[Vision2020] Public Health: Essential Services of the "Deep State" (long version)

[Nicholas Gier]

This has been submitted for publication in Pocatello's Idaho State Journal.
Here are some highlights below. Also my response to Dale Courtney's
error-filled column on Sweden for those who might have missed it.


Just in: Germany, with quick action and intensive testing, has “flattened”
curve of new infections.


Northern Italy has some of the best hospitals and medical staff in Europe,
but even the best can be overwhelmed in such a health crisis.


*Obama Acted Properly on Swine Flu*


There is misinformation in the right-wing media about Obama’s response to
the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the “swine flu.” Here is the Politifact
correction on the matter: “The Obama administration declared H1N1 a public
health emergency six weeks before (WHO) declared it a pandemic. No H1N1
deaths had yet been recorded in the United States. Six months after that
initial declaration, when more than 1,000 deaths had occurred, Obama
himself declared H1N1 a national emergency.” After two months, the number
of coronavirus deaths are already over 1,300, so this will be far worse
than H1N1.


 *Coronavirus Much Worse than the Flu*

Even though his own health officials have explained the differences to him,
Trump still keeps implying that the seasonal flu is worse than COVID-19.
Nicholas Kristoff has laid it out succinctly: “Covid-19 is at least 50
percent more infectious, requires hospitalization at least 5 times as often
and results in death 10 times more often. A single person with the flu will
lead to 386 people with the flu over two months, and a handful will require
hospitalization. But a single person with Covid-19 will result in 99,000
Covid-19 infections in the same period, and up to 20,000 will require
hospitalization.”
Be safe by social distancing,
nfg
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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