Hey everyone, Lbat1901 here back with a long overdue journal entry where I talk about basically anything yet alone having the name Channel 7 Lucky Hour in it.

Man, 2020 has been so far a rough year and a rough start into the new decade. So much has happened within the first three months of the new year and quite frankly it's been very depressing.

I would talk about what went down so far, but I am saving that for my end year review and believe me, this year's review is going to be nasty. So yeah.

I just wanted to spend time writing this journal about the whole Covid-19 issue that's been going on. To be honest with you I had several breakdowns in mid March where it hit where I live.

We all have a panic button when it comes to Covid-19 and I even put together my current knowledge on what Covid-19 could be like. It wasn't bad, but there are people out there who like to debunk all your statements which is exactly what happened.

They claimed that I was wrong about people dying from the flu, but we'll get to that later.

But I just want to make it clear that at some point of the entry, I will be talking about statistics. Unfortunately, most of the statistics that I put into this post are mostly the US statistics. But there are a few statistics that count the whole world. The flu isn't seen in Europe. The places were it's a problem at will be mentioned later on.

Ok let's do this.

Oh...where do I even begin with this? Well if I had to start somewhere it would be many centuries ago. There was a time where things like antibiotics and vaccines didn't exist.

Many places around the world had different ways of healing the sick. Unfortunately no one had a single clue on what to do when it came to the Black Plaque.

Oh the Black Plaque. This plaque nearly wiped out all of Europe. It started in Italy and spreaded out. There was nothing people could do. They could only watch their love ones and friends die. Heck even they themselves suffered a very long and painful death. It was a tragic time.

There has been many speculations on how the plaque started, but the most accurate one had to be the fact that rats were everywhere and I mean everywhere and also the cities were very dirty. Nobody washed their hands or took a bath. Who knows how bad those cities smelt like. I really don't want to know, but we're glad to have moved on from those days.

That's until the Spanish Flu (or the influenza pandemic) came in 1918 right after the first World War. Man was this thing devastating. It took out a lot of lives between said year of 1918 to 1920. Again the world still didn't have any antibiotics or vaccines. So if you were around during that time you had to do a lot of distanting.....which kinda worked(?), but still, never mess with a flu like this. It is said that the Spanish Flu killed about 17 to 50 million people. There's even speculations that the number is higher than 100 million.

The Spanish Flu wasn't the only illness that everyone had to worry about. We had measles, scarlet fever, yellow fever, small pox and any other illness that has been a major problem back in the day which I don't want to add. The reason why being is that if I were to add them than this would be longer that it's intended to be.

But over many years we've finally created vaccines and antibiotics to combat them. We no longer see small pox, measles, yellow fever (well if you are living in a poor undeveloped country, you'll see it and will possibly die from it), and the numbers to scarlet fever went down even though it didn't kill you, but it can do a lot of damage and it's not pretty.

I recently forgot to add Pneumonia to the list, but it's very common to get and it's not that problematic as it used to be. So yeah.

Now with advancements in medicine you would think that we would get rid of illnesses that once killed right? Not really....

The only thing that we haven't fully combated against would be the common flu. Despite having a shot for it, the vaccine has partial effect.

Luckily we only see the flu during the cold and flu season or better known as the "Don't touch me, I'm fragile!!!" season.

The flu exists in the tropical and subtropical parts of the world. There are only three major places where the flu has high numbers and those would be: the US, Australia, and Hong Kong.

Now here comes the part where I am basically throwing stats and numbers at you. After this paragraph I will be going through the total number of deaths caused by the flu. A quick thing that I want to add is that the person who flared at me claimed that nobody dies from the flu. Oh buddy, I hate to break this to you, but there literal numbers and stats for these kinds of things. Stats don't lie.

Also the only people that are at high risk of dying from the flu are children that are under 5 years old (technically it's children that are under 2 years old), pregnant women (and women up to two weeks postpartum), and finally the elderly especially if they have respiratory issues.

To start this off right, we will look at the 2009 flu pandemic. The total number of deaths worldwide, and I stress worldwide, is 151,700 to 575,400. Now for infected it's 11% to 21% (about 0.7 to 1.4 billion).

Now onwards to the typical flu season which is every year. The death toll is about 290,000 to 650,000 a year. For the numbers for the infected, it's 5% to 15% (340 million to 1 million), 3% to 11% (5% to 20% (240 million to 1.6 million).

Just a quick mention of the polio outbreak that was only in the US at the time. It would seem that people forget how dangerous polio was without the vaccine back in the day. Oh history should never be forgotten. There weren't any sort of treatment for polio in the time between 1917 and the early 1950s. In the 1950s polio got worse which resulted 57,628 children being reported with it and 3,145 deaths. Also it's worth mentioning that 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.

And finally the 2019 to 2020 seasonal flu. Surprisingly these numbers only imply to the US. The number of deaths from the flu in the US is 20,000 to 52,000 and the number of infected is 34 to 49 million.

Okay stats on the flu over. Now we get to the most baffling part of this entire book report: the US has a serious problem with the flu season and measles. Yes, measles, a illness that we got rid of with vaccines and antibiotics.

In order to get the vaccine for the flu, it is recommended that you're over 6 months after birth. Now for getting a shot for the measles, all children (and yes children are at a high risk of getting it and dying from it) get two does of MMR vaccine. The first dose is given at 12 through15 months of age and the second dose is at 4 through 6 years of age.

Why am I telling you all this I hear you ask? In case if you don't know, the US had an outbreak of measles in the past year and the year before which infected those who are under 19 years old and a majority of cases are from children.

"How could this happen? Measles is supposed to be extremely rare to get"

You'd be right; however, there are people out there that are so against getting their kids vaccinated. This is commonly due to religious beliefs or something else which is totally understandable. But half the time, people believe that vaccines cause Autism.

This right here, this makes my blood boil in rage. This is completely false. I would love to explain why but unfortunately you guys didn't came here to hear about my political views. You came here to hear about the deal with our current situation and you are going to get it. I might talk about it since it's Autism Awareness Month but for now we got a some serious matters to talk about.

Brace yourselves this is going to be a very long ride.

I am sure that everyone worldwide is currently panicking about the Coronavirus or the Covid-19 outbreak. I have to admit I am worried too.

Let's just go over it on what we know so far.

Covid-19 is, well of course, a virus and you know that viruses can spread and a good majority of the well known viruses are contagious and airborne.

Now what are the symptoms? The symptoms result in a person coughing, having a fever, and shortness of breath in 2 to 14 days of exposure. The people who are at higher- well basically anyone can get it, but the people who are at an extremely high risk are the elder especially those who have already existing health issues.

Now for the countries that are in total lockdown a week or two ago. Before I mention them, feel free to add on to this as much you want since I might miss out on something.

Alright, first country to have it was China which now has lower number of cases, but before that we couldn't really get information since China doesn't like leaking info out. We have to pull China's teeth out to get some info, buuuuut.....regardless or not, info usually gets leaked. Enough of that. Next we e have South Korea, then Japan. Speaking of which Japan had to closed down all the schools. You know it's serious when Japan closes down school and goes under quarantine.

Anyway....next up we get a few cases reported in the US which eventually spread throughout the entire country expect for the state of West Virginia (Editor: Hi, this is Lbat's editor. I just wanted to fix this one mistake here about West Virginia. As of recently, it has been reported that West Virginia is no longer a Covid-19 free state. So please don't attack Lbat. Thanks!). Then we get Canada going under quarantine after the Prime Minister gets tested positive for it. Over in Europe, Italy is shutdown. In Spain, the country shutdowns down after the wife to the Prime Minister is tested positive. Soon afterwards, France, Germany, and the UK are under quarantine.

After this pretty every country in Europe is under quarantine including Russia.

Australia on the other hand, all I heard was that they are taking procedures. Again, as said before, feel free to add on to this on what's happening because there is a chance where I won't be able to keep everything straight on every country.

Africa so far is the only continent, along with Antarctica, doesn't have any reports. But if they were than oh boy, there's going to be a whole lot of deaths since Africa (well some parts of it) don't have the best healthcare system.

Anyway, since the lockdown, many things have been postponed. Even in the US where St Patrick's Day parades got cancelled and March Madness getting postponed including high school and college sports (this also implies to schools, bars, restaurants, etc all over the world). Yeah it's serious when this happens.

Now when it comes to stocking up from stores.....oh boy. Ever since the outbreak, people are going crazy in order to stock up on things such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Uhh............ok. Hey....I hate to say this, but you really shouldn't be stocking up like that. Oh god I am so going to get angry riots. Calm down people! Calm down! Look all I am trying to say is that you need to be mindful for the people who need this. I am talking about the people who are higher risk than. Yeah I am referring the elder and the people who have health issues.

I am not telling you to stop getting what you need. Just take the number of things that you want and let get other people stock up. See it shouldn't be that hard. Thank you.

So in long story short, we are still learning about Covid-19 and are working on a vaccine in if it were to come back. We just need to do is stay strong and determined. So watch your hands, wear a face mask, keep your distance to 6 ft, and makes sure to stay away from dear ol' granny and grandpa. You want them to come to every single family gathering now do you?

Or we can always be that one idiot that refuses to listen and goes to beaches and be exposed. Yeah there are literally people that don't get the memo. Don't be like them.

Now you probably notice that I didn't mention any deaths from Covid-19 and honestly, as much as I would like to add the total number if those are currently infected and have died from it, I really can't give off a number. The reason why being is that the numbers keep going up each passing minute, hour, and day. If I were to put a number, it likely to be wrong since again the numbers get updated. So fir the third time in a row, feel free to add information on what's happening. You can basically say anything as long as it is in a real respectful matter.

What I mean in a respectful matter is because there are people out there who are being truly racist around any Asian they come across with. Blaming Covid-19 on them which totally not cool.

Hey to the people who are being racist to Asians, you might, I don't know, self quarantine yourself out of society and maybe learn a thing or two. Just saying.

Thank you all for taking the time for reading this really long thing. I know it was a lot, but thanks for making it this far. I appreciate it