I am really motivated to keep lifting weights, and also I do not love the news about the transmissibility of the omicron variant. I did not expect to find it so satisfying to move barbells around, but here we are. I'm not going to buy a powerlifting setup, so I keep going to gym, aiming for the times when it's likely to be empty.
There are usually a few other people there wearing masks, but not today: today I was the only one. Maybe all the other cautious people are staying home because they know omicron is coming? Maybe they're waiting for the data on how sick it seems to make people? Who can say?
There's lots of talk in my Facebook feed about the left's overreaction to COVID, and I was thinking about it as I was driving home from my workout this afternoon. Have you seen this graph? In both September and October, COVID was the #2 cause of death in this country. Only heart disease killed more people. In three of the last 13 months (Nov '20 through Feb '21), COVID killed more people than heart disease. Do you know anybody who had a heart attack last month? or the month before that? I do not. I don't actually know a whole lot of people who've died of heart disease across the 51 years that I've been alive. But it would be a grave error for me to extrapolate too far from my personal experience. If I were to say, "Heart disease is no big deal! Hardly anyone dies of heart disease!" -- obviously, it would be a false statement.
My gym acknowledges the reality that sometimes people's hearts stop beating unexpectedly. They have paid to install defibrillation units; someone on staff gets paid to inspect them at intervals. They have paid their staff for the time required to get trained in AED use. They've invested time and money into protecting people at the gym from the adverse consequences of a cardiac event. They've done so not because people are keeling over every other week, but because cardiac events are (usually! maybe not this winter!) the thing most likely to kill American adults.
AEDs aren't magic bullets. More than half of people who experience cardiac arrest are going to die, even in communities where AEDs are widespread. We invest in them because they shift the odds; they have significant potential to reduce suffering and death, even though that potential isn't always realized.
So here's my question: in September the number of deaths caused by COVID (1899 of them) was just slightly under the number of deaths caused by heart disease (estimated at 2056). How is that not serious? In October the number of COVID deaths dropped to 1683, but that number is higher than any other cause of death recorded in this country -- even when you group every form of cancer together. More serious than cancer = pretty dang serious.
And yet-- the same folks whose membership fees pay for seldom-used AEDs are balking at the idea that they should wear masks in the building. It's true that masks, like AEDs, aren't magic bullets. It's also true that masks, like AEDs, have the potential to reduce suffering and death.
I don't understand the discrepancy.
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