The Plague
If COVID-19 had a 10% fatality rate, killing virtually one in ten people that encountered it, you wouldn’t have to INSIST on ANY behavior changes in me! I’d barricade myself in my home, never leave, have groceries delivered (contactless, of course), and purposely not encounter another human. If my wife had a single symptom, we’d be sleeping and living in different, non-intersecting parts of our house. If dogs could spread it, mine would live outside (quite the departure from normal). Paper masks? Please. I’d have hazmat gear to beat the band! And anything anyone else touched would be completely disinfected before I ever touched it. I would become even more of a hermit than I am now! Doors stay locked, all contact with anyone else would be via telephone or internet. I simply wouldn’t risk it, if the survival rate was that poor.
There would be a new government position added: dead body collectors. It would be a necessary evil position, trying to keep the dead from infecting the living. And that collection process would be a 24-hour a day process, as would the operation of the new crematoriums. Think of how horrible it would be if one-tenth of your neighbors just ceased to live! To put it in perspective, 3.8 MILLION Texans alone would’ve passed away by now! The nationwide death total would be over 33 MILLION! And likely the largest, most immediate impact would be the complete decimation of all of our healthcare workers, doctors, and first responders of all kinds.
Resume schools? No chance! I simply wouldn’t allow anyone I had influence over to attend any function of crowding that had that high of a mortality rate! I would try to convince all of my friends to isolate themselves from others by any means and all methods necessary. There would be no action that would be considered ‘overboard’. Paranoia would be completely justified.
I wouldn’t trust the ‘all clear’ from government at all—I’d wait until everyone else mingled without me, just to test the safety of it all! Y’all go ahead! I’ll just sit here for a few months, see how it works out for you, before I even think of leaving my cocoon!
But you know what convinced me this is not needed, and that reality was quite a bit less serious than the hype? The actions of Congress. They are mostly older, fairly sedentary folks, yet NONE of them died, in spite of mask-less, close contact with everyone in their circles. If this was as bad as advertised, they would be 100% self-isolating, with enforced distancing between them and virtually everyone. They have the means (our tax dollars) to spare no expense in modifying their environment as needed. They would live on ZOOM, TEAMS, or some other method of distance-enforcing conference calling. They wouldn’t show up in their offices EVER! They would self-isolate as much as physically possible. And they still would lose about 50 of their members to this terrible plague. Instead, they were like the Newsoms, Lightfoots, and Pelosis–we’ll do whatever we want, completely contrary to the edicts we’ve declared for the ‘little people’.
Note that not one word of the above belittles or demeans those that actually died from COVID or COVID-induced symptoms. The loss of life of loved ones during the last year has been devastating to so many families. And to those that got severely ill, some with symptoms and after-affects that linger for MONTHS, your stories are tragic, and you all have all of the sympathy I can muster.
