We can’t underestimate the threat of COVID-19
To the Times:
There are those of us in the U.S. who are questioning the true seriousness of the COVID-19 infections and debating whether the governments around the world and the press over-reacted and caused undue financial suffering with all the lock downs, social distancing and cancellation of public gatherings since March 2020.
In an effort to explain just how serious a threat COVID-19 has been to humanity I compare it to the seasonal influenza. The average infection rate for influenza in the U.S. is in the mid 30 million infection range. That is even after we distribute 200 million flu vaccines. Depending on the accuracy of the flu projection for vaccine we accept that 20 million flu cases a year is a great result while poor results are in years when cases go over 40 million. Death rates from influenza range from the low 20,000 to bad years when they exceed 60,000 deaths.The last influenza season was virtually eliminated due to vaccines, mask wearing, social distancing and elimination of public gatherings. Less than 2,000 cases were reported! Down from 38 million the year before.
That proves that all the restrictive measures were extremely effective in almost the complete elimination of a disease that we see millions of cases every year!Those same measures were implemented because of COVID-19 but the COVID virus was so contagious that even with these extreme measures it managed to spread to 33 million Americans and kill 600,000 of us!Even with all the restrictions we were unable to stop Covid 19 until an effective series of vaccines were introduced and distributed. What can we conclude from this comparison? First, that COVID-19 is a much more contagious virus than influenza and because it is much more contagious it is also much more deadly. The death rate from influenza is 0.1% while the death rate from COVID-19 is 0.5%. Five times higher!
Second, that if the government had simply allowed the virus to run it’s course, until a vaccine was found (as many advocated), that the infection rate would have been 5-10 times higher along with the death rate.
Third, that a higher infection rate would create more virus mutations and the more mutations the more likely a variant would become immunization immune and the process of infection would start all over again.As painful and difficult as the last year has been the numbers tell us that the actions taken were appropriate and saved millions. In hindsight, stronger, more universal actions in all 50 states and by the federal government, would have prevented more infections and more deaths.