong Kong have each reported eight cases of infection; the United States, Taiwan, Australia and Macau have five each; Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia each have reported four; France has three; Canada and Vietnam have two, and Nepal and Cambodia each have one.

THE DARK SIDE