Inviting Death

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Feb. 26, 2022

 

We Americans have been challenging death with some success. Until recently, we didn't knowingly invite it into our homes and businesses, nor did we choose to expose our children to it.  

We know, for example, a certain number of people are going to die in traffic accidents every year. The odds of us being one of those fatalities is very small, but when we pass a bad accident on the road we might slow down for the next few minutes. 

In truth, we've dramatically reduced the number of traffic fatalities even as the number of miles we drive has dramatically increased. Since 1946, fatalities started increasing annually, peaking in 1972 when nearly 55,000 people died on our roadways. In 2020, that number was down to less than 39,000.

We didn't suddenly become better drivers, but we did make the vehicles we recklessly drive safer. Padded dashes, crumple zones, telescoping steering wheels, shoulder-harness seatbelts, safety glass, and airbags were innovations designed specifically to protect vehicle occupants. (Every one of those safety advancements was met with howls of protest from manufacturers who claimed the added costs would be passed to consumers and destroy their companies. They were wrong.)

Sadly, we also know there will be a certain number of murders every year. We don't even pay much attention to those grim statistics unless there is a significant body count. The last two years have seen a highly publicized increase in murders in our major cities, mostly fueled by gun violence.

It would be easy enough to theorize the pandemic was somehow to blame, that the familiarity of the lockdowns bred plenty of contempt. We simply don't yet know why the sudden uptick, but we do know that even with all the scary headlines, our murder rate now is barely more than half what it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Drug-fueled turf wars were the proximate cause of the carnage back then. Through attrition and incarceration, the drug warriors slowly disappeared. 

All of that pales in comparison to deaths by illness. Heart disease and cancer continue to be our first and second leading cause of death, but even those death rates per capita have steadily decreased. Improved diagnostics and treatment plus certain lifestyle decisions can significantly increase our chances of a healthy heart and reduce our chances of becoming a cancer victim. The advice has been some version of the same song for decades, with some modern additions: don't smoke, do eat a reasonably healthy diet, and do exercise something in addition to our thumbs.  

But there is one disease some of us have knowingly invited into our lives — and with devastating results. As of Feb. 22, 2022, the United States reported nearly 78 million confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus with a truly stunning 933,000 deaths.  

That's more than all the combat deaths in all of our wars combined. It's more than 15 times the number of traffic deaths and homicides combined. It's more than the death toll of the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–20. Our average life expectancy at birth has actually decreased for the first time in decades. And we know most of it could have been prevented. 

The first COVID-19 vaccine was available in December 2020 when the death toll was about 385,000. We knew soon enough that the vaccine would be effective in two doses. (We discovered the need for a booster shot later, after the Delta variant emerged.) 

Former President Donald Trump deserves full credit for unleashing the pharmaceutical companies to quickly develop a safe and effective vaccine. But he gets failing marks for constantly downplaying the severity of the virus and the spread of the pandemic, an approach that led directly to some of his supporters opposing three things we knew then, and still know, helped slow this contagion: masks, lockdowns, and vaccines.  

Had he become an overt cheerleader for the vaccines, which he and his family all received, it's likely his beloved base would have been more receptive. Instead, we ended up with a politicized response from some that has extended the lifespan of the bug and led to surge after surge. All of this opposition despite data that shows unvaccinated people are 14 times more likely to catch COVID-19 and die than those fully vaccinated. They are 20 times more likely to die than those fully vaccinated and boosted.

Those are facts; not theories. Still, only 61 percent of us are fully vaccinated and boosted. Given the opportunity to receive safe and effective protection against a deadly virus, more than a third of us have illogically decided we'd rather endanger ourselves, our families, and our friends.

We've made progress against death in several areas. But now some of us have invited it into our communities.