Numbers. Don't we LOVE numbers!
Www.worldometer.info (where
@seedcorn 's chart came from), now has coronavirus deaths (in the USA) at 88,000. As of May 15, the CDC has the number at just over 60,000. Does anyone really know? People get numbers, play with them to develop statistics that suit their on agenda, and those with a similar agenda propagate them.
The worldometer chart offers some interesting numbers which could be meaningless or downright confusing. Communicable disease deaths (over 3 million)....isn't Covid 19 a communicable disease? Seasonal flu? HIV? Were these lumped into the "communicable disease" category?
Covid 19 is definitely a serious infection in its own right, and one that should be treated with respect, but what does it really DO? Look at the worldometer chart again. Except for traumatic deaths (childbirth, traffic accidents, suicides) how many of these categories are "standalones"? Most are "contributing factors". Alcohol (except for rare instances of alcohol poisoning by over ingesting) isn't a cause of death. It may be a causative factor in other illnesses, but not a cause, per se. Likewise, tobacco use. Contributes to, or causes many other death inducing illnesses. But doesn't kill in its own right.
If a cigarette smoking, heavy drinking, obese person with hypertension, diabetes, impaired lung function person contracts Covid 19 and succumbs, what did they die from?
I will avoid adding to the "numbers". Look it up for yourself. But what age groups are most prone to dying from (supposedly) Covid 19? Nursing home (assisted living, etc...call them what you will) residents are high on the list of people passing from this disease. Really? If one is a nursing home resident, you are probably teetering on the edge already. Nobody goes there because they're bored living in their own home. A sudden onset of hangnail could push them over the edge (silly comparison, but you get the idea).
Let's face it. Older people are more prone to developing illnesses, which cumulatively make us more likely to succumb than younger people. It's called life. It happens. We die.
If this were the plague, you catch it (9 or 90) you die, then panic. But just another infection that, combined with the myriad vagaries of living, contribute to our end of life? Panic? I don't think so, Tim.
It's life. Live it. Death? Gonna happen anyhow, don't run from it.
As Shakespeare said: "A coward dies a thousands times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."