THE COVID HALF MILLION HIT YESTERDAY, FEB 22

My phone laid on the table top near my screen. It lit up with “News Top Stories.”

That top story is the covid half million dead.

“The U.S. has surpassed 500,000 COVID-19 deaths. Here’s how to visualize the overwhelming loss.”

I didn’t need the last sentence. I’ve watched enough WWII on the History Channel to make the visualization. It was a god-awful number then and a god-awful number now.

No one should try and visualize mass-death unless they have to. And who would that be? What job tallies the preventable dead during a year of a rampant virus?

Death camp administrators in WWII made a big thing out of their efficiency numbers. What was that for, competition between prisons and chemical labs?

As massacres go, exact numbers mean something, unless it’s for statistical and comparison studies, then it’s all about percentages.

Doesn’t everybody calculate acceptable losses into their daily routine? Finding a balance between what matters and what matters more? However anyone makes an assessment of mass death, a half million a year is big.

With the quickest of looks, cancer takes out 600K a year. The flu gets between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

Heart disease? Number of deaths per year: 635,260.

These are all disease-related deaths the health industry plans on and deals with. Every year. The heart number was from 2017, so that’s got to be more now.

The Covid Half Million

This is not normal. It will never be normal.

How many died in WWII?

Talk to your flag waving, national anthem singing neighbors about getting down to business.

Don’t be surprised if they are as shocked as you about the covid half million.

And don’t be shocked if they take no precautions, no social distance, no masks, and travel because, “We don’t go places or associate with people we’re afraid of.”

Not Another Half Million Dead, Please

Let’s be frank, I’ll be frank, and in all frankness, if the first half million covid deaths are bullshit, what about the next half million?

I understand the power of the learning curve, starting over with more worry and fear, of the last hope dangling just out of reach. I get it. I like to think you get it too. Since you’ve made to here, I’m encouraged.

This particular blog, identified as “One Post Away From The Big Time Since 2012,” is the squeak of the tiny squeak in the squeak inside the wheel that helps turn other tiny wheels.

In other words, we’re not talking blow horn.

But, as a social media platform, it does have reach. And if you have reach and add it to more reach, something happens. Eventually the ears that hear a different tune perk up.

Big Tommy from college whose dad owns a lake boat and membership in the yacht club might cancel his next spreader event.

Lucille might cancel her girlie gatherings. You’re skipping the gym rat celebrations, concerts, movies, shopping malls.

Covid Half Million Part 2 is waiting in the wings. Let’s keep it there.

Wear a mask, social distance, wash up.