In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death,” a callous nobleman named Prospero invites
his wealthy friends to join him in his well-stocked castle. There they
can eat, drink, and dance away a plague season while the poor folk
outside die horribly. But Prospero's ban on travel to China the countryside proves insufficient. The plague slips in, and eventually he and his guests are doomed.
Clearly Prospero should of done more testing. And he should have let fewer people into his castle. Because Donald Trump has made it dead obvious that it’s possible to ignore the dance of death happening all around him, so long as he personally is surrounded by only people who wear masks and get daily tests. That level of smug self-assurance allows Trump to stand on the stage in front of a crowd of supporters and inform them that COVID-19 is still just a hoax.
Which is exactly what happened last night. As the United States passed 200,000 deaths, Trump stood in his personal safety zone and informed a rally that “it affects virtually nobody.” Dance, America. Dance harder.
By the count at WorldoMeter, the United States has currently lost just under 205,000 people to COVID-19. But that total includes some losses, like people who died at home during the first sharp spike of the disease, whose cause of death is only probable, not certain. However, on Monday even the most conservative number, at Johns Hopkins tracking site, stood at 199,890 American dead.
It took four months from the outbreak of the disease in the United States for COVID-19 to reach the terrible milestone of 100,000 deaths. When that happened, it seemed momentous. It seemed as if something was happening that would reshape everything we knew; would draw a line across history and divide all of life into “before” and “after.”
Four months later, another 100,000 lives have been lost. COVID-19 has reached into more cities and states, more small towns, more schools, more families to tear away someone who should have enriched the lives of those around them for years to come. The disease has ended the life of college athletes, Broadway actors, and thousands of doctors and nurses working on the frontline. Over time, the odds of an individual patient dying really have declined, as doctors have learned the best way to apply oxygen, steroids, antivirals, and other steps to slow the progression toward intubation and irreversible damage. And that’s good, because with 7 million cases in the United States, the case fatality rate is still just under 3%.
Perhaps the biggest thing we’ve learned over the last four months is the extent to which deaths alone are an inadequate measure of the disease’s toll. Studies have shown that 15-30% of young healthy athletes exposed to the disease, even those with no obvious symptoms, are left with damaged hearts that may diminish their abilities for a lifetime. Months after being exposed, fully half of former COVID-19 patients show neurological symptoms which can be severe. The parade of results includes damage to lungs, liver, kidneys … and minds. America, and the world, are being left with a cross-generational group that is marked by the disabilities generated by COVID-19. It’s a number that will be marked not just in diminished quality of life, but in diminished incomes, diminished wealth, and soaring healthcare costs.
Still … Trump’s castle, composed of an unlimited supply of instant tests and masked agents keeping the rabble at bay, holds fast. What’s 200,000 lives? What’s another 200,000 predicted by the end of the year? They’re just brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, fathers and mothers … no one important. Virtually nobody at all.
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