Watching news stories about all these holiday travelers flocking to the airports is a ghoulish experience. Cases and deaths are going to skyrocket – and we’re already at 3,000 deaths almost every day, more each day than the deaths on 9/11. A couple months back, I wrote that I think it’s hard to imagine that doctors’ concerns of up 400,000 deaths by the Inauguration won’t come to pass. As we're now into January, with the Inauguration around the corner, that reality becomes a near certainty. But with additional caveats.
We’re already at 362,123 deaths. There are 16 days left. We reached 4,000 deaths just the other day. But let's be conservative, let's say deaths actually drop to “just” 2,500 a day. That would bring us to 402,000 deaths! So, when you consider that we’re now often passing 3,000 a day – and that the Christmas/New Years spike will worsen things -- even this ghoulish total would be less than what's likely to come. But even if some Christmas miracle happens and nothing increases because of holiday travel, and it even drops to 2,000 death a day…we will still be at 394,000. And that’s the best case scenario. The thing is...it's not like COVID-19 deaths will suddenly stop on January 20, 2021, when Joe Biden is inaugurated president. These mass deaths will continue for a long time. Even when the numbers plummet to "merely" 1,000 deaths a day -- which, in perspective, almost seems like a "blessing: these days -- , that means we'll keep adding 30,000 COVID deaths in a month. Once upon a time, 30,000 deaths for the year was what we might expect from the flu -- and that's without wearing masks, social distancing, sheltering at home and closing businesses. This would be an "almost-comforting" 30,000 more deaths on top of the horrifying cumulative number that will already exist at the time. So, Trump once upon a time said he is a “war time president” against the coronavirus. Well, he lost the war. He’s the first “war time president” I know of who went AWOL. If Trump had been a war time president in WWII…then today wir alle deutsch sprechen. The good news is that there are already two vaccines are have been approved and are being distributed, with a third on the near horizon! The bad news is that the Trump administration insisted that it's goal was to have 20,000 Americans vaccinated by the end of the year -- and their incompetence was, not shockingly, so vast that they only made about 2,500. The good news is that when the Biden Team comes in, they not only have actual experts in charge, but people who actually care. Yes, it's great and remarkable that we have two vaccines already approved and being distributed. It's just that I’m appalled by the general recklessness that hurts SO many others who are innocent, hurts the country by risking it being closed down, and insanely risks death when an actual vaccine is so near. And also appalled by the sheer thought of 400,000 Americans dead within 2-1/2 weeks. And then far too many more. However, yet another added problem to all this is that we hear these numbers on a daily basis so the horror of them almost becomes meaningless after a while from our daily familiarity with them. When we hear 2,000 deaths every single day, it's only a little more than, say, 1,800. And if that jumps to 2,500 deaths the next day, well, okay, that is "only" 500 more people in a land of 320 million. And after weeks of getting used to hearing 2,500 deaths every day, 3,000 is just slightly more than that. And on and on. It's incremental -- but it's Every Single Day. For nine months. The disheartening death total on 9/11 was 2,977 for just one horrific day. One day alone, not every day -- every day after day after day after day...after days and weeks and weeks when we "only" had a mere 2,500 deaths each day. And by the same token, when we hear that a total of 362,000 Americans have died as of that day, that's hardly much different from the day before when we heard that 359,000 had died. Day after day, the cumulative number stays almost the same as the day before. So, each day, it sounds pretty much the same as the day before, as if not much changed. Yet after nine months we went from zero dead to "It will go away soon like a miracle" to "I'm hearing 50,000 - 60,000" to...to 362,000 Americans have died. So far. Because it will keep going up and up and up. And the reality is that to think my polite “average” of 2,500 will be the standard is laughable. So, we can only hope that not many more than 400,000 Americans will have died by the time of the Inauguration. And it’s not like they’ll suddenly stop dying at that point. And Republicans officials are not only silent, but many push such actions. And we haven't even touched on the 140 Republicans in Congress who've said they're going to channel the Electoral College votes certified by all 50 states. This is not about Trump, we know who he is. This is about the elected Republicans in Congress who enable him, are undermining democracy, overseeing the mass deaths of Americans and are all complicit down to their dirty fingernails. Trump said that he was tired of hearing about "COVID COVID COVID" and that Democrats and the media would stop talking about it the moment the election was over. He was wrong.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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