I do not mean to make light of the pandemic or of the death of one single person, but how one reacts to news depends on how it is presented.
Tonight, on the eve of his inauguration, President-elect and Mrs. Biden and others participated in a brief COVID memorial at the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington to recognize and remember the 400,000 Americans whose deaths have been attributed to the disease. It was televised.
Four hundred thousand seems like a very large number -- and compared to the 16,650 automobile fatalities in the U.S. in 2020, it is. (Side note: With 25,000 members of the National Guard in Washington to protect the incoming administration's inauguration activities, there are more than enough of them to have formed a living memorial composed solely of National Guard members to recognize and remember the Americans who perished in automobile accidents in 2020. I'm just saying.)
It's all in how you look at it.
The number of Americans who have died to date due to the COVID pandemic is a very small segment of the overall U.S. population, just 0.12 per cent of our current U.S. population of 330 million. By way of comparison, between 0.48 per cent and 0.81 per cent (between 500,000 and 850,000 out of a U.S. population of 105 million) died during the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.
Going by the raw numbers, this pandemic could soon be as bad as the earlier one, but looking at the percentage of population it is nowhere near as bad.
Sadly for all those for whom the numbers have become names it is every bit as bad. We are a very subjective species.
ReplyDeleteYou lot are amateurs. Our NHS has again beaten the world as yesterday we were top of the deaths/capita league.
ReplyDeleteI agree with EC. Although it is a small proportion, and although many of them would have had "underlying health conditions", and although more people are being born in the world than dying, a big proportion of those who have died might otherwise have lived for another five or ten years and enriched the lives of those around them.
ReplyDeleteAny death impacts the loved ones of that person. If I had lost a close person to COVID-19 I would not care about statistics and percentages. What would be important to me is my loss and pain. We wish to diminish the numbers of those affected.
ReplyDeleteAny loss of life is tragic, and it is even more so when many of those deaths could have been avoided if we had had competent leadership.
ReplyDeleteThis post did not appear to me to address your comment: "I will reply to both Graham and Snowbrush in my next post."
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the deaths, I wonder how many Americans who contracted the virus will suffer from impaired health in the years ahead.
ReplyDelete