The Elephant in the Room

It is not a tragedy when elderly people get sick and die.

If you’re like me, you know someone with no previous history of heart issues who dropped dead of a heart attack over the past year.

If you’re like me, you know someone who seemed perfectly healthy who dropped dead suddenly of a stroke over the past year.

But let’s leave that for another time.

What I want to talk about is the fact that I still don’t know a single person who has died from covid. Do you?

If you do, that person was almost certainly very old, or old AND unwell.

We are 2.5 years into the covid pandemic. Not a single true celebrity has died from covid ON THE ENTIRE PLANET. Don’t people notice?

Yes, I know about Colin Powell. At the time of his death, he was suffering from both late-stage cancer and from Parkinson’s disease. And he was 84.

Here is a list of “cultural figures the U.S. lost to COVID-19.” If you take a look you will see that those on the list are either moderately famous people who actually did not die from covid, or people who actually are not famous.

Tom Seaver is in the moderately famous category. He had been suffering from a severe sort of dementia for 7 years at the time of his death. People with Lewy body dementia usually live 5 to 8 years after diagnosis. Seaver lived 7.

Cloris Leachman is also in the moderately famous category. She died in her sleep of a stroke. At age 94.

In the not famous category are people like Nashom Wooden and Floyd Cardoz and Jennifer Arnold. I have not heard of them. Have you? And in any event, I doubt that covid is responsible for their deaths. Many people whose deaths were attributed to covid early in the pandemic were actually killed by the doctors who ventilated them to death or medicated them to death with Remdesivir.

Over 600 people have served as members of Congress since the start of the pandemic. Most of them are old (but not extremely old) men. None of them has died from covid.

Yes, I know about Ron Wright. He was being treated for lung cancer at the time of his death.

However, 33 sitting members of Congress died from causes other than covid during just the first 1.5 years of the pandemic.

My father was very healthy until he got kidney cancer in his early seventies. He died at age 74. It is sad, particularly for me and others who knew him. But it is not a tragedy.

Is there a point where the majority of people realize that it is is not a tragedy when people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties get sick and die?

Is there a point where the majority of people realize that covid is not a significant public health problem?

Is there a point where the majority of people realize that attempting to avoid a ubiquitous respiratory virus that poses little to no risk of death to them is not only futile but insane?

Is there a point where the majority of people realize that re-organizing society in order to “control” such a virus is not only futile and insane, but inhuman?