Risk and Covid-19

I’m going to take a risk. This risk that I’m going to take has to do with a view on Covid that is not particularly popular right now. 

I imagine it is very possible that I could get all sorts of hate replies from it and my followers will go from, like, seven down to, like, two.

So first, the disclaimer.

I am in no way mean to devalue any human life, nor to demean or objectify an individuals suffering from sickness or any sort of suffering, nor to reprimand loved ones involved with that person and how they are probably and justifiably upset.

Let me repeat that paragraph. And go back and read it again and take it to heart as to my actual intention, where my view is coming from, before reactions might arise.

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Here’s a video that I saw on the news earlier today.

Now, in the context of the reported devastation and visceral fear that surrounds most people in our world society, if we are ethical then we watch that video and our fears and emotions are confirmed. We think, “oh my God! That child might die from Covid and the family has no idea where it came from. And humanity is in severe dire straits with this virus! Oh my god that’s terrible and sad. Masks might not be sufficient. Sequestering at home and staying away from loved ones and friends might not be sufficient. This devastating killer disease had made it into a house that was doing everything they were supposed to! COVID-19 is very terrible and I’m so scared and oh my gosh somehow I also feel confirmed in the measures that we are taking, because we are all in this together.”

And we watch the video, and at least on the news it was reported that the kid has fully recovered. And thank God. I’m absolutely happy that this child got over the sickness and didn’t die and I’m very happy for his family.

Consider this:

The last time I had the flu, I had flu A. This was four months ago. I went from a sore throat on Saturday at work, to coming home fatigued and a little bit stuffy headed with a headache and fairly sure that I had a cold. Waking up the next day feeling like shit and by noon on Sunday I took the advice of my wife and I went to the urgent care and I had 103.4 temperature. I felt like absolute hell. I could barely sit up, I actually did drive to the doctors and back home. I had a nagging cough that I could not stop coughing and so that whole night at first night, and even the second night, I barely slept because I couldn’t stop coughing. And by the third day my temperature had gotten down into normal area and all in all I was out of work for I think five days.

My question goes to why are we not posting videos of people when they have the flu?

What virologists and the people who are studying the virus seem to be discovering is that Covid 19 does not have a significantly greater mortality rate than the flu, and likewise generally the same number of people get positive for Covid as they do the flu. I think the difference between the two is the contagion possibility. It’s something like the flu infects 1.5 people per infected person, and Covid infects 3 people per one infected person, or something like that.

If you watch that video that I posted a few before this, made by one of the doctors who is studying Covid globally, he asks the question if all this reactivity, all these precautions that we are putting on society to prevent a sickness that has the same pattern, the same morbidity, the same infection proportion as the flu, is worth all the secondary problems that are arising because of these social precautions.

He talks about many that I’ve already thought about being in the mental health field:

— Alcoholism is the first one that came to mind for me. If someone was yet potentially an alcoholic, who still went to their work and was functional and didn’t drink at work and was otherwise a good parent say, now is not working and is at home with his family members who they don’t really see that often nor have to involve themselves with, and it’s probably been that way for years — now all of a sudden all the family members have to get along under the added stress of no income. Having to deal with each other all day long where as before they had various natural outlets. Now that individual can go get a beer or scotch or whiskey anytime they want to throughout the day. So I thought of how many more alcoholics are going to be created because of these precautions that we’ve put in place. And how is all this alcoholism going to affect the family and society over the next 5,10, or 20 years of these people now attempting to get and stay sober and get back to the productive lives?

The next ones I thought of is

– depression

– suicide

– anxiety

Then:

— spousal abuse and domestic violence.

The doctor in the video points out how Covid will be solved at least in the next year or so,but the victims of domestic violence, the individuals as well as their families are going to be affected for the rest of their lives in a way that Covid will just be a thing that was an interesting phenomenon.

–Child abuse.

Here we have a parent whose ability to parent is based on them not being around their family member for at least a third of the day, not including the third that they’re sleeping also.  The doctor points out That the rate of child abuse is up. How many decades is that child going to have to deal with this short period of time? How much social money, social services, psychological effort is going to go have to go into this child as an adult getting better and hopefully not implementing abuse Upon thier own children?

And then the one that I hadn’t even really thought of that really stuck out to me:

–Child sexual abuse. 

Parents And friends and family members are starting to more frequently abuse the children of their own household sexually.

Why?

I am not making the argument that somehow we should let everything go back to normal, or whatever.

But I am bringing up the very valid question about what trade-offs are we making based on fear and ignorance?

And what about the mom who made that video and posted it? What kind of trauma did she go through and thinking that her child had any more potential of dying then if he would’ve had the flu? Would she have been so nervous if her child had flu a, for example? Would she have entertained the possibility that her child was going to die if it was the flu?