Remember the summer of the shark, when there were actually fewer shark attacks? Remember the bird flu virus, the swine flu virus, the Ebola outbreak? Apparently the national media doesn't, because here we go again with coronavirus mania.
While the national media is busy frightening everyone with the coronavirus, ten thousand Americans have been killed by the flu this season. The truth is, the coronavirus threat is very low compared to the good old influenza virus.
Kelsey-Seybold Dr. Melanie Mouzoon says for a healthy adult coronavirus probably isn't much of a threat.
"Most of the people who get it will not die from it or be seriously ill with it; the problem is that those people could spread the illness."
And Dr. Mouzoon says it shouldn't be ignored.
"I think if we don't spread the word that then we will have a pandemic, but on the other hand we shouldn't be panicking about it because we're really at very low risk here."
Dr. Mouzoon says the real threat for Americans is influenza. Flu typically kills between twenty and sixty thousand Americans each year.
Dr. Mouzoon says corona is a low risk to Americans so far because we've done a good job of containing it.
"It's hard to know whether you should hype it or not hype it because the threat is there but as long as it's contained it's kind of like having a lion in a cage at the zoo; yeah, if the lion's let loose that's a problem, but as long as he's in the cage we're okay."
There are no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Texas, but about a hundred American evacuees from China have been quarantined at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.