The first U.S. case of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was identified when a 35 year old man in Snohomish County, Washington, was admitted to hospital on 19 January 2020, 400 days ago today. On this, the 400th day since that moment, the US surpassed 500,000 deaths from coronavirus, which equates to a rate of about one death every minute and 9 seconds. To put this another way, we have had the equivalent of 3 Boeing 747s crashing EVERY single day for the last 400 days. The number of US military casualties in World War 2 was just over 400,000.
The virus has made me mad and sad. Today CNN’s Brianna Keilar welled up as she presented the personal stories of bereavement as a result the pandemic. I did the same thing as I watched along with her. I don’t like bad news. I watch super hero movies rather than dramas because everything works out in a super hero movie – usually. The goodies win, and the baddies lose, and if any loss is too much for me in the movie I remind myself they are only acting.
Today I had to watch. Today I needed to watch. I don’t want to get numb to the misery, because when I do that I feel I lose some of my humanity. I cried at the very same point as Brianna Keilar, when hearing an inconsolable brother – Michael Alvilez – speak through his torment about his sister giving birth then immediately having a tube inserted into her throat. She died without ever holding her child. And now I’m crying again.
The coronavirus has made me incredibly sad, but it has also made me angry, at us. For almost all of the way through we have been told what to do, and pretty consistently:
- Wear a mask
- Wash your hands
- Socially distance
We have been collectively incapable of following the guidelines, we granted ourselves exceptions and then found a way to justify them to ourselves. We have chosen to believe what we wanted to believe. If we had been less selfish, more compassionate, and more evolved we would still have suffered bereavement, just not on this scale.
We were given multiple warnings by the data, but we’ve acted like those sports personalities we laugh at, when they celebrate victory too early, just before crossing the finish line, and they end up losing as a result.
- On April 9, 2020 the cases in the US were at 34,699 before falling back to 19,130 on June 14
- On July 24, 2020 the cases in the US were at 73,525 before falling back to 25,166 on September 7
- On November 27, 2020 the cases in the US were at 205,866 before briefly falling, only to rise to 251,223 on December 18 before briefly falling, only to rise to 300,619 January 8, 2021.
The cases are falling now, just as the inoculations begin. It feels as though the vaccine is saving us not so much from the virus as it’s saving us from ourselves. We didn’t work hard enough to change ourselves, and it was all so much easier to ‘science’ our way out of the problem… unless it was us who lost a loved one. If we can’t adapt our behavior in response to a global pandemic, when our very lives, and those we love are on the line, then do we still stand a chance addressing climate change?
