If we listen to news broadcasts daily, especially those from CNN, CBS, ABS, NBC, and MSNBC, we are bombarded with the horrible situation in which we find ourselves. Around two thousand have died and even more are ill and we are all on the verge of death from the Coronavirus we are told. Nancy Pelosi, whose attempt to push a wish list of Democratic wants held up the bipartisan Relief bill for a week, now chides President Trump for “fiddling” instead of doing something to stop the virus. She obviously ignores the fact that his ban on travel from China, Europe and other infected areas, “saved thousands of American lives” according to Dr. Fauci, but were derided as racist and xenophobic by Democrats. Katherine Stewart of the New York Times blamed the spread of the virus on Evangelicals because we according to her don’t believe in science. (This from the side that ignores that a fetus with a beating heart is a live baby and argues that there are multiple genders and we can “choose” whatever gender we want!) Now we are told that the U.S. has more cases than any other country, no doubt all the President’s fault and not the fault of those officials in New York City who encouraged continued mass gatherings. But let’s put that last charge in perspective using Italy as an example:
The population of Italy is a little over 60,000,000. The population of the United States is over 330,000,000.
The number of cases of Coronavirus in Italy makes up .0016281 % of their population.
The number of cases of Coronavirus in the U.S. makes up .000398% of our population
The number of deaths in Italy makes up .000166% of their population
The number of deaths in the U.S. currently makes up .00000606% of our population, half of the deaths in New York City where as late as early February, the Head of the Board of Health was encouraging New Yorkers to live normally, going out to eat, to clubs, riding buses and the subway, ignoring the possibility of spreading the virus in crowded areas.
Do we have the most cases? Perhaps. (Advisors to the British Prime Minister have told him that the number of reported cases and deaths in China could be from 15 to 40 times greater than they are admitting!). But even if our number of cases surpassed that of every country in the world except China whose numbers we cannot really know, the percentage of cases and deaths is lower because our population is so much greater.
I am not attempting to minimize the deaths or the danger to those who are older (into which category my husband and I fall) or immune compromised because of underlying illnesses. Even younger people can become very ill from this disease. However, the statistics that the media reports are often misleading, and deliberately so, just as many Democrat leaders fault the President for doing more to combat this virus than President Obama ever did to combat Ebola or H1N1 which caused 12,469 deaths in the U.S.
Most cases are occurring in large metropolitan areas like New York City and New Orleans which both went ahead with parades and celebrations. Jake Tapper recently cornered Mayor de Blasio of New York City for telling New Yorkers as late as March 13 to ignore the virus and go about their daily routines as they normally would. Short-sightedness on the part of some local governments are exacerbating the problem in their locales. Still, how bad is it?
For the majority of us, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to us. Stores and businesses are closed. Employees are temporarily laid off. We are told to stay at home where parents are struggling to entertain children since the schools are closed. We can’t go to church. We go to restaurants for curbside pick-up or call in for delivery. We go to the pharmacy or to Walmart or the grocery store. Many walk in the parks, but we are careful to keep our social distancing. People are using up their savings. Toilet paper is hard to find and flies off the shelves as soon as a new shipment of it comes into a store. Other things disappear and then are restocked, but you cannot be sure you will find what you need when you go to the store.
Many of us are frightened. The rest of us are stoic. We wait for it all to pass.
Yet, Americans are doing what Americans do best. My Pillow and at least one expensive shirt company are keeping on their employees and retooling to produce masks for doctors, nurses, and first responders. Distilleries from the giants like Anheuser-Busch to local craft breweries have turned to making hand sanitizer, often donating them freely to their communities and especially to first responders. At least seven U.S. pharmaceutical companies are producing the malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine which, used with azithromycin, has already saved countless lives in France and in New York, and which is being used in India as a preventative to catching the virus. Most patients given this drug go from having symptons to testing negative for the virus in 5-6 days. Millions of doses of that medicine will be available by mid-April, enough to cure 46,000,000 virus victims. Bayer, Novartis, and Teva Pharm who have the medicine on hand, are donating several million doses now.
So there is hope on the horizon. But still we must deal with the problems today. So let’s put those problems in perspective also. Following WWI, soldiers returned from war carrying with them the Spanish Flu which ravaged the country from September of 1918 to January of 1920, killing 675,000 Americans, including both my great uncle and his wife. Nearly every family had a relative touched by the disease and the country went under much the same conditions as we are undergoing now with businesses closed and social distancing promoted. But most people survived.
When the depression and drought hit in the 1930s, the acres of grasslands that had been plowed into wheat fields saw the crops dry up and die, leaving the southern plains victim to strong winds. The dust bowl was created, killing hundreds who breathed the dusty air. The air was so filled with static electricity that shaking hands with someone could create enough electricity to put both people on the ground. Sixteen thousand were forced to abandon their farms and move to California, carrying their meager belongings in their vehicles, as did the family in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Many others moved to neighboring states not affected by the dust. But most stayed to wait out the dust bowl, watching what few crops remained eaten by scores of grasshoppers and jackrabbits. But most people survived.
In the 1940s, Nazi Germany turned the lives of Europeans into a living hell. The Blitzkrieg hit countries like Poland with devastation they could not have imagined. The Poles sent their horse-mounted cavalry against the German tanks because that was all that they had. Horses and men alike were slaughtered. Homes were bombed. In cities German soldiers, or Russian soldiers in the east of the country, roamed the streets with machine guns, shooting those attempting to protect their homeland. Resisters were shot or, later, carried off to concentration camps along with Jews and gypsies. In London the Blitz reduced much of the city to rubble and sent the people running for the Underground (subway) tunnels daily as the German planes strafed and bombed. Children were put on trains and sent from London into the countryside to live with strangers there until the war was over and it was safe for them to return to their parents. There was little to eat. Young men were off to fight and only the older men were left to conduct women to the air raid shelters and to prevent crime. Most no longer had a home to live in. Younger women’s husbands were off fighting and their children were living with strangers, leaving them alone to do what they could to fight for Great Britain. And most survived.
There are no bombs falling on us. Our children are at home. Our husbands are with us. No one is shooting at our houses. Most of us have food to eat, games to play, computers, cell phones, televisions to entertain us. We are warm and comfortable. How bad is it, really?