700,000 (The Coronavirus Diaries, Part XX)
Early this October, the media reported that 700,000 people have died in the United States due to the coronavirus pandemic. That's more people than lived in North Dakota back in the 2000 census, which was the last time I was marked down there instead of Ohio. Depending on which population number you pick for the United States, that means somewhere around 1 in every 475 people has died from the pandemic. The first 600,000 or so of those were before there was a vaccine.
I basically knew none of these 700,000 people. Even though a staggering five of our wedding guests have died in the last 14 months (two in the last three weeks), none of them were due to covid. My friend Tony's father died last year of covid (he had multiple comorbidities) but I had only met him once or twice. That's as close as I get.
Heck, while I know quite a few people who got a positive test and many more who were forced to quarantine due to an exposure, I can count on both hands the number of people I personally know who actually displayed symptoms, or at least that have mentioned it publicly. If I count people I don't know but who M does (e.g., the husband of one of her friends who I met once at a party), the number goes up quite a bit, but still isn't very high. I'm obviously not complaining about this.
None of this is terribly surprising, given that the vast majority of my friends work white collar jobs and were able to work from home for a substantial length of time or are still working from home now. My friends who are teachers and professors are mostly in places that have mask mandates for schools. Most of my friends are younger and were out of the high risk zone of old age, and the older ones seem to have taken it seriously. Most of the people I know from North Dakota (now a deep red state in a time when that unfortunately correlates highly with disregard for both vaccines and masks) long ago left for other places that tend to take it more seriously.
It also certainly helps that the vast majority of my friends got vaccinated, as well as most of their 12+ children. I only know of one friend who hasn't, which is less than the two people I know whose vaccinations didn't have any impact on antibody counts because of long term medications they are forced to take.
Despite all these obvious reasons, it still seems very strange to me that with as many people as I know, I have heard of more anti-vax conservative radio hosts who died of covid (four as of this moment) than people I actually know who died of covid. Again, I'm not complaining about this, but it's kind of weird.
Most historical pandemics killed everyone, since people rarely understood how the disease was transmitted and there wasn't much in the way of effective treatments. For some pandemics I understand that those who could afford to leave the location experiencing the plague (e.g., usually the rich) survived, but beyond that everyone was in the same boat. Now we have a massive worldwide pandemic that is killing people along a myriad of divisions - type of job (which of course correlates highly with income and to large extent racial background), political leanings (which correlates to geography) and age. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
I basically knew none of these 700,000 people. Even though a staggering five of our wedding guests have died in the last 14 months (two in the last three weeks), none of them were due to covid. My friend Tony's father died last year of covid (he had multiple comorbidities) but I had only met him once or twice. That's as close as I get.
Heck, while I know quite a few people who got a positive test and many more who were forced to quarantine due to an exposure, I can count on both hands the number of people I personally know who actually displayed symptoms, or at least that have mentioned it publicly. If I count people I don't know but who M does (e.g., the husband of one of her friends who I met once at a party), the number goes up quite a bit, but still isn't very high. I'm obviously not complaining about this.
None of this is terribly surprising, given that the vast majority of my friends work white collar jobs and were able to work from home for a substantial length of time or are still working from home now. My friends who are teachers and professors are mostly in places that have mask mandates for schools. Most of my friends are younger and were out of the high risk zone of old age, and the older ones seem to have taken it seriously. Most of the people I know from North Dakota (now a deep red state in a time when that unfortunately correlates highly with disregard for both vaccines and masks) long ago left for other places that tend to take it more seriously.
It also certainly helps that the vast majority of my friends got vaccinated, as well as most of their 12+ children. I only know of one friend who hasn't, which is less than the two people I know whose vaccinations didn't have any impact on antibody counts because of long term medications they are forced to take.
Despite all these obvious reasons, it still seems very strange to me that with as many people as I know, I have heard of more anti-vax conservative radio hosts who died of covid (four as of this moment) than people I actually know who died of covid. Again, I'm not complaining about this, but it's kind of weird.
Most historical pandemics killed everyone, since people rarely understood how the disease was transmitted and there wasn't much in the way of effective treatments. For some pandemics I understand that those who could afford to leave the location experiencing the plague (e.g., usually the rich) survived, but beyond that everyone was in the same boat. Now we have a massive worldwide pandemic that is killing people along a myriad of divisions - type of job (which of course correlates highly with income and to large extent racial background), political leanings (which correlates to geography) and age. Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!