SARS-CoV-2 is not a hoax. It's a real virus that has caused and is causing a real pandemic. It's sneaky, it's dangerous, it can spread through people who are asymptomatic or not yet symptomatic, it can cause strokes, blood clots that require amputation, long-term debilitating symptoms and permanent damage to the lungs, and it's unpredictably fatal.
I live near Seattle, Washington, where the coronavirus pandemic first hit hard in the United States. As such, our family and many of our neighbors take COVID-19 very seriously. The death toll in King County has been high enough that nearly everyone in this area knows somebody who has died of COVID-19.
When scientists, doctors and public health officials tell you you need
to stay home, wear a mask if you must go out, wash your hands regularly
and maintain appropriate social distance, they're not trying to ruin
your fun, nor are they trying to be political. These are basic public
health measures to avoid spreading a virus we can't yet vaccinate
against, to stop making more cases of a disease we can't cure, to try to
keep our hospital ICUs from being overwhelmed with desperately ill
COVID-19 patients. And these officials are not trying to take your rights away.
They're trying to make sure YOU STAY ALIVE to exercise those rights
after the pandemic is over.
People from Seattle, from New York City, from New Orleans who have been warning the rest of the country for MONTHS about how bad this stuff can be are getting used to feeling like Cassandras. There are too many people outside the hot spots who are convinced that COVID-19 isn't real, that it's "just like the flu," that it only kills old people and the sick (and even if that were true, don't you have someone you care about who's old and/or sick?), that those of us who advocate for public health measures are "living in fear," that it's all a political stunt to steal your job and/or your freedoms.
None of these things are true.
You don't want your town to get like it was here in March and April, where we heard ambulance sirens every night. You don't want it to get like it was in New York City, where at least 18,000 people have been confirmed dead of coronavirus (there are certainly more) and many, many others are living with permanent damage from their bout with it. You don't want it to get like it was in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras was probably a super-spreading event that passed the virus all over the city. And you don't want liberal passage of the virus to allow it to adapt to its host, mutating to become ever more virulent and capable of seriously sickening or killing even more people than it does now.
We've seen what this virus can do. But there were precious few people able to spread the word to us that the pandemic was already here. You don't have to go through what we did.
The measures may be annoying, but they're not hard: Stay home if you can. Wear a mask if you can't. Keep at least 6 feet away from others. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Stay alive until we get a cure or vaccine.
Please. We love you.
People from Seattle, from New York City, from New Orleans who have been warning the rest of the country for MONTHS about how bad this stuff can be are getting used to feeling like Cassandras. There are too many people outside the hot spots who are convinced that COVID-19 isn't real, that it's "just like the flu," that it only kills old people and the sick (and even if that were true, don't you have someone you care about who's old and/or sick?), that those of us who advocate for public health measures are "living in fear," that it's all a political stunt to steal your job and/or your freedoms.
None of these things are true.
You don't want your town to get like it was here in March and April, where we heard ambulance sirens every night. You don't want it to get like it was in New York City, where at least 18,000 people have been confirmed dead of coronavirus (there are certainly more) and many, many others are living with permanent damage from their bout with it. You don't want it to get like it was in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras was probably a super-spreading event that passed the virus all over the city. And you don't want liberal passage of the virus to allow it to adapt to its host, mutating to become ever more virulent and capable of seriously sickening or killing even more people than it does now.
We've seen what this virus can do. But there were precious few people able to spread the word to us that the pandemic was already here. You don't have to go through what we did.
The measures may be annoying, but they're not hard: Stay home if you can. Wear a mask if you can't. Keep at least 6 feet away from others. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. Stay alive until we get a cure or vaccine.
Please. We love you.
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