If you watch the coverage on the cable networks (I actually watched a combination of FOX News and FOX Business for a few hours on Friday), you’d be perfectly well excused for thinking you, me, and everyone around is going to die from the Coronavirus. Since it was pretty bad on FOX News, I can’t imagine what they might be saying over at the TRump-hating CNN and MSNBC. Personally, I’m more of a mind along with Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection, who writes that maybe it’s time to dial back the Coronavirus drama:

Let’s begin by starting with some perspective. The current flu season has hit 32 million Americans, resulting in 18,000 deaths, and the vaccine that was selected for the flu season was limited in its effectiveness. Yet, we are not doing a daily flu death countdown.

Understandably, COVID-19 is a new pathogen. However, American bioscientists and medical professionals have focused on it with impressive intensity. It is from a family of viruses that have been well-researched. Currently, the CDC has established the following risk levels:

•For most of the American public, who are unlikely to be exposed to this virus at this time, the immediate health risk from COVID-19 is considered low.
•People in communities where ongoing community spread with the virus that causes COVID-19 has been reported are at elevated, though still relatively low risk of exposure.
•Healthcare workers caring for patients with COVID-19 are at elevated risk of exposure.
•Close contacts of persons with COVID-19 also are at elevated risk of exposure.
•Travelers returning from affected international locations where community spread is occurring also are at elevated risk of exposure.

…The press is currently ginning up fear about the lack test kits. However, Pence noted that all the state labs that had requested test kits have received them. And because of the changes in the regulations implemented by the Trump administration last week, the state labs can actually run the tests.

Between March 2 and 5, over 900,000 tests had been distributed across the country. By the end of next week, 4 million tests could be shipped. Pence made it clear that a public-private partnership (working with Lab Corp and Quest) was being implemented toward getting even more test materials to the state labs more quickly.

…In other words: Millions of tests for a disease that was essentially unknown a month ago will soon be in the hands of America’s public health professionals. I cannot imagine another administration responding so robustly to stem a potential epidemic.

Finally, Dr. James Phillips, operational medicine fellowship director at George Washington University, recently said that most people who contract the coronavirus will “do just fine, saying:

“Most of us are going to get this virus. It’s undeniable,” said Phillips. “You won’t find a single expert out there who is saying that this is going to be contained. “And, the more we learn about it, the more we see that the spread is going to be global and, for the most part, that’s OK because the data we know from China shows that roughly 98 to 99 percent of us are going to do very, very well.”

In conclusion: Stay calm and keep your hands away from your face.

I understand the importance of taking reasonable precautions as far as the Coronavirus goes, but until we start seeing rapidly escalating deaths from it I’m not going to change the way I go about my life, and neither should you. Personally, I might think about holding off any air travel, for example, for the next month or so (not that I had anything planned) and have advised my team members at work the same regarding corporate travel, but that’s just me. Tracey and I will be driving to Vegas for a few days in a couple of weeks, and even knowing the large numbers of Asian folks who like to frequent Wynn Las Vegas (where we are staying) I’m not planning on changing any plans. We were bandying about the idea of an Alaskan cruise later this year, but that obviously doesn’t seem like the greatest idea (at least at this point in time) so we’ll probably do something else that’s within driving distance.

After talking with my dad (he resides at a senior retirement community), it sounds like there are additional precautions being taken with how the meals there are being served and when and how food is being made available – completely understandable given the demographics there. But in the short term I think we’re all just going to have to see how things all play out. It would, of course, be a great help if the mainstream media would put on hold their Trump hatred – if only temporarily – and not try to create panic and politicize everything in their effort to hurt the president, but that would expecting them to act responsibly and as journalists. Unfortunately, that horse left the barn a long time ago.

So if I can offer just a wee bit of advice from my own humble porch here at Goodboys Nation weblog, let’s everyone stay calm, take reasonable precautions, don’t clog up the local hospital ER if all of a sudden you cough or sneeze, and take everything – and I mean everything you read and hear from the mainstream media with a grain of salt. And don’t worry about the stock market – the latest jobs report shows the economy’s fundamentals remain strong; your investments will be fine in the long run.

Bottom line, I think we’ll know a heckuva lot more in the next few weeks just how this is all going to go. But the world as we know it is not going to end.

My Goodboys pal Killer sent this to me. As a “Jaws” enthusiast I laughed out loud. Hope you will enjoy.