Remember the Hong Kong flu? – IOTW Report

Remember the Hong Kong flu?

American Thinker: An I’m-so-cute-and-clever reporter recently asked the president if he deserved to be re-elected given the number of deaths from coronavirus, noting that the number is greater than American fatalities from the Vietnam war.

People can always find something as a point of comparison as if that automatically adds weight to what they are implying. No doubt this reporter thought stats from the Vietnam war added gravitas to her query.

In any case, her disrespectful and rude question didn’t deserve to be dignified with an answer. But Trump answered her anyway. Unfortunately, he didn’t use the opportunity to his advantage by giving her a little history lesson, as discussed at The Daily Wire:

…She may have been unaware that at the height of the Vietnam war, there was something that killed more Americans than the war did, and it was a similar virus — and no one questioned whether a president should be elected or not because of the virus, known as the Hong Kong Flu. MORE

14 Comments on Remember the Hong Kong flu?

  1. Check this out, data direct from CDC. Average weekly deaths in USA for the first 28 weeks of each year (I did only first 28 weeks to account for seasonality):
    2013-14: 51,204
    2014-15: 56,010
    2015-16: 53,364
    2016-17: 55,859
    2017-18: 57,271
    2018-19: 56,175
    2019-20: 55,991

    See the big jump this year??? Me neither.
    Here’s the article that led me to the CDC data:
    https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/28/if-coronavirus-threats-so-great-whys-u-s-overall-death-rate-down/

    The season begins October 1, 28 weeks is through mid-April.

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  2. My younger sister, my cousins, and I (only the girls got it for some reason) became sick with HKF (Covid68) shortly after Thanksgiving. We didn’t get up when called down to dinner, and were revived by a doctor in our bedroom. We had a quarantined room sign hung on the door. I lost a lot of weight and turned yellow. Like, Chinaman yellow. It was jaundice, but I didn’t know what that was. I missed a month of school and Christmas. Yeah. I remember that flu. It was like a sleeping sickness. We just slept all the time for weeks.

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  3. In actuality, HJK killed FOUR TIMES as many Americans as had died in Vietnam, up to that time. Prior to TET, only 20K had died in Nam. And then, some 5K died in the next two months. In the same 4 month time period, HKF killed about TWELVE TIMES the number of Americans

    But guess which event dominated every headline for the entire year and which event went down a memory hole. I was twelve and I wasnt even aware that a killer flu was loose. But I sure heard about TET

    (More stats to come)

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  4. How many people here are aware that as many American soldiers died of the 1918 flu bug in about 6 weeks as were KIA in the entire Vietnam War. (46K to 47K)

    Moreover, 30K soldiers died of the flu in training camps in the America between mid September and mid October. Meanwhile, 27K troops were KIA in the month of October in the Battle of Meuse Argonne. That made about 75K kids killed by flu or enemy action in about 6 weeks ending in late Ocyober. So why didn’t we learn about this in school? Didnt their lives and suffering matter

    But there’s more. The death toll in October 1918 in America from flu was 195K — and half of those were in the 20 to 40 year range. Add 75K from the camps in September and carnage in Europe and you have about 175K deaths in the 20 to 40 range. That would be equivalent to half a million dead today

    Has there ever been anything remotely like this in our history
    And yet we never learned about October, 1918 in school did we? And of course we know why

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  5. Callmelennie,
    In MOST wars, disease kills more than battle.
    Remember Bangladesh? A Million deaths – fewer than 50,000 from battle.
    Just one as example – I think if you look at the statistics for WWII in the Pacific you’ll find some shocks (I haven’t studied them – just seen minor references in passing).

    It was a “gotcha!” moment for some disingenuous hag pretending to be a “journ-o-list.” President Trump’s people should have had those numbers (shown by LCD) available at his elbow. Course, you can’t prepare for everything.

    izlamo delenda est …

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