It is rather a surprise to learn that we are all going to die from a viral pandemic, considering that we have all already died from swine flu, bird flu, SARS, and that one time when four people had Ebola. Nonetheless, if media reports are to be believed, we are on the verge of yet another planet-wide outbreak. This time, the imaginary global destruction will happen courtesy of the coronavirus.
Back in realityville, the coronavirus has infected 2,700 people, or about .00003% of the global population. Almost all of the cases are in China, where the death toll has reached 82. The majority of these deaths were people who had the misfortune of already being old and sick before they contracted the virus, compounded by the disadvantage of living with China’s “ailing” health care system. Outside of China, there have been around 50 cases, none of them fatal. So far, five people in the United States have been diagnosed and none have died. Of the approximately 327,000,000 people in the U.S., approximately 326,999,995 do not have the coronavirus. There is no good reason to think that the latter number will significantly shrink, as the infected people pose a “low risk” to the public, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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