Unfortunately, I believe that COVID-19 would cause an excessive number of fatalities if allowed to spread unchecked -
and that the media is hyping this negatively. Instead of focusing on the threat & what we can do to overcome it, the majority of the media seems to be more concerned with politicizing it, which I find distasteful.
That being said...
H1N1 did not ravage through nursing homes as COVID-19 does, nor with as high a mortality in that population. Because of its long gestation period & asymptomatic carriers, it is much more contagious than the flu. Whole rooms of people have been infected because a single carrier was present with them for a short period of time. So comparisons of COVID-19 (where efforts have been made to contain it) to the flu (which was allowed to spread unchecked) are comparing apples & oranges. For all intents and purposes, regardless of its origin, this disease has the properties of a biological weapon, given its impact on the entire planet. Hopefully it does not mutate before we get a handle on it, I've seen no evidence up to this point that it has done so.
Yes, the media is now inflating the death toll... NY decided to add those "probably killed" by corona virus, in spite of the fact those additional people were not tested, and could as easily have died from non-COVID pneumonia, flu, COPD, or a heart attack. That inflation of fatalities will probably continue from this day forward, for political reasons. But regardless of that inflation,
we are losing about 1000+ people per day who were diagnosed... and that number continues to grow
, in spite of the no-contact restrictions. So those who use the present numbers to downplay the severity of the outbreak are, IMO, off base.
As
@seedcorn stated, the pandemic won't end until (a) the entire population has been exposed (herd immunity); (b) the vulnerable population has received an effective vaccine; or (c) effective treatment(s) are available to reduce or prevent loss of life.
There is some question as to how long ago COVID-19 has actually been spreading through the population... but option (a) is being prevented from happening by "stay-at-home", and is unsustainable unless/until widespread testing becomes
fully accessible. Otherwise, the disease will just resume spreading until the majority of the population has been exposed. This would allow us to restart the economy, and put people (at least temporarily) back to work - but at a greater loss of life than any pandemic in our lifetime. According to Johns Hopkins, there are over 26,000 fatalities in the U.S. as of this date; so uncontrolled, we could realistically expect a death toll well over 100,000. It saddens & angers me that to serious proponents of this proposal, many of us on this forum in our later years would be considered expendable.
The best we can hope for - and what I believe is most likely to happen - is that option (c) is able to prevent loss of life until an effective vaccine can immunize the population. We are not there yet, but several drugs have shown great promise, if they can be approved & manufactured in sufficient quantities. In the interim, the proposal to distribute & require masks of anyone in the public sphere, along with behavioral precautions, would allow many to return to work with minimal risk. It appears that mask production has been increased to the point where that may happen soon... hopefully hand sanitizer follows suit. Those measures would allow us to return to some semblance of normality.
I guess this went a little long, my apologies for the long-winded post... guess that means I haven't got it yet.
Time to turn in.
