r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	meepmeep13
Comment	I think this very much depends on where you live; you may have forgotton about SARS and bird flu, but I can guarantee that for a citizen of e.g. Hong Kong, these events are still very present in people's minds and affect daily life. H1N1 infected something like 20% of the world's population in 2009, but had a very low fatality rate. Now imagine if it had had a high one. You're right these happen regularly, you've just been lucky enough not to have been in the time or place of some of the awful ones. Saying, "well it hasn't affected me before so it can't be serious" is entirely wrong - it won't be serious until it is, and part of preventing a pandemic is taking it very seriously every time, and it why billions of dollars are spent on international disease management efforts. So you're right not to get into the media frenzy that this is the end of the world, but this is absolutely something that needs to be taken seriously each time it occurs, and making the public aware of the risks of transmission is an important part of that. Ignore the media and just listen directly to the WHO - at the moment they seem fairly optimistic that this isn't going to translate into a pandemic. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---2-march-2020
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/fc6zs9/the_steamie_monday_2_march_2020/fjaf9t5/
Created	Mon 2nd Mar 2020 6:04pm
Status	normal ()

I think this very much depends on where you live; you may have forgotton about SARS and bird flu, but I can guarantee that for a citizen of e.g. Hong Kong, these events are still very present in people's minds and affect daily life.

H1N1 infected something like 20% of the world's population in 2009, but had a very low fatality rate. Now imagine if it had had a high one. You're right these happen regularly, you've just been lucky enough not to have been in the time or place of some of the awful ones. Saying, "well it hasn't affected me before so it can't be serious" is entirely wrong - it won't be serious until it is, and part of preventing a pandemic is taking it very seriously every time, and it why billions of dollars are spent on international disease management efforts.

So you're right not to get into the media frenzy that this is the end of the world, but this is absolutely something that needs to be taken seriously each time it occurs, and making the public aware of the risks of transmission is an important part of that.

Ignore the media and just listen directly to the WHO - at the moment they seem fairly optimistic that this isn't going to translate into a pandemic. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---2-march-2020