here in the Philippines, Luzon is still under lockdown and the official number of cases is low, (3,600 with 163 deaths) maybe because they haven't tested a lot of people, and of course, poor people die at home.
and we hear anecdotes of OFW who had it, maybe because so many are in the health professions or work on cruise ships. Officially the count of citizens infected outside of the Philippines comes to over 500....
while everyone is counting the 65000 who died in this epidemic, one only has to shake one's head in frustration when "experts", who usually just want to misquote Trumpieboy and blame him for everything, and ridicule those who compare it to the influenza, they forget that the swine flu influenza outbreak was bad too: killing mainly the elderly but also kids, often with secondary pneumonia.
and I'm old enough to remember the Hong Kong Flu epidemic of 1968
global outbreak of influenza that originated in China in July 1968 and lasted until 1969–70. The outbreak was the third influenza pandemic to occur in the 20th century; it followed the 1957 flu pandemic and the influenza pandemic of 1918–19. The 1968 flu pandemic resulted in an estimated one million to four million deaths, far fewer than the 1918–19 pandemic, which caused between 25 million and 50 million deaths.
and the Asian flu epidemic of 1957 which killed over a million people, including pregnant women and children.
The difference here is that no one is immune (yet), meaning the caregivers are sick too.
For example, the big epidemic in 2011 was very bad, but both Lolo and I didn't catch it because we had a similar virus in 1974 and had some immunity.
the good news is that summer is coming, and keeping a distance outdoors will mitigate the spread, as will herd immunity meaning fewer people will become spreaders of the disease.
The question is if having Wuhanflu will give you immunity or not when it makes it's revival next winter seeason.
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update: The maid reports a lady up the street age 74 did of covid virus. I have no idea if she had a positive test or not: we've had one or two people a day asking for money to get checked at the emergency room for "asthma", but that could be CHF or another virus.
And the barangay is giving everyone over age 70 a present of 500 pesos, about 10 dollars (most elderly have family, but many of the family are out of work and live elsewhere so the elderly are hurting). I didn't want to take it, but rules are rules, so I signed for it and gave it to our cook, who has a large family that includes blue collar workers and tricycle drivers who are out of work.
ten dollars doesn't sound much, but most of the poor are eligible for subsidized rice, and the "minimum wage" here is 320 pesos a day.
Of course, the farmers don't even get that much: depending on the harvest and expenses (for irrigation etc).
the bad news is that the shutdown is expected to last three more weeks, by which time people could be in real trouble.
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