Because it caused so much serious sickness, and then so many deaths in China, SO FAST, and we were not given a little heads up until it had hit epidemic proportions over there, and it spread so fast into other places like Italy, and there is SO MUCH TRAVEL nowadays, and the incubation period is longer from pre-symptom people, it can spread so far and so fast. Plus, it is a strain that has never been seen in people before so it just went viral.... and people went totally nuts over it.
And I am very sorry, but like was said earlier, maybe by
@The_V's , or someone else, that since it does affect the elderly and the ones with compromised immune systems, it is a way that nature has to weed out the less healthy.
Understand that my parents are in their mid-80's..... my mom has some dementia and other mobility problems, my dad had a severe stroke in July and has made a near miraculous recovery...... but they are still on that list of compromised immune systems, as well as just being elderly. I don't want them getting it or dying. I wouldn't want them to be one of the ones like in Italy where people are dying so fast, and the hospitals are so overwhelmed that people are dying in the hallways waiting for a bed and doctors are making decisions who to treat first..... with younger and healthier people getting some preferable status.....
It is mostly that it spreads so far and so fast mostly due to the "mobile" state of our existence nowadays, that this has become such a big deal. I get that they want to slow down the speed that people get it, so as to not overwhelm our hospitals and "emergency" response ability, all at once. When all the BS came about with the "Affordable health care act" , and there were fewer and fewer choices of doctors and the way things really worked out, health care costs went way up and alot of small hospitals had to close because they could not afford to stay open and operate on a basis that they could pay the bills. Many were "for profit" hospitals, many of the small ones were a "first stop" for sick people, and then worse cases were transferred to larger hospitals, of which many of them were subsidized by universities and other things that helped to cover costs. But with the mandate that we all must have everything available, and that the smaller ones often could not meet these requirements, they closed. Look at all the doctors that quit delivering babies due to the cost of the malpractice insurances......
So all this has contributed to fewer hospitals, and so now when you go to the emergency room, you sit and wait. There are many more people there. you are exposed to all the germs, bugs, viruses, bacterias, etc., and so on.......
And you don't know if the person next to you in the restaurant, or the grocery store check out line, or the movie theatre, or in church, was at their own house and job all week or if they visited their brother/cousin/uncle that just got home from a trip to Hong Kong where they carried the virus home with no symptoms.....
So all the shut downs are to try to SLOW DOWN the speed that it is spreading so a million people don't all get real sick at once and the hospitals cannot take care of them and they are having to make choices of who to treat. I get the reasoning..... I think we should have closed our borders .... tighter..... sooner...... to prevent so many travelers in, that could be carrying it. There are going to be alot of people who get it and get over it with no big deal..... but they are more contagious than people with other types of "bugs". A greater number of people will have some immunity to it after getting it.... we just have to go through this initial "infection stage" with hopefully not too many becoming deathly sick.
And that means dealing with all the WTF idiots in the meantime.
