03/23/2020
Some Thoughts on Covid-19
In the past ten days, the number of COVID cases outside of China (where the virus originated – a country which has done a tremendous job of containment and has, in recent days, reported zero new cases) have risen dramatically from 64,659 on March 13th to 293,499 cases today. The United States has seen an increase from 2,247 on the 13th to 41,631 today, an 1850% increase!
We are reporting new daily infections on the order of 9,000/day, now, whereas China is down to reporting under 50 new cases per day.
China, the first country to experience the disease, has totaled 81,000 infections and 3,270 fatalities. This is a morbidity rate of 4% versus Italy’s fatality rate of 9.5% (~6,000 deaths and 63,000 cases). China has a population of 1.435B, which means the virus took only .0002% of its population. But Italy’s population is a scant 60.5M, meaning it has lost .01% of its population in the past few months.
The CDC reports that in the United States, automobiles accounted for 37,461 deaths in 2016. By far, however, our leading cause of death is heart disease, which in 2017 accounted for nearly a quarter (23%) of all deaths – a whopping 647,457. Pneumonia thinned our numbers by 20,000 or .0061%. What differentiates COVID, of course, is that it is transmissible, unlike a heart attack.
China appears – fingers crossed – to have its COVID infections in hand. We shall see. I would not at all be surprised if a new outbreak causes another round of lockdowns and quarantines in that country. Italy is wishing it had acted sooner, and more decisively; their encounter with the disease may last much longer.
If we consider China as a best case scenario, 655 people (.0002% of our population) will die in the United States. We already have 517 deaths, so this appears unlikely. Italy’s death rate puts us at 32,720 deaths, and Italy’s story is yet far from over. Thirty-three thousand deaths would be equivalent to our losses in the Korean war. Although they were young men and our at-risk population for COVID has already lived to celebrate their grandchildren.
So we see that our evaluation of COVID is not so straight forward as a simple numbers exercise. I believe many people are reacting strongly to the unknown. This is not a war. This is not a heart attack. This is invisible and our own family members may be the ones to give it to us. And we, in turn, may not even know that we are infected when we pass it on to our parents. But our parents, our grandparents, they were old anyway. “It is only those with underlying health problems,” is a common refrain I am hearing. Honestly, I have no idea what it would mean to me to be old, enfeebled, and dying from COVID. Would I feel robbed of what could have been two or three more years with my grandchildren? Or is this a “valid” natural cause of death, and could I pass peacefully from this world? My ninety-three-year-old grandmother has, many times, said she is ready to die when her time comes. But to die because my lungs turned to bricks and I suffocated, alone in my hospital bed where my family was not allowed into the room for fear of contamination… I doubt that is how she wants to go.
Let’s go back to heart disease. This one’s preventable, people. Even in the midst of the Coronavirus Crackdown, restaurants are allowed to stay open and provide curb-side service as part of the Essential economy. Our president is steering people towards fast food, lauding the heroic efforts of Wendy’s, Burger King, and McDonalds. People are lining up to purchase their heart attacks, hunkering in their homes to consume their artery-clogging fries and waist-expanding sodas.
Do I hit too close to home with that one? Is it easier for us to “shelter in place” and practice “social distancing” than to change our dietary habits? Easier than quitting smoking, which accounts for 480,000 deaths annually (2014 US Dept. Health and Human Services)? But of course, this is America, and I’ll smoke if I want to. I’ll eat what I want to. I wouldn’t even disagree that you have a right to, as long as I am not paying for your healthcare.
Perhaps I digress, but really all of this is part of what we are thinking in the backs of our minds when we ask ourselves, “How do I evaluate the Corona Virus and what it means to me, my family, and my country?” In the United States we do not like to see innocent people die. People who make stupid decisions, we feel differently about.
