First deaths confirmed in US, Australia and Thailand

[struggle4progress]

18. Is this 'the Big One'?

By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
Feb. 29, 2020

... That Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide, has been the benchmark for pandemics ever since. For decades public health experts have called for preparations for another “big one” — yet adequate preparations were never made.

Nobody knows if the coronavirus will be a “big one,” for it may still fizzle. As of this writing, only one person is known to have died from it in the United States, while thousands routinely die annually from the seasonal flu. But increasingly, experts are saying that we should get ready just in case.

“Are we seeing a replay of 1918?” asked The New England Journal of Medicine, a publication not associated with alarmism. Bill Gates, who for years has been warning presciently about the danger of pandemics, bluntly cautions that this virus could be a “once-in-a-century pandemic.”

“I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume that it will be until we know otherwise,” Gates said, and that seems prudent ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-outbreak.html