by Bill Sardi, Lew Rockwell:

Initially the coronavirus outbreak started with 186 persons and 38 died, a ghastly shocking mortality rate of 20.4%.  A public health emergency was considered.

Right away World Health Organization (WHO) authorities realized doctors weren’t prepared to manage such an urgent situation.  Patients were crowded in emergency rooms and multibed hospital rooms; family members visited freely, facilitating a second spread of the virus.  Doctors narrowly focused on treating patients rather than managing the epidemic from a larger point of view.

The socioeconomic impact of the outbreak was great. Yet the numbers of infections and deaths from coronavirus were smaller than the numbers from tuberculosis or seasonal influenza.

In spite of this fact, the public’s perceived threat caused by coronavirus was much more serious than those of other infectious diseases. The coronavirus epidemic was a simple public health problem at that time that was to be minimized, but revealed vulnerabilities in the overall economy and society beyond the health sector of the country.  The country as a whole viewed itself under a life-and-death threat. Yet immediately over its borders, life was normal.  The infectious viral epidemic soon became a social epidemic, fueled by modern electronic communication (twitter, other  social media).

The failure to transparently communicate relative risk (the chance out of 1000 that an individual would come down with illness that would result in death) resulted in the public’s overreaction to the outbreak. At the outbreak’s peak, schools and kindergartens were temporarily closed and many public events were cancelled or suspended.

News reports said more than 1000 schools closed, many people are wearing facemasks, and animals in zoos that were thought to have transferred the coronavirus in another country were isolated and quarantined.

In retrospect none of those measures made much sense, scientists say. The outbreak was largely confined to health care workers, patients, and family members at the hospitals that treated patients, but nothing suggested there was a risk of being infected at school or on the street (what is called “in the community”).

While animals were thought to be the origin of this coronavirus outbreak elsewhere, the initial case in this country was a 68-year-old business traveler who had visited four Middle Eastern countries. “There is no reason to believe animals (camels) in this Asian country of origin are spreading the disease” in this country. “People need to understand that this virus was not circulating in the community,” emphasized a follow-up report.

A criticism of the handling of this so-called epidemic was that politicians grandstanded and commented frequently on the outbreak while few scientists involved spoke out publicly.

One irresponsible medical authority said publicly: ““Thirty-six cases in less than a month is a lot. This virus seems to be highly contagious.”But other infectious disease specialists around the world doubted that.

Eventually World Health Organization authorities recommended the government reopen schools, “as there has been no linkage of coronavirus transmission with school attendance or elsewhere.”

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