Note: I actually wrote this article in March of 2020. I think it is interesting to read it now, so I am including it here. Please don’t come after me for any mistakes, as I did not have the info then that I do now!
A lot of people are really missing the point when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it leads to a lot of attitudes that really are pissing me off.
- Yes, this disease has caused a lot of hysteria. Hysteria does not invalidate fact. People are freaking out for a reason.
- Yes, it doesn’t kill most of the people it infects. That’s what makes it dangerous.
- Yes, it often presents with flu-like symptoms. Just because it might sometimes feel like a flu does not mean it will act like the flu in terms of lethality or infectiousness.
These attitudes cause a slow response, full of denial, causing a lot of death and suffering that could have been avoided if proper measures were taken in the first place. The US government and society in general essentially denied that there was any threat to the US. Coupled with a huge funding cut to the CDC, it meant that any response to a pandemic was going to be a crappy one.
What is happening in the US is that the virus is spreading through the community unnoticed because there is no policy of actually testing people unless they require hospitalization and have severe symptoms. This means that people with mild symptoms are refused testing but can still spread the virus willy-nilly throughout their communities, eventually reaching the most vulnerable members of the community (people over 60, people with heart disease, etc).
Most people only show mild symptoms, which is also really bad. This is bad because most cases fly under the radar. The virus has shown itself to be more infectious than flu, even when one has no symptoms, but let’s assume that when the virus really takes hold it behaves similar to influenza. This year, between 34 and 49 million cases of the flu hit the US. If this virus behaves similarly and reaches, say, 40 million cases this year, its death rate implies that the number of deaths will be pretty large. So far, the death rate is around 3.4% (let’s say 2.5%, since there are many undiagnosed cases). This means that if the virus behaves similar to the flu (which has a much lower mortality rate of .1%), it has the potential to kill around a million people that
would not have died otherwise.
One of the main reasons why this pandemic will be a big deal boils down to our healthcare system and the grotesque value our society gives to work at the expense of human life. As a personal example, an insured person I talked to wanted testing done because their family member had a high fever, coughing, and shortness of breath. They have every reason to believe that it could be COVID-19 – there are cases in our county and in neighboring counties. He works in a public place. In order to get him tested, they were quoted a price of over $2500. This is after Oregon claimed that every test needed in the state would be covered, with the caveat that a doctor needs to recommend you for testing. Because testing supplies are limited, doctors are not doing this and leaving the cost on the consumer, who can’t afford it.
What’s even worse is that Americans have, on average, little to no vacation time. People who work long hours, even in public places, will not be able to take time off because workers in the US have practically no rights. Hourly workers have no way to escape this, which means many people will go to work sick. There is no social support to allow people to stay at home for more than a day or two. The only countries that have had success fighting the spread of this virus are those that took top-down control, forcing their countries into quarantine as rapidly as possibly.
This disease is going to ravage countries that don’t take it seriously, like the US. The window of opportunity we had to stop it from spreading is gone, as it is now in almost all 50 states. Hysteria is not a great reaction to anything, but people should be worried and proactively taking steps to protect themselves.