Virtue signalers willing to kill millions while sheltering in place

Re: Raymond Pippert’s letter “Lessons of 1918 are of use to us today” of Apr 12, 2020

Studies show that if we lowered the speed limit to 25 mph we could greatly reduce the number of lives lost due to automobile accidents.  We are not willing to take that life saving step.  Instead we buckle up and take our chances. The end result of not slowing down is nearly 40,000 tragic deaths on America’s highways last year.

By adding $500 to each ticket, airline travel could be made much safer.  Simply by banning flights over large bodies of water and mountains and canceling flights when the weather is not perfect and all night flights, airplane crashes could be nearly eliminated.  We are not willing to take these lifesaving steps.

Every single year between 30 – 60,000 die from influenza and county’s reaction is a collective shoulder shrug. There has never been a call for social distancing, masks or sheltering in place.   

There are mitigating steps we can take in nearly every human endeavor to avoid injury and death.  We adopt many, for others the cost is either too high or too inconvenient so we accept the risk.  So it will be with Wuhan Virus. 

People who have a rudimentary understanding of economics know that the government cannot continue to print money and issue checks indefinitely.  Sooner or later people have to be capable of supporting themselves.

Sheltering in place has risks of its own.  According to the JG, calls to the state’s 211 hotline, regarding mental health, including suicide distress, calls have gone from 1,000 a day to 25,000.

Right now we are at the point of measuring how much risk we are willing to accept to return to some semblance of normality.  We know that we’ll accept 40,000 highway deaths, between 30 – 60,000 flu deaths etc. without shutting down the economy.  So to all the virtue signalers, how many CV-19 deaths are acceptable to get the country back on its feet?  The answer to that question cannot be zero.

Once that question is answered, try this one, how many deaths from poverty are acceptable when the economy slips past recession and crosses into depression while we’re sheltering in place?

We need to consider a quarantine for those most at risk of succumbing to the virus while we maintain social distancing and possibly the widespread use of face masks and send America back to work.

Lessons of 1918 are of use to us today

It's surprising and discouraging to see an article with such total lack of logic (“Newspaper feeds irrational hysteria,” April 25).

The author attempts to minimize the danger of the coronavirus by comparing the COVID-19 pandemic to numerous other causes of death. His only valid comparison is with the flu. However, the statistics must be evaluated appropriately.

The writer seems to think the flu and COVID-19 are similar, with the flu perhaps more dangerous. In January, the flu was in full force when the first case of coronavirus in the U.S. was announced, with none here in Indiana.

He also references the flu pandemic of 1918, which infected an estimated 500 million people, a third of the world's population, with 50 million deaths. That yields a mortality rate of about 10%. Humans had no immunity to the new virus, there was no vaccine, and hospitals were overwhelmed. Even with far less travel than today, the virus spread around the world.

The flu today looks much different from that of 1918 since humans have developed some immunity, there are vaccines that reduce the number of infections, and hospitals are not usually overwhelmed. The disease is still contagious. The mortality rate in the U.S. has dropped to the range of about 0.1% to 0.2%.

Does our current situation more closely resemble today's flu virus or that of the 1918 flu? Humans have had no exposure to this coronavirus, so no immunity; there are no vaccines; and hospitals are becoming overwhelmed.

So what should we expect if the virus is allowed to spread as it did in 1918? Although medicine has improved our chances of survival, the preliminary estimates of mortality range from about 1% to 4%. Assuming the lower rate (almost 10 times the current mortality rate for the flu), if a third of the world's population (7.8 billion) were to contract the virus, the death toll would be at least 26 million, with about 1 million of those in the U.S. Should the higher rate prove valid, the world toll would exceed 100 million and our toll would be 4 million.

To conclude with “Let's get back to work, America and Indiana!” is to say “Go, go, go, COVID-19!”

Raymond Pippert

Huntington