2018 Flashback – “Doctors deliver blunt message about a record 80,000 flu deaths”

This puts the COVID-19 pandemic in proper perspective, so why wasn’t the planet shut down in 2018?

First the article, then my comments. MH.

Maggie Fox – NBC News Sept 27, 2018

Flu killed 80,000 people this past season and put 900,000 into the hospital, making it the worst influenza season in decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

The numbers were shocking. Until now, CDC has said flu kills anywhere between 12,000 and 56,000 people a year, depending on how bad the flu season is, and that it puts between 250,000 and 700,000 into the hospital with serious illness. The numbers for the 2017-2018 flu season go far beyond that.

“It’s high, but it’s consistent with what we had last season,” the CDC’s flu division director, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, told NBC News.

Other doctors spoke bluntly in saying how so many people got infected and died.

“Those 80,000 people who died from flu last year? Guess what? They got it from someone. Someone gave them the flu,” Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said at a news conference.

Those numbers included 180 children. “The majority of them were unvaccinated,” Adams said. “It’s healthy kids out there that are dying from the flu.”

Influenza activity hit a high mark early this year, and the virus was infecting many people across the country all at the same time. Usually, flu hits first in one region and then another, but this past season saw widespread flu activity all at once, for weeks on end.

“That first week in January, I said it was peaking. Then the next week I said it was peaking,” Jernigan recalled. Finally, the CDC stopped predicting a peak as the flu season continued worsening.

The CDC had already feared a severe flu season because it was the H3N2 strain that was circulating. H3N2 usually hits people over 65 the hardest. “This virus hit the population in a vulnerable spot,” Jernigan said.

The CDC does not count adult flu deaths directly, but estimates them based on the number of excess deaths during the flu season.

Adams and other leading doctors urged Americans to start getting the annual flu shots now and, as happens every September, rolled up their sleeves to get immunized for the cameras…cont.

Source NBC (archival)

Martin comments: Regardless of one’s opinion on the pro-vacc theme of the article above, this is yet another indication that, in terms of seasonal viruses, we are really not dealing with anything exceptional this year.

YES: every one of the deaths is a tragedy (these are people not just numbers) and YES: we should be staying fit and healthy and taking sensible precautions against the EXPECTED annual viruses, including staying at home (“self isolating”) if we feel unwell..but locking down countries? Stopping you from hunting, kayaking, surfing, even going for a walk on the beach…in case you have an accident and the Health System can’t cope...because the hospitals are overloaded with panicked, anxious people who would otherwise be at home recuperating under usual ‘flu-season circumstances? Entire infrastructures grinding to a halt. Businesses closing, and some never to re-open. Economies tanking, Police, military backup, even drones hovering overhead, at the ready to take action if one should stand too close to others or walk too far from one’s home. Meanwhile, isolation sees domestic violence and psychological stress cases skyrocketing. “For our safety” apparently. Will we see as much grief from the lockdown as from the pandemic itself? Will lost jobs and isolation lead to an increase in suicides, heaven forbid? Which will exact the greatest toll one wonders, when the long term effects are accounted?

Does the current situation sound like “sensible precautions”, or an experiment in how readily the population will accept a Police State, and even self-police under oppressive rules, if presented with a crisis? Or perhaps it sounds like a plot to sabotage our economic and social infrastructure in order to fast-track a New World Order? Perhaps both?

This writer must now carry “Essential worker” papers in order to travel to my fulltime occupation. This is madness! We are living inside a dystopian science fiction story. And more and more people are waking up to the fact that this just doesn’t add up, unless there are underlying motives for the global lockdown. Even as most folk (sensibly) obey the rules, many are nevertheless starting to ask serious questions.

Peruse the many articles on the COVID-19 subject that have been posted here over the past few weeks and Think For Yourself!