Another look at the numbers on the virus

Yes, the corona virus is killing Americans.  If you have a family member who's fighting the virus, prayers for them.  But with that said, consider this:

In an average year between 20,000 and 80,000 Americans die from ordinary flu.  Before the U.S. had lost 100 people to corona, the media had tanked the entire economy with its scare stories.

So what is it about this virus that warranted shutting down the entire economy?  When the media started pushing panic, the only data we had were unverifiable reports from the Chinese government on how infectious the virus was, and the mortality rate.  When we offered to send doctors to Wuhan to help Chinese researchers, China declined the offer.

Consider that every day about 7,000 Americans die from all causes.  While it's wrenching if you have a family member fighting the virus, an additional 100 or so deaths per day is 1.4 percent--not enough of a difference to destroy the world's strongest economy, by a long shot.

Hell, over 100 Americans die each day from overdoses of illegal drugs.  Does THAT cause the economy to shut down?  Should it?

As of the time I write this, 473 American deaths have been attributed to the virus in more or less seven weeks.  In that same time about 350,000 have died in the normal course of things without the virus.  That's an increase of one-seventh of one percent due to the virus.

Again, if you have a family member who's fighting this, percentages are no consolation.  Understandable.  But from a national policy viewpoint, how the hell did something so seemingly "routine" (in the sense that some virus variant hits the world every year) result in the shutdown of the entire U.S. economy, when that never happened before.  In other words, was this virus orders-of-magnitude more deadly?  If so, how was that determined?  By whom?

One more little detail:  At the press conference when Trump mentioned the French study--admittedly small--that found a 100% cure rate using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, the Hilliary-supporting Dr. Fauci said he hadn't read the paper but that that the drug a) hadn't been approved for use, and b) would have to go through long trials.  But wait: the paper had been put on the Net two days earlier.  If Fauci is the supposed expert, how could he not already have known about it?

Further, hydroxychloroquine has been used safely since 1944.  It's already known to be safe, and no further trials are needed to determine that.  And "approval" for an already safe drug to be used "off-label" isn't even needed--doctors can already prescribe drugs for off-label uses.

At a time when the nation badly needed good news, and the French study offered exactly that, Fauci seemed to deliberately debunk something he claimed to know nothing about.  Curious.