‘Morning Joe’ Medical Expert on Jan. 27th: Americans Should Worry About the Flu, Not Coronavirus
From the January 27th, 2020 episode of “Morning Joe”:
BRZEZINSKI: “We want to give you an update right now on the deadly Coronavirus. At least 80 people in China have died from the virus and nearly 3,000 have been infected with illness which is spreading globally. Now with five confirmed cases in the United States. The CDC says the cases have been reported in Washington, Chicago, California and Arizona. Across China, 15 cities with a combined population of 57 million people have been placed on lockdown. Yet according to Chinese media reports, about 5 million residents left Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak, before the lockdown began. So let’s bring in ‘Morning Joe’ medical contributor Dr. Dave Campbell for more on this. Your thoughts, Dr. Dave on this? You know, explain the severe concern about this outbreak and how worried should Americans be? Should they panic?”
CAMPBELL: “Good morning, Mika. No, Americans do not need to panic. The Chinese are already panicking as they should, because this virus is spreading all through the central parts of China, and it’s a new virus. It has never been seen before. So its mechanism of spreading is not quite known yet. What I would suggest, however, is that Americans take this as a wake-up call for seasonal flu. We are not out of the flu season. We’ve already had 15 million cases of the flu in the U.S., 140,000 hospitalizations, 54 children have died. Almost as many as have died from the novel Coronavirus, and everybody’s not vaccinated yet. Even if you get vaccinated and get the flu, it lowers the complication rate from the flu. So we don’t need to be overly concerned yet in the United States about the novel Coronavirus, we do need to keep our eyes open for the seasonal flu. We’re right in the middle of the flu season still.”
