I had a very good discussion with a friend of mine the other day and while he and I disagreed on a lot - the one thing we both do agree on is that COVID-19 is now a huge legal problem. I would argue that it is a far bigger legal problem now than it is a health problem whereas my friend doesn't believe it has gotten to that point yet, but that it will.
If you look at how this has evolved, publicly, over the past 4-5 months there has been a theme. First, it was lockdowns...first with countries...then with states; one state did it, then another, then a bunch more, until most of the country, save the states where no one lives (*cough* South Dakota *cough*) were all on 'lockdown'. Then it was re-opening plans. One state developed a "re-opening" plan and pretty soon, every state had a re-opening plan that looked something like a staging model, where it would happen slowly and over the course of a couple of months. At this point, school is now the vanguard - in our area, district after district has announced they are moving exclusively to e-learning to start the school year. I'm sure similar things are playing out all across the country. Colleges and universities have followed suit with the NCAA canceling team sports and many institutions of higher learning moving to e-learning models. The bottom-line is this: no one wants to be left holding a bag of blame. Executive orders written by governors have been successfully challenged, legally speaking, in almost every state and yet many are acting as though those orders still have teeth. Why? Because states have threatened legal action (forcible closings, forfeiture of business licensing, including liquor licenses, etc) for those businesses that don't comply. In talking to a couple of restaurant owner friends of mine - they probably would open except that the departments of health in the towns they operate in have threatened to shut them down, or take away their liquor licenses. They also talk about the social stigma and/or blow back that would occur as a result of re-opening.
The data could not be more clear in terms of how minimal the COVID threat is to children. The median age of the person who dies from COVID-19 is 78 years old. If we look at the CDC's data set, which is updated to September 9th, a total of 62 people under the age of 15 have died of COVID-19, in the entire United States, since the start of the pandemic in February (data set is 2/1 to 9/9). A total of 377 people under the age of 25, in the entire United States, have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic in February. By comparison, 15,644 people under the age of 15 in the United States, have died of any cause, in that same period of time. A total of 35,642 people under the age of 25 in the United States have died of all causes, in that same period of time. Our children are far less vulnerable to COVID than they are to a number of other things (the flu, for example, has killed 110 children under 15 since Feb 1st, 2020), but we are shutting down in-person school because of COVID...why?
In case that isn't convincing. 1,894,447 (as of September 9th) Americans have died in the United States, since February 1st, when all causes of death are taken into account. The latest COVID death count is 175,866. Over 1 million Americans over the age of 75 have died since February 1st (1,028,792). Death, even death on a large scale, is common in our society...and yet we are weirdly fixated on COVID. To underscore this fact - a poll recently conducted by Franklin Templeton (accounting firm) showed that "for people aged 18-24, the share of those worried about serious health consequences is 400 times higher than the share of total COVID deaths; for those aged 25-34 it is 90 times higher..."
To me, it's a head-scratcher. We have more access to hard data than we have ever had for anything, and yet the story being painted by media (social and otherwise) doesn't match with reality. The question I keep asking myself is 'what is going on here!?"
The only logical conclusion I can make is that no one wants to be sued. That is the only conclusion that makes any logical sense when you look at the numbers. Every day - the media flashes up the current COVID death statistic, without giving it any context whatsoever, and so it has become a thing. They don't give it context within itself (number of deaths FROM covid vs. WITH covid), they don't give it any context in terms of what kills people commonly (cancer, heart disease, etc). They never mention that in a regular ho-hum year, 2.8 MILLION people die in this country of various causes.
And so we have what we have - schools closed, college students forced to wear masks almost 24/7, no fans in the stands, no concerts or large gatherings, businesses closing left and right, widespread unemployment or underemployment and on and on and on. PEOPLE - the folks making decisions have the same numbers that are available to you and I. 180,000 as a number, without any context, sounds like a lot, but it's not. It just isn't, even as it relates to death. And yet, we continually hear from people like Dr. Fauci and our governors, that we won't be "safe" until we have a vaccine. Dr. Fauci said yesterday that even when we get a vaccine, it will have to have been available for 6 months to a year until it's administered to enough people to make a difference. I guarantee you Dr. Fauci knows what is truly at risk here - it is his reputation. A reputation that has been hard fought over decades of time. You put a mic in his face and ask him, "Dr. Fauci, when will we be able to go back to normal again?" - he won't be hedging his bets. He's going to say the thing that preserves his reputation. The problem is, we aren't asking enough people - we aren't asking other experts in other fields what the consequences of shutdowns, social distancing, closing schools, making people wear masks, preventing people from dining out inside, etc. are. There needs to be more voices in the room where the policy decisions are being made. There needs to be federal leadership with regard to protecting businesses and individuals from litigation related to COVID-19. These are common-sense actions that no one is taking - and so we continue, in this malaise of uncertainty and fear, waiting for a phantom vaccine that may never come. How much longer will we tolerate this?
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