How many deaths were there yesterday from covid-19? That sounds a bit impersonal, so let's rephrase it. How many people died yesterday from covid-19? We're not talking about "deaths." Deaths of what? We're talking about people here. The number of people who died yesterday who probably would not have died otherwise. People. The answer to the initial questions? 3,100 (one source said 2,777, but I'm going with the 3,100). Three thousand one hundred people who were alive on Tuesday are not around today, Thursday. That's frightening. Perhaps more frightening is that that number of deaths, no, that number of people dying, is the most ever. More than died on any one day when we watched the novel coronavirus lay waste in a way to New York City. More than died on any one day back when taking the coronavirus seriously was not that difficult, when every story on the front page was virus-related, when the numbers seemed to mean something.
Other records were set in terms of the number of new covid-19 cases, no, the number of people with covid-19. Yesterday, 205,000 people were diagnosed with covid-19. And there were more than 100,000 hospitalizations. But let's get personal again. More than 100,000 people were admitted to a hospital yesterday due to covid-19 symptoms. People.
I wonder if all this would be taken more seriously if all the stats were expressed in terms of the number of people affected. I can hope.
As for people, one person in the house, The Professor, learned today that someone with whom he spoke for less than 15 minutes, both masked, and more than six feet apart on Tuesday has tested positive. The local university says the exposure was so little that The Professor really wasn't exposed. Really, local university? Really? The Professor and I are negotiating quarantine principles, since the university said he didn't really need to quarantine given that he was not really exposed. (They at least will send him a test kit.)
More than you wanted to know possibly. Definitely more than I wanted to learn today.
1 comment:
Oh my. I hope the test kit arrives quickly, followed by quick results. Damn.
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