This Coronavirus pandemic  is a major historic event/time that the generation not born yet will read about in their history books for sure.

What will be written for those people to read about in 40 years?

  Below is what is written about the flu pandemic of a century ago.  Those are mighty impressive numbers.

I believe strongly that not only will the numbers with this 2020 pandemic not come to much more than a small fraction of the 1918 numbers, they will not come close to even a weak flu season. So with that in mind, what do you think will be written?

I am all  for significant actions because of the disruptions its causing as a result of people's psyche/frame of mind in viewing deaths from the coronavirus vs deaths from the flu.

History will explain what caused people to think this way and how it led to certain beliefs and actions and why the old sick people dying at a higher rate was partly to mostly related to no vaccine...............which protects that vulnerable group the most from the flu every year and they have no protection from Coronavirus.

A threat not much greater than the flu for anybody under 50, in fact, even less of a threat for the very young...................but the reaction. WOW! Historic, unprecedented actions on many scales/levels.

Here is the reason:

The age of the internet and instant communication with the social media ushered in the age of sensationalized news and fake news on steroids. The professional MSM media has morphed greatly over the past 2 decades to compete and maintain block buster ratings.  The changes have accelerated in recent years.

I was part of the media from 1982-1993 as chief meteorologist at WEHT in Evansville IN.  In many respects, the world now has changed a great deal but the coverage of the world since then is like a completely different Universe.

Many newspapers went out of business or had to turn to the online business to stay competitive. The battle for ratings shifted and has resulted in a different kind of news than what we got 40 years ago.  Its much, much more competitive because the number of competitors and their range has expanded by 100 fold.

People can read newspapers from any city in the US while living in any part of the world. 40 years ago, there was no cable tv. There was no CNN or FOX.

Just CBS, ABC and NBC and they came on with the national news for 30 minutes once a day, 5 days a week. Other than that, all you got was your local tv news and newspaper................and actual paper that gave you YESTERDAYS news.

Compare that with today. 1,000 different  cable tv stations and numerous ones providing 24 hour coverage of everything happening around the world, almost the instant it happens. If you add social media, we are being bombarded with 10,000 times more information than before. No longer limited to tv in your living room a couple times a day and 1 paper in the morning but on your computer or electronic device/phone 24 hours a day from any location you go to and  more sources than you could possibly access.

If it were 40 years ago, how would a virus doing exactly the same thing as the Coronavirus be covered?  The number infected and dying are not even close to that of a weak flu season, here in 2020 and the fatality rate for those under 50 is comparable to the flu.

What would have been their justification back then for elevating this threat to how we think of it today in 2020?

There is justification today..............because the nature of the news delivery system and what is communicated has completely evolved into something entirely different. A news source today that delivered the news like it did in 1980, would go out of business immediately.  

To stay competitive today, sources need to try to give you something the other dozens/hundreds of sources are not giving you. Every station and every paper has the basic facts/numbers. It's the way that they interpret and add to those basic facts that distinguishes them from the other stations. It's that "extra" added to the basic facts, multiplied by 100 sources all trying to enhance their product so that you will read or listen to them that makes the news so much different  today than it was in 1980.

It's the main (but not entire) reason that the scary sounding Coronavirus narratives with so much uncertainty and speculation were able to obtain so much traction.

In a way, they are giving people exactly what they want. Broadcasting good news around the clock would result in a station/paper going bankrupt. Bad news sells. Really, really bad news is a ratings and profits smashing bonanza.  These entities and their journalists are not public service, non profit sources.  They do care about credibility and try to be accurate.............but if you had the opportunity to listen to discussions between them and management about ratings.........which are very frequent, you would understand their MAIN objective is to increase the number of viewers or readers............by a very, very wide margin.

Coronavirus treated like the flu = average ratings.

Coronavirus treated like a scary new virus = increased ratings

Coronavirus treated like a deadly scary new virus, much worse than the flu =block buster ratings

Coronavirus treated like a deadly, scary virus, much worse than the flu, with an out of control killer pandemic raging in numerous countries having no end in sight =Record Smashing ratings.

In 2060, when we read about the Coronavirus, historians will note how peoples fear of the worst was more than 10 times, even 100 times in some cases greater than the actual threat of it compared to their perceived threat of the flu for their entire lives up to that point.

Maybe part of that was our previous UNDER appreciating the serious threat of the flu(because the media has never given it massive attention).

On the event below: Now that was a REAL pandemic!

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html

The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919.  In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

1918 Pandemic Video

Cdc-mediaLow Resolution Video

History of 1918 Flu Pandemic

Read about the 1918 influenza pandemic and progress made in preparedness and response.

Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic. While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.