Fair enough and my apology for that characterization earlier.
One of the things I used to write about and actually taught public health departments all over the country is predicated on how we communicate about risks in a public health emergency. The same thing I referenced previously that CDC is general is very good about but has failed in a significant way twice in the last 20 years. The first was the Anthrax attacks in 2001 and the second is this current event. When you are comparing risks (and granted I know we are just on a message board shooting the shit here) it’s something we train leaders on to be very careful about, because it’s almost impossible to make a fair apples to apples comparison when drawing an analogy. Yes, we accept risk every day as per normal part of life but people often make poor choices because they fail to assess the risk appropriately. Let’s go back to 9/11 and use the car analogy again. Add in how people travel particularly for longer trips. After 9/11 people stopped flying on airplanes in the following year out of terrorism fears. The real threat had passed. AQ wasn’t going to achieve that same operation again. So more people drove. That following year more than 2000 additional vehicle deaths occurred beyond a normal year because more people drove instead flying.
So, to bring this back to where we are now the comparative here is the virus is the car. Because what we are comparing is which “risk” could harm or kill. Me getting into the car to go to work is a necessity of life because we all have to do what we gotta do to provide. There is no inherent benefit to acquiring a virus that the human body has never fought before. So, the risk calculus is very, very different and thus the analogy fails to meet that already tough to meet apples to apples comparison.
And when we expand this out further failing to take the precautions that Dr. Redfield laid out (masks, distancing, avoiding being grouped together, etc.) assures us that we - as a society - will keep this going. Not only will we keep it going we will keep going in the worst way possible. I was tempted there to draw an analogy but very difficult to do. Anyway, that’s a problem multiplied, because there is simply no protection. Those who get it are either lucky or they are not but every single one of us who refuses to do all we can to minimize the spread is creating a worse situation weeks/months down the road. We are magnifying and enhancing the risk to everyone else around by saying well this is just another risk to add to the pot. But it’s more than just another risk, because it’s communicable. It isn’t heart disease or cancer which has an entirely different prevention requirement. It’s preventable through some really simple but uncomfortable measures. And that doesn’t mean we have to shut down everything but it does mean to achieve the goal of limiting spread until we do have a vaccine or a viable treatment, we have to make sacrifices. When it flares up in (pick your state) because of refusal to make some minor sacrifices, we’ve seen daily covid deaths outpace every single other COD. That shouldn’t happen from a communicable disease - not in a first world nation like ours - especially since we know how it transmits and spreads. Even one without a treatment. Bottom line and final point regarding the analogy. This isn’t exactly a normal situation. Just look at the extreme lengths MT is doing in a effort to try to prevent it from entering the football facility. Meetings outside? Masks required. Ice buckets spread across the football concourse. They aren’t doing that just for liability. Let that sink in for a moment what they are trying to achieve. If the risk was no different than driving a car then surely we wouldn’t need all that. I consider driving a normal routine part of life. There is nothing normal about this and if the rest of society would exercise the same caution as the athletic dept we wouldn’t be staring down the barrel of 200K deaths. I understand people are going to disagree but it’s really hard for me to understand why. Like Dr. Redfield said, we need to do this for our country and our fellow man. If for nothing else just to be a solid citizen and good human being. In my book preventing my neighbor from getting this potentially deadly virus is as patriotic as anything we could do right now.
That’s my 2 cents. Take it fwiw.