Is the Coronavirus the Silver Bullet to Bring Down President Trump? (Opinion)
The Democrats and the mainstream news media are suggesting that President Trump is responsible for the outbreak of the coronavirus that will come to America as a pandemic. In fact, Joe Biden slammed Trump’s response to the coronavirus epidemic saying, “This is no time for “fearmongering“. The Democrats were unsparing in their criticism, with Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (NY) saying the administration was showing “towering and dangerous incompetence” in its response to the virus. Schumer called for at least $8.5 billion in funding and for the administration to appoint a czar to oversee the response.
Readers, keep your masks on and take a deep breath. Now that you have done that, we need to look at the problem by the numbers and see if the media and the Democrats are purposely trying to frighten Americans into a full-blown panic.
The numbers do not support the Democrat’s contentions of a pandemic coming to America. If the Democrats genuinely believed that one was coming, shouldn’t they support the closing of the border? Shouldn’t America be like other nations and add more significant restrictions of travel to and from countries that have the coronavirus? But they will not go that far. Schumer only wants to spend $8.5 billion and add a new czar to run the program to protect America.
Getting back to the numbers, various strains of the flu have been with us for a long time. It comes in the fall and winter and leaves in the spring. Here are the coronavirus numbers as of this writing: 80,000 people on a global scale have been identified as having the virus, and around 2,800 people have died.
Flu seasons come and go every year; some are worse than others.
The United States numbers from the Center for Disease Control as of October 1, 2019, to February 15, 2020 are:
-How many people have been infected with the current flu virus: 29,000,000 to 41,000,000.
-How many people went to the doctor: 13,000,000 to 19,000,000.
-How many had to go to the hospital: 280,000 to 500,000.
-How many people have died as a result of having the flu virus: 16,000 to 41,000.
IMPORTANT: NONE OF THESE NUMBERS REFLECT THE CORONAVIRUS.
Based on the reported global numbers for the coronavirus, the mortality rate is 3.5%. If we look at the United States, we see the high end of deaths compared to the number of people affected is just 1%. Now, let’s look at the numbers for China in which 80,000 people are infected out of a population of 1.4 billion, or just a tiny fraction of one percent. The death rate is almost unmeasurable because it would be 5 zeros after the decimal point.
These numbers do not support the contention of some medical experts who are predicting a pandemic coming to America. To add an additional perspective, the World Health Organization reported this month that in a typical flu season across the globe about one billion people catch influenza every year, with between 290,000 to 650,000 deaths. And the severity of flu changes every year.
The world has a long way to go to reach a pandemic level with the coronavirus.
Perkins Twist: What country in the world is the best equipped and experienced to handle a pandemic? China, if we can believe them, they had public health issues in just trying to treat 75,000 of their citizens. On the other hand, our public health system in four and one-half months handled upwards of 41 million people infected with the flu virus. China had to build temporary hospitals, while we had 500,000 people treated in American hospitals during this period of time. So, here is the big question: where would you like to be if you came down with the CORONAVIRUS: under General Secretary Xi Jinping or President Donald Trump? One more question: if the Democrats still can’t count the 171,517 people who voted in the Iowa caucuses, then how can we trust, if elected, that they can run an effort to fight the coronavirus?
Dan Perkins is a nationally syndicated radio and TV talk show host. He is heard in over 1400 markets in the United States and is broadcast in 193 nations around the world. He is a current events commentator who contributes to over 20 blogs across America. His latest radio program is Americas Cannabis Conversation broadcast over the AM/FM radio network and the Global Entertainment Network and all the major Pod cast networks. More information about Dan Perkins can be found on his website Danperkins.guru.
