Hey @agmoore,

It’s really sad that you and your friends suffered so hard from the pandemic. I have to admit that we in Germany had no comparable situation. What again raises the question about the reasons.

There is no question that mistakes were made when this virus hit. That ventilators were overused. These turned out to be death sentences in most cases. Nursing home infections were handled badly and this resulted in more deaths. Nobody really knew what to do. Which is amazing, considering the notice the world had received from Wuhan.

Besides the reasons I had in mind (health situation, air pollution, population density) it seems like there are tremendous problems in the American health system. Maybe this also has contributed much to the horrible outcome.

According to this source about 6% of the presumed COVID deaths in the US are direct victims of the virus. Maybe a vicious combination of several factors led to the suffering you encountered.

In Germany, we had about 10,000 COVID deaths. In one of my articles, I calculated that around 80% of the tested persons in Germany were false-positive. This would mean that only one in 41,500 to one in 8,000 died from COVID. The probability to die from flashes is about 1:12,000. Therefore, in Germany, the chance of dying from COVID is comparable to the probability of dying from flashes. I don’t want to say the virus is harmless, this is definitely not the case and especially weak people suffer heavily. Nevertheless, the economic problems which arose and the potential threats to world peace are more dangerous than the virus itself. Additionally, the situation in society is even worse and there is a lot of hostility, fear, and anger.

In the end a sober view on the data would help to make the right decisions. This, however, wasn’t the case, neither in hotspots (such as New York) nor in less-to-not-infected regions.

The best way to handle the potential second wave is to stay clear in mind and brave in your heart.

I wish you all the best, stay healthy and upright.

Best regards

Chapper