As usual, you make a lot of good points. I feel you’re wrong about this, though, in a lot of ways. What could be termed as mathematical correctness does not always make one right. There’s also a profound difference between measuring a single tree and measuring an entire forest.
For me, Covid-19 response has always been more about population resilience rather than the actual lethality of the disease. I can do the math, but I can also think beyond immediate consequences.
Health measures have always been more about reducing overall spread to buy time to learn how to treat it or develop a vaccine and not overwhelm the healthcare system than about effectiveness of the measures for each individual. It’s hard to focus on improving treatment when you’re in triage for months on end because of the sheer numbers of sick. You also rip through supplies. There are costs involved that need to be considered (not all of them financial).
Failure to maintain or even carry out a full quarantine for long enough to stamp it out in the first place is a huge failure of government leadership and ourselves. The next virus that hits may not be so mild. If we look at Covid-19 as a drill for the future, we failed. Miserably.
When Covid-19 hit, we didn’t know a lot about it. It got compared to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in a historical sense mostly, but it’s a false equivalency in that Covid-19 is not an influenza. It’s a blood vessel disease. Surviving the pneumonia may be just the beginning. How many people are going to die or have their lives significantly altered due to sudden heart attack, stroke, embolism, aneurism, organ failure, or any of the various neuropathies? We may not see those numbers for years. And even if you don’t 'stroke out' relatively early on, weakened blood vasculature, heart, and lungs will lessen your life span. It will catch up to you eventually. We just don’t know how bad that’s going to be yet. The autopsy reports should be concerning to anyone who got the virus but didn’t get the respiratory illness. Just because you didn’t get pneumonia, doesn’t mean your organs aren’t littered with blood clots or that your vasculature linings aren’t weakened, perhaps permanently. We still don’t know conclusively.
Being a Coronavirus, Covid-19 affects more than just humans. Don’t forget, humans got it from another species. We already know that other primates, cats, dogs, rabbits, and hamsters can get and spread Covid-19. They usually have to be in close contact with an infected human but it’s possible. But what about livestock or other production animals? It seems swine may be susceptible and cows already have problems with their own coronavirus so they may get this one too. The mink industry has already lost tens of thousands of animals, though in that case they were still able to harvest fur. Again, reducing the overall transmission rates by any and all means until these issues can be discovered and worked out seems like a good call.
It’s a cold calculus to be so blasé about mass death. Based on your writings, you seem to live alone, you’re middle aged, I’m guessing around 60ish. Your children are grown. You’ve past the point of life where you’re directly responsible to and for anyone else. Not everyone is so fortunate to just blow this off like it’s nothing. If I get this virus, and pass it to my mother, she’s not going to survive it. That’s going to have hard financial consequences if there’s a long hospital ICU stay. I’ll likely survive it, but again, the financial burden of a hospital stay even with some insurance will set me back years. If I don’t survive it, I orphan my daughter right before she’s ready to launch on her own. No college. No support into adulthood. She’s young, and she’ll eventually recover and do well enough for herself, but let’s not pretend like it’ll be easy. I don’t even want to think about losing her if she gets it. No, it’s not likely, but it’s possible. It’s not hysteria to be concerned about losing family members—its love and prudence. In my case, that’s being a mom and as a mom, I really don’t appreciate the constant cynic derision from the political peanut gallery. Let’s not confuse the media shit show and statistics with real lives, real people, real damage. If wearing a mask and distancing reduces my chances of getting or spreading it by only 5%, that’s 5% I didn’t have otherwise. It adds up people. You do you, but don’t mock me for gladly embracing that 5% increase for my family. She’s my only mother. She’s my only child. All the proverbial eggs are in one basket. I’ll increase survivability by any and all means, thank you very much, knowing full well I can’t protect them from everything. That’s not the point, we do what we can and hope for the best. That’s the point. Masks are a small thing that does not cost me anything but a minor inconvenience. It’s not a political statement, it’s a mask.
Every dollar spent dealing with this because of public malfeasance, mismanagement, and making it political is one less dollar spent on fire containment, hurricane and flood response, the next epidemic, etc. Do we think climate change is just going to take a break and go on holiday because we mishandled Coronavirus? Hmm? It’s also one less dollar that can be spent securing needed transitions to make us more resilient for the future. But no. We want to waste time arguing about masks and social distancing, who’s got ape brain, who’s being an idiot, why liberals are Satan incarnate, whether or not Hilary eats trafficked children, fighting Republican led tyranny of the minority, whether Trump is nuts or not, and should we place bets on how much further Sean Hannity can stick his lips up that glorious Trumpian arse—bonus if there’s going to be tongue. Personally, I’m sick of all the noise. Really, it’s too late for all that.
We are at the point of overshoot. It won’t be a tidal wave that knocks us out, it will be a long series of smaller waves that pecks away at our ability to respond. Covid-19 is a small wave, but one we allowed too much ground and too much damage in order to engage in pointless pissing contests. Collapse is going to happen. I doubt there’s any stopping it now. We had a chance to at least soften the blow or to ease transition. I had hope for that until Covid-19. People seemed to be rethinking things. Sustainability and emphasis on renewable and repairable products was gaining focus, popularity, and support. I’m not hopeful now. Covid-19 was probably the first chance in history that we’ve had to respond to an emerging virus by tracking it down and stamping it out before it goes global. We found it early, we knew it was deadly, we knew the points of origin and ingress and were capable of tracking it down. Think about what that capability would have meant for the future. A chance to salvage more of who we are. Evolution beyond ape brain.
We have everything within us to evolve to higher thinking. We lack the will, we’re too stubborn and resistant to change, and we’re out of time. If we don’t evolve to that higher order of thinking and keep on the way we’re going, then by 2100 half to 2/3 of the world population will likely be gone according to estimates tracking resource depletion from the 70’s that have been right more than they’ve been wrong.
We won’t be extinct. We will be starting over, but not all of us. I hope people will learn enough not to repeat the same mistakes and turn away from corrupt and transient thinking. I hope they figure out what matters and what doesn’t. I hope they learn to work together better and think beyond themselves and the immediate moment. I hope…
Really, letting it run rampant until herd immunity was never a viable option. That would have had a cascade of unpredictable consequences. Here in America, we’re on that path now. Sooner or later, we’re all going to take our chances with it, especially if Trump is reelected. Most of us will easily survive the pneumonia. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be fine or that there won’t be hard consequences or that herd immunity is even achievable in the manner being promoted. And it didn’t have to be.
