I thought I’d check in with my Tumblr friends here to let you know that so far my family and I are well. Several of us are high risk health-wise, so we’re isolating ourselves as best we can. Â
I also wanted to share this, which I wrote in response to the news this morning:
1% is Not the Solution
I checked the current population of the US this morning, which the internet says is 327,700,000. 3% (the mostly frequently touted mortality rate of Covid-19) of that is 9,831,000, but it's possible that it's as low as 1%, which would be 3,277,000. It's safe to say that if this highly infectious virus spreads unchecked, somewhere between three and ten million people in this country will die.
About three million people die every year in the US anyway, so the best-case scenario is that we'll double the average annual death rate -- if nothing else factors in. If the virus doesn't mutate. If our healthcare system is not overwhelmed and more people die because they couldn't get care. If the people who initially survive the virus don't relapse or experience complications that shorten their lives. In other words, if we're very, very insanely lucky, only three million will die.
Who are these three million? Some of our elected officials will have us believe they're the elderly, as we're the most vulnerable. But we'll also be sacrificing people with pre-existing conditions or suppressed immune systems. A good portion of the dead will be neither old nor vulnerable; that's just the way this plague seems to work. So, let's say three million random people will die.
If someone rounded up three million Americans and executed them, we would call it a holocaust. Even if they were old, or not as healthy as others. I can think of nothing that would make our government do that – or I didn't, until I woke up this morning.
Here's an alternative plan: let's just kill everyone who is infected right now. At this point that would cost only, what, a hundred thousand lives? Peanuts compared to three million. We don't really need those politicians or celebrities who are infected. By summer the US would be virus-free, and the economy back on track. It's just as heartless, yes, but the numbers are better. And that seems to be the only thing that matters to the government right now. The numbers.
Just one problem with both plans: We are not numbers. We are human beings. We are all important.
My wish today is that we don't kill anyone on purpose. That we put the value of all lives above the numbers. That we do what we must to save as many as we can. That is the only decent solution.









