COVID: Yes, it’s a thing

They’re not telling the truth. We don’t want to hear it.

Coroners and medical examiners across the country certify one corpse at a time. Their stats show 300,000 more cadavers than this time last year, roughly following the monthly COVID numbers but even higher. That’s truth on a cold, hard slab. An invisible enemy is among us, killing as many people as 911 every three days and growing.

Vaccines are no quick fix. This antibody only seems to last a few months, which pretty much rules out “herd immunity” too. I really hope I’m wrong but this path leads to a million dead in a few months, and more and more people crowding out hospitals.

Now the vast majority will still survive. The economy will struggle forward, limited some by government shutdown but more by people sick or afraid to go out and by $7 trillion in new national debt. That was added since 2016, no small amount before the pandemic.

Cutting payroll tax, as the president openly promised after January, will defund Medicare and Social Security. That’s taking away people’s life savings and putting us on the dole, but we’ll even get by that.

We’ll survive. It will just take toughening up, giving up some things, protecting our neighbor as ourselves and keeping up hope. It will take thinking about things we don’t like to hear. And it will take not trusting someone who pretends any of this has ever been under control.

MIKE BULLARD

Coeur d’Alene