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Clarice Feldman is a writer whom you can always expect to be thorough and comprehensive. She writes today in part in the American Thinker:

I’m phlegmatic by nature. It gives me an edge up when mass hysteria seems to take up so much space in the news and the pronouncements of Democratic leaders. Looking at the best information available to me, I find it beyond question that the President has taken the right steps to deal with this variant flu; that few people in this country will perish from it; that while there may be some economic consequences of the supply disruption from China, the fact that we’ve been decoupling ourselves from China under this administration means they are likely to be smaller and more short-lived than the market manipulators would have us believe.

1. What is the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and How Does it Compare to the Flu?

The most informative reports I can find on this are from Johns Hopkins Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Director of the CDC.

CDC Director Robert Redfield this week said CDC official Nancy Messonier, (sister of Rod Rosenstein) misspoke when she said an epidemic outbreak of COVID-19 in this country was inevitable.

Redfield’s clarification is in accord with an editorial last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, which speculated that this virus “Could turn out no worse than a ‘severe seasonal influenza’ in terms of mortality.”

Citing an analysis of the available data from the outbreak in China, the authors note that there have been zero cases among children younger than 15; and that the fatality rate is 2% at most, and could be “considerably less than 1%.”

Those who have died have been elderly or were already suffering from another illness--as with ordinary flu. The underlying data suggest that the symptoms vary, and fewer than one in six of the cases reported were “severe.”

The authors note that coronavirus looks to be much less severe than other recent outbreaks of respiratory illnesses:

[T]he overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

The vast majority of patients recover, and among those who are hospitalized, the median stay thus far is 12 days.

Coronavirus, they note, does spread easily, and the average infected person has infected two other people. That means the U.S. should expect the illness to gain a “foothold.” But they note travel restrictions on China (imposed by President Trump over the objections of some critics) “may have helped slow the spread of the virus.”

...In his press conference to transparently inform us of the situation and the best means to prepare for it (a conference CNN broke away from to cover a Bloomberg town hall), Trump detailed the health status of Americans confirmed to have the virus, our preparedness for it, confirming that “our great sanitation, access to excellent medical care, and good diet” doubtless play a role in recovery and make it less deadly than elsewhere.

...Maybe we should be bothered that we are running out of things to worry about. Nah. The Democrats and media are creative in finding new and more original ways to manufacture angst.

Read more here.