The Plague to End All Plagues

Here it is -- time to write the story on how the death count from the Great Plague of 2020 exceeded that of the Great War.  And I don't have a clue what to say.  I'm trying to get "ahead of the curve".  That date is not yet here.  But I know it is inevitable.  Must I wait for the reality of it to feel the shock?  How can a microscopic, brainless virus kill more Americans in a few months than massed artillery, machine guns and poison gas?

I can think of no better word for the warfare in World War I than "ghastly".  Sounds British doesn't it?  I'm sure some British author somewhere slipped it into my brain, unnoticed.  Or maybe is was Dan Carlin with his "Hardcore History".  He did a whole series on it a few years back. (I have no idea where it's buried on his site. Sorry.  Maybe search for "Passchendaele"?)

I remember him describing soldiers trapped in the mud of the craters and trenches.  Literally stuck in the mud. They couldn't free themselves.  Their mates couldn't free them.  Think quicksand.  You slowly sank and were smothered. Or the gas got you.  Or the artillery. Yep.  Ghastly is the word.

The United States of America entered the war on April 6th of the Year of Our Lord, 1917. We stayed until the armistice —"the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.  In one year, seven months and five days of the Germans trying to kill Americans with the most advanced weapons known to man at the time.... 116,708 Americans died.

The novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 has managed to do that in five months.

Do you think dying of COVID-19 is any less ghastly?  I bet it isn't.  Alone in a strange bed with no parent or spouse to comfort you while a little-bitty fraction of DNA chokes the life out of you.

Sorry. I don't mean to be ghoulish.  It's just that the few times I've been out of my house lately have been a shocking surprise to me.  Very few people are wearing masks.  It seems that people can't remember to stay 6 feet away.  And then there are people that won't stay 6 feet away.  You can choose to be careful.  But you can't make other people be careful.  And, apparently, a lot of people are okay with that.

I guess we'll just have to wait until everybody loses somebody they love to this pandemic for the masses to take it seriously.  Donald G. McNeil Jr. (health reporter for the New York Times) said some folks will be the proverbial, stubborn mules. The ones that will have to get hit in the head with a 2x4 before you get their attention.  I'm pretty sure this virus can accommodate them.

Who am I kidding? 62,984,828 Americans voted for Donald J. Trump.  Almost 63 million people.  Even if he has lost half of them that leaves at least 30 million Americans that still support him. That's a lot of hosts for a virus.  It's almost like they can't look at any chart and see that we've lost over twice as many people than any other country on Earth. We're doomed. (You there! The guy reaching for his keyboard to argue that China and Russia are lying.  You are missing the point.)

The day draws near. Either today, Sunday, the 14th day of June or Monday, the 15th, we will pass World War I's 116,708 dead Americans.  I'll wait to see if any words of wisdom come to mind.  So far, they elude me.

Will there be a monument to the dead?  Should there be?  Or, like the pandemic of 1918/1919, will we just let this tragedy fade into history -- ensuring that the generation of 100 years from now is equally unprepared?

Don Brown
June 14, 2020

P.S. Nope. No new wisdom. Just more sadness.  More death.  It did take an extra half day to get there.  Some might take that as a positive sign. It isn't.

Data chart is from John Hopkins CSSE on June 16, 2020 at 4 PM.

Don Brown
June 16, 2020 4 P.M