Inspiration for this post: the sensationalizing of both the numbers of infections, which count doesn’t mean very much, and the number of deaths, which do matter, but for the public, the same have been rather sloppily derived. BackChannels, incidentally, always refers to CDC numbers when it cites statistics.

From the (Still) Awesome Conversation

Our nation’s population is a little more than 328 million; our annual morbidity: 2.8 million. C19 morbidity associates deeply with both age and seriously compromised health, most deaths affecting persons within the 65-85 cohort.

The Baby Boomers of the post-WWII era have arrived.

Two questions: how could a nation so heavily invested in defense, disaster management, and preparedness not have expected an attack or episode in or related to “CBRN Warfare” and not have kept itself readied with contingency plans, field hospitals, and basic emergency equipment and supplies? Given the demography and the fit of this virus to it, how could we not have expected this kind of a shock over the toll?

For focusing so well on the trees — and not so many — we seem unable to have a look over our now financially suffering continent!

I’m an old liberal who long ago got an introduction to statistics, and reason now tells me to take the partisan politics out of the matter and deal with what the data has been telling us.

I don’t like him either, but I don’t want that animosity to color how I’ve viewed this issue.

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Afterthoughts

Three things in life are now certain: Death; C19; and Taxes.

🙂

The world will not eradicate a virus globally distributed by mouth.

It would certainly be helpful and polite to use handkerchiefs when we sneeze, to avoid “spraying” when we talk (however lubricated or impassioned one may be), to brush and gargle with appreciation (whatever it is, kill it at the windpipe! — and enjoy minty fresh breath as well). Still, the world will not spare itself the now dreaded COVID-19, which, unless the nasty thing evolves, will not kill handsome or pretty 19-year-olds in good health.

In fact, the odds favor even 85-year-olds (and older) in good health.

Let’s get the nation — hell, go all the way: The Nations! — out of this panic mode and address the challenges posed by the ageing and unwell portions of populations that needs must demand the greater expansion of active and palliative treatment facilities as well as resources and services for the care and dispatch of the dead.

We got to this pass unprepared and panicked by way of complacency, greed, penury, and fear of the unknown.

Let’s not do it again.

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