Corona Virus Member Discussion

[Lynn]

Originally Posted by Lee Stewart

Lynn:

It is not fair to make any comparisons to other stats. And BTW, you picked a miniscule one. How about: Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. And they still sell cigarettes right.

Stop looking at the mortality rate and concentrate on the rate of those people going into the hospital and those going into ICU. If CV-19 overwhelms our health care system, what about all the other people who need to be hospitalized or placed in ICU? Are doctors going to have to choose who lives and who dies?

Having your lifestyle disrupted so abruptly sucks. I understand that. It sucks for all of us. But it's the price we have to pay to get this pandemic stopped in it's tracks right away. We do not want a repeat of the 1918 Spanish Flu. 675,000 Americans died and we had a population that was more than 3X smaller than it is today. If CV-19 duplicated the Spanish Flu we would see well over 2 million people die here in the US.

It's important not to keep asking "when are we getting there?" This is a 1000 mile trip and we just passed mile marker 50.

Lee:
First off, I don't know that I disagree with any fact you have stated. Secondly, I did not say anything about mortality rates related to COVID-19. And you are correct, I specifically stated that I was only going to mention ONE (in all caps) comparison; and that one is miniscule. I figured the post was long enough without trying to list EVERYTHING we trade for human life and health. There is no direct comparison. I was siimply stating that as a society, we make trade offs for human life and health every day. We just don't THINK about it every day. And we don't want to discuss it, because we don't want to feel that cold. I fully agree with you about cigarettes; but that is a whole other debate for another time.

I am just saying we need to balance things. Let's say you are correct, and we are only 1/20th into this, with nothing to look forward to for another 19 months (apologize if you had a different period of time targeted for your 50 mile mark... but I really don't know) but more of shutting everything down until the whole country is on lock down. Personally, I believe 19 months of lockdown will create more havoc than the havoc it prevented.

I don't have a crystal ball. Is Phil correct when he says it all blows over in 60 days? I don't know. Are you correct in stating we are only 1/20th of the way through? I don't know. You guys both have a right to your opinions. I hope and pray Phil is closer to the mark than you. Just because I WANT it to work out that way doesn't mean it will.