Covid 19 has presented government with a plethora of different challenges, a principal one being how to track and determine real cases of this virus.

Yesterday news broke of a 17 year old boy in LA County who had died. The media jumped on the case as a death attributed to Covid 19 but that information has now been placed on hold seeing that the teen suffered from a number of complications prior to being infected. The US mortality rate for those infected is hovering around 1.4-1.5% (or 0.5-0.6%) more than the yearly viral influenza.

This season’s Flu (A and B )have been especially lethal with somewhere between 23,000 and 59,000 deaths – a noticeably large range given the difficulty in tracking this “regular” disease, let alone a more highly contagious one (by means of transfer) like Covid 19. Some 38M Americans have had the flu this season (ranging back to Nov) and 390,000 required hospitalization. Without getting into the fallacy of making a comparison between the two viruses, the numbers beg the question about whether we will ever be able to accurately track Covid 19’s spread AND death rate, given the difficulty of tracking yearly influenza rates.

Doctors have admitted many could have had the virus and merely wrote off it’s mild symptoms as the flu or a cold, never truly addressing it. It is reported that Italy among other have simply written off most elderly deaths as Covid 19 related by regional association even without accurate tracking and testing given.

There is a great possibility that the death rate is even lower than the current 1.4 or 1.5% – while keeping in mind that it is believed the issue has yet to peak. So now the difficult question must be had and answered – with difficulty tracking the accuracy of the contagion’s infection rate, and issues with the death rate – when do we return to normal?

We obviously cannot live like shut-ins forever. We will eventually have to break out of this self-isolating routine – so where is that red line? Cuomo said all the measure taken in NY are worth it if one life is saved. Great sentiment but nothing more. It’s illogical and unreasonable thinking.

This question of when and how to return to norm is being ignored and only being brought forward by those on the Right. The Left is happy keeping people living out of the government’s hands – we know this. So they pass the buck and allow the Right to take the heat. The Left seems content with virtue signal type sentiment that avoids facing the reality that we as a nation cannot go on living like this. This isn’t about sacrificing old people over this nameless and faceless idea of an economy. It’s about returning people to their livelihoods which allow them to live fruitfully and raise families. We all know people out of work, laid off, furloughed and struggling to run their businesses (many of which they invested with their life savings). So for Leftists to simply rest on their laurels and say those of us on the Right just want to save the economy – no – we want to save the livelihood of Americans. Sacrificing millions of people’s livelihood to potentially save one life is not logical, Mr. Cuomo, even when you paint it as a noble platitude.

I don’t have all the answers. The answer no doubt must be measured and carefully procured. While Doctors and experts knowledge and potifications are important, they don’t run cities or nations. Their expertise, while appreciated greatly, doesn’t denote wisdom. And a wise decision is what is ultimately needed here, before we start anew. When we return to normal, we need to be careful not to reignite the fire of the contagion as it appears Honk Kong may have done. And if the ultimate goal (sans a cure) is to “flatten the curve,” we need to ultimately understand that this is something we’ll all have to live with.

SOURCES:

• NYT – https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/us/california-coronavirus-death-child.html (Left lean)
• NPR https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/23/820435849/fact-check-trump-says-50-000-could-die-from-flu-so-far-its-half-that (Left lean)
•Ncov2019 https://ncov2019.live/data
•NYP https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/coronavirus-in-ny-cuomo-orders-lockdown-shuts-down-non-essential-businesses/ (Right lean)
•CNN https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/23/asia/hong-kong-coronavirus-quarantine-intl-hnk/index.html (Left bias)