cwerdna
Well-known member
It is not only about YOU and its possible effects on you.Oilpan4 said:I'm more likely to end up in a hospital because of work or driving to work. And yet I don't hide at home.
You could already have it and spread it to others. You might catch it and spread it to others. Those others can then spread it to others that could end of in the hospital or die (esp. elderly folks or those w/pre-exisiting conditions). People can be pre-sympotmatic or asymptomatic and spread it.
The odds of me dying from catching it are pretty low due to my age so I'm not too concerned from the POV of my own health. However, if I passed it onto my parents (who live in the same city as me), it's possible one or both might die from it. They're both in very high risk age groups (79 and 80) and both have some pre-existing conditions. My dad is slightly older and used to smoke for years, as well.
I could also unknowingly spread it to others. See above.
Some of my co-workers also have elderly relatives at home. We're all WFH ever since my county lockdown around March 16th.
I'm pretty sure before my county locked down, there was a thread on Nextdoor about some member of the "extended" member of a local elementary school testing positive for COVID-19 and people calling for the district to shut the schools. Other threads got spawned w/one very active one (w/a lawyer with kids at the school finding out lots of info) that got deleted. IIRC, it turns out there were (IIRC) 3 dads and 2-3 of them caught COVID-19. IIRC, at least 1 of those was a coach for something at the school and 1 of those died from COVID-19. I don't have all the details committed to memory since the thread got deleted and I didn't participate (don't care much as I have no kids).
People were all up in arms about how the district communicated it, left it vague (e.g. "extended" member), didn't shut down schools and people were concerned about sending kids there where they might bring COVID-19 home, sicking or killing family/community members. I only have fragments from emails and memory.
I also just got a push alert about https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-funeral-home-morgue-bodies.html which I haven't read yet but it referred to: “The death rate is just so high, there’s no way we can bury or cremate them fast enough.”
At the height of the outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes — more than 800 per day, or four times the city’s normal death rate. And though the daily toll has recently slowed, hundreds of bodies are still emerging each day from private homes and hospitals.