The Many Faces of COVID19
Part 1 of a 7 part series…
We are well into life with COVID19. What have we learned? Well I would like to share what I have learned and expound on my personal thoughts on this, confusing at times, subject. This may be long as I have so much to talk about I believe to be vitally important. So I am going to simply jump right in.
1) It is a serious life-threatening disease. I wrote about this at great length early on in one of my newsletters and I still hold it to be true today. I am, however, more educated about the subject today and want to share a few updated thoughts. Early on I was very much on board with the idea of separation/isolation in order to slow the spread to give hospitals across the nation a chance to ‘catch up’ to the reality that this disease had the potential to add a great strain to the system. We saw it in places like New York City and Northern Italy. Some of the stories were terrifying and I certainly wanted to be agreeable to the idea of giving ourselves a chance to get on the front foot.
I still very much believe it is a life-threatening disease but I do have serious concerns as to the prolonged response that is damaging our way of life. We know now that this serious life-threatening disease is far less threatening to the majority of the population than we initially thought. In fact, I read a fascinating article by a researcher/professor/doctor at Stanford University (where hundreds of other researchers agreed to sign in agreement) state that the evidence simply does not point to large percentage rates of death due to COVID19. In fact, the actual percentages are really quite low. I am not throwing in my towel completely with this article but the basis of it has to do with true numbers of people who have contracted the disease versus those who actually have a test done.
One of the many problems of counting actual numbers is the reality of people avoiding tests either by accident or even on purpose. In Wyoming the fine for being ‘caught’ in public having tested positive for COVID19 or even while waiting for results from a recent test is $100,000.00. I happen to disagree with this tactic but my point is not whether this idea is right or wrong but rather it makes sense that people would not want to get tested. In California and Nevada entire companies are shut down if/when workers test positive. The fact is that the vast vast majority of people have mild, moderate or no symptoms. Does it make sense that they get tested? Most people obviously say ‘no’ to this. That is why experts throughout the pandemic have estimated that only 1 in 5 get tested all the way up to 1 in 25. I don’t know the actual numbers but some ‘experts’ are using scare tactics to predict a nightmare coming up while others use the same exact ‘actual’ numbers to say it is not nearly as bad as we have been led to believe.
One thing I do know and believe is for a certain group of people this is a deadly disease and its pathways of attack are serious. It simply appears that this group of people is much much smaller than originally thought. Another thing I know is that for some lower or non-risk groups the disease can have a devastating long term effect on them. I am exceedingly sad and compassionate for those people as well. But, is shutting down the country wise for what turns out to be an extremely small number of people percentage wise? I have personally been affected by losing people so I do have a certain amount of experience on the loss and grief side of this thing so my thoughts are not without connection to the loss side of this disease.
Also, I want to mention there is a condition known as MIS-C (multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children) that can be devastating for a child. There are numerous stories of this condition cropping up around the world and it is thought to be caused by COVID19. It is indeed a tragedy but again the actual numbers are very low. We might argue that one child affected is too much or one at risk person who dies from COVID is too much but if we were honest with ourselves we would have to widen the scope of that question to nearly every area of life.