Opinion: Math—Annual Flu Pandemic vs WUHAN Virus

FILE – In this Feb. 26, 2015 photo taken through the eyepiece of a microscope, human cells infected with the flu virus glow green under light from a fluorescence microscope at a laboratory in Seattle. The U.S. government estimates that 80,000 Americans died of flu and flu complications in the winter of 2017-2018 – the highest flu-related death toll in at least four decades. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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I keep hearing the experts telling me that our annual Flu pandemic has a mortality rate of 0.1%. Folks on the left continue to make hay over Dr. Anthoney Fauci’s (National Institute of Health Director) comments about the Wuhan Virus being 10 times more deadly than the Flu. I’m sure he’s right in some scientific manner that I would have difficulty pronouncing the terms, much less understanding the calculations to produce that statistic. Having said that, I’ve done a little math of my own. The below links are where I get my current numbers data. The CDC for the Flu information and the Worldometers site for up-to-date information on the current Wuhan Virus situation.

Read: CDC U.S. Flu Information

Read: Worldometers Up-To-Date U.S Wuhan Virus Statistics

What I did was a little numbers comparison between this year’s U.S. Flu season, starting 1 Oct 2019, up until 14 March 2020, with the WORST 7 days of fatalities caused by the U.S. WUHAN Virus.

When I did this calculation, the CDC had ESTIMATED between 23,000 and 59,000 U.S. persons had died from the Flu or Flu related issues since the beginning of the 2019-2020 Flu “season.” See front page of CDC link above. In order to avoid becoming a Pollyanna on this issue myself (humor me on that one) I decided to use the CDC weekly average number of fatalities since 1 October. The numbers included weeks where there were very few Flu deaths. On a weekly basis, that average was according to the CDC estimated range: 959-2,458 U.S. fatalities from our annual Flu pandemic.

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I then took the 7 WORST days in the U.S. for the WUHAN Virus. That number came out to 167 U.S. fatalities from the Chinese originated disease.

Then ladies, gentlemen and Infantrymen, I did some simple math (the only kind I know) 958-2,458 divided by the 7 day total of 167, comes to 5.7-14.7. Rounding up, there are 6 to 15 Americans killed on an average week by our annual Flu, for one single American killed by the Wuhan virus on its 7 worst days. I’d also remind everyone, we have a vaccine for the Flu.

Does this mean that the Wuhan Virus isn’t serious and that we should blow it off? Of course not. This is just another set of facts that hopefully helps Americans put all of this in some sort of perspective.

I publish a daily roll up and data assessment each night at 2330 EST. Keep an eye out for it.

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