Now I was promised something pretty important.
I was told, in no uncertain terms, mind you, that the coronavirus pandemic would be over come November 4th. Now here we are, over a week later, and it seems that, if anything, the pandemic has gotten worse.
Virtually every day we’re setting new records for the number of infections and, on the current trajectory, we’ll be hitting 200,000 daily infections soon. This is horrendous. While mortality from the virus has declined with new treatments, one to two percent of those people are going to die. As of this writing there are 150,526 cases today and so that means somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 of those people are going today. And that’s just today.
To put that in perspective, in an average year about 7,700 people will die in the United States each day from all causes. Even at the low end we’re talking about a 20% increase in the number of people who are dying.
As a percentage of the population we’re almost a quarter of the way to the number of deaths we sustained in World War II. So next time you think that this is a hassle or that you don’t have to wear a mask or social distance, take a moment to think about what we are up against and what we have to lose.