We’ve been suffering through COVID-19 for months now and it’s really taken its toll on us. Most of us are fatigued and just want to get on with our lives as we once knew it. Figuratively speaking, we want to be done with this awful exam and graduate to the next class. Sadly, Americans, in particular, might need to retake the exam. Let me explain.
Right now, it’s January 22nd, 2021.
Since the November presidential elections, about 180,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Back then, we had about 9.5 million cases, and ‘only’ about 235,000 people had died.
Since November 3rd, the number of cases has increased by about 15 million! We’ve not even started to see the deaths from at least 8 million of these cases, which happened in the last 30 days alone. It takes a few weeks before any newly confirmed cases on our charts ever translate to confirmed deaths.
At a rate of over 3,000 deaths a day (we’re way past that now), by this time in February, 500,000 people will have died. By this date in March, 600,000 will have died. This is assuming a mild linear increase in daily deaths and that hospitals don’t get any more overwhelmed, further worsening death stats. Add to this, the possibility of more easily spreadable or (God forbid) more virulent strains/mutations out in the wild.
The US (alone) makes up 25% of all worldwide cases and 20% of all worldwide deaths. One country! One out of every 5 people, (worldwide) who die from COVID-19, lives in the US. One out of every 4 people, who get infected (with unknown long-term effects), lives in the US.
Countries with much better mortality/morbidity statistics are taking more drastic measures. They took the initial lockdowns more seriously. They’re taking travel restrictions and precautions more seriously. They are not talking about long-term risks to children without acknowledging the raging virus. More poignantly, their sending of children back to school is based on a proper acknowledgment of downward trends in infection rates.
The question isn’t whether to open schools. The question is what to do immediately (right now! Yesterday even!!) about our horrendous morbidity and mortality statistics.
If we want to open schools, we need to earn it by drastically reducing the number of cases and deaths.
We should consider stricter distancing, and urgently ramping up vaccination in as many people as possible. Generally speaking, we don’t admit children to schools without proof of certain vaccinations. It’s the same way we should be sure we’re able to vaccinate enough adults such that the kids don’t have people to infect or people to infect them.
We can’t wish our way out of this mess. We have to do the work and we don’t get to skip any part of the algorithms.
Otherwise, we’ll be back to square one. We’ll be forced to close again (because we won’t have a choice) and we’ll spend even more time waiting for it to be safe to get the kids to school.
Either that, or we’ll have an embarrassing number of cases and deaths compared to other countries. Oh, wait, that ship already sailed. We’ve already lost more Americans to the virus than each of the World Wars and in much less (much much less) time.
We locked down when less than 2000 Americans a day were dying.
Now we’re approaching 4500 deaths a day.
I understand the temptation to believe that COVID-19 isn’t leading to excess deaths and that deaths are being inordinately attributed to COVID-19. However, way back in October, the CDC had already estimated about 200k excess deaths to COVID-19.
By the time the thing runs its course, no single unnatural factor will have killed more Americans than COVID-19 within the same span of time.
In 2018 heart disease was the leading cause of death. It killed over 650,000 people (many of the disorders causing these deaths didn’t start in 2018).
Cancer was next at nearly 600,000 (most of the cancer diseases causing these deaths didn’t start in 2018).
This should give a benchmark to how unacceptable these coronavirus deaths should be.
400k Americans have already died within a 10-month span and almost ALL of these cases started within said 10 months. Seeing that more (way more!) people got infected AFTER the elections than in all the months prior, we can be sure that if nothing drastic is done, we will see a doubling of the previous numbers within record time.
When the world was at war and we were snuffing each other out on the battlefield…deliberately using weapons that would cause death quickly and on a large scale, Americans weren’t getting killed nearly as fast as this virus is killing Americans. World War I took over four years to kill 117,000 Americans. World War II took 6 years to kill 670,000 Americans. This means this coronavirus is killing Americans 6 times faster than WW2 did and 24 times faster than WW1 did!
I can understand other countries, who are not properly testing, brushing aside the severity of this pandemic. Not the US.
I can understand the need to send our kids back to school and the pain and suffering they’re going through but we can’t make these complaints in isolation. We can’t make them separate from the number of deaths and the number of people who will suffer long-term tissue scarring from this disease. I want to hear people who are complaining that their kids have been home for 10 months also acknowledge that people are dying. I have a strong suspicion that during the World Wars, people understood why they had to make certain sacrifices and maybe put their lives on hold. After all, nobody would send their kids to school near an active battlefield. Right now there’s a battlefield and bullets and missiles are flying overhead. Only, this time, these bullets are more in number (way more) and they are invisible and inaudible.
We don’t need to see the bullets in order to appreciate the magnitude of deaths. I know death is an uncomfortable topic but we don’t do ourselves any favors by pretending like they aren’t happening. I understand that avoidance can be a good coping strategy but let’s not overdo it to the point that we risk our lives even further and thus need even more drastic measures to cope.
All hope is not lost but we need to be proactive. We need C.R.E.D.I.T.T. and we need it fast:
Charity: Not just bribing citizens with government money, or filling warehouses with palliatives, but creating strategic outposts for strengthening already-existing networks and optimizing them for increasing the number of stakeholders participating in charitable distribution. We need to cooperate with each other more than ever before. We need to be more selfless than ever before. We need to look out for each other while also not taking our eyes off the stats.
Research: Doing even more analysis. Watching the numbers as closely as we can bear and accounting for every factor leading to observed changes. Clinical trials. Double-blinds and what not. We seem to be doing well here. Where we struggle is in educating the masses about our findings.
Education: This might be the most important and where humanity might have failed the most (aided in part by this age of social media) regarding this pandemic. This includes not just educating people but also countering the opposite of education (such as misinforming, misleading, and holding information from people in an attempt to avoid panic). It involves not just information blurbs but campaigns that reach the people in their language and spearheaded by representatives that the people trust. We should reach them in not just their official spoken language, but also at the level of their culture. Not just PDFs and PSAs that inform the brain but a proper rejigging of the things that people actually love to share on social media due to their sensationalism and ability to touch the heart. We have to find a way to connect more than ever before…but not physically.
Distancing: Regionally, this may include a lockdown. It may not include a lockdown. It may need severe mask mandates. It may not need severe mandates. It may need an additional closing of school locations. It may not need it. Each region will calculate severity based on their needs and risk-tolerance.
However, as individuals, since we can’t know (just by looking) who has the virus, we’re better off living our lives as if EVERYONE we meet or every surface we touch has the virus. That’s the level of carefulness we needed before November. Talk less of now.
The US, as a whole, desperately needs more restriction or more intelligence in its execution of restriction measures.
Innovation: We may have to destroy our old paradigms. We have to do things we’ve NEVER done before. We have to innovate in our charitable giving. Innovate in our education. Innovate in our tolerance for pain/discomfort while also figuring out strategic ways to not get collectively jaded by deaths. We don’t need to obsess over the number of cases but we (at least those of us who can effect major change) need to know that number.
Testing: We should test and test and test and test. Yes, more tests will lead to more cases being reported but more tests mean that more people will know their status. This means that more people will stay out of the pool of people unwittingly spreading the virus. More tests mean we can identify clusters of infection as well as past and potential super-spreader scenarios. So, yeah, the tests don’t create the cases, they make us more aware of the cases that will rage on whether we test or not. More tests mean we can identify cases earlier and increase the likelihood of improved health outcomes.
Treatment: Prevention via vaccines. Palliation in the hospitals. And, who knows, someday, maybe some kind of cure.
A day will come when people will look back at these numbers in the history books and they may ask “What in the world were these people thinking?!!”. They won’t fully buy our excuses of Covid fatigue, but may they also see how well we tried.
May posterity judge us kindly.
Updates:
Here’s an interview where I talk extensively about this.
Rounded up my death projections for next month.
Added a link to Tyler Perry’s messaging as an example of representatives that people trust who speak to them in their ‘language’.
