I initially wrote: “There won’t be a Covid convo today … I just can’t even. I don’t know who or what to believe. I don’t know why a pandemic has become political (I get why as in how I just don’t get why as in chess). So, let’s focus on how we’re staying covidtained…”
But then I came across this article covering mental health and food security during this pandemic and thought it might be interesting to compare “infection” percentages…
Because I’ve been a stickler for data sourcing and continuity, let me clarify that what I’m about to do looks a broad strokes, comparing data that is not from the same data sets and can’t be standardized. Yes, I am extrapolating.
Nonetheless, from a five-day survey of parents across the U.S. run June 5-June 10 run by Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, an unknown sample size not broken down (as far as I know) by socioeconomic status, race, or age, top line results showed:
- 27% of parents reported worsening mental health for themselves
- 14% reported worsening behavioral health for their children
Whereas, if we are to suspend our mistrust of testing numbers (I have distrust the testing numbers, so I’m assuming you do too) and look at our own government’s reporting (again suspending the fact that our own president mistrusts this organization), the CDC says:
- 5,046,506 positive tests out of 52,942,145 tests shows 10% positive tests
- The number of positive tests in a state is not equal to the number of cases, as one person may be tested more than once.
So, the percentage of adults and children whose mental health is (self-reported) “infected,” that is being impacted by the pandemic, is significantly higher than the number of people actually infected (scientifically-reported) by the coronavirus.
Which brings us back to: is it worth it? Is everything we’re doing—putting ourselves into a recession, closing schools, forever changing the ways certain generations will grow up and socialize—worth it when the problem we’re combatting isn’t even as bad as the reality we’ve created in combatting it?
AND when we take into account that the infection “apples” we’re comparing to “apples” above are positive tests from which the vast majority of the population recovers without incident, the measures we’ve taken to mitigate a fatality rate that is well below 1% at even the highest estimates seems a bit overblown in comparison to the mental health impacts we’re creating.
Not a perfect argument, but point stands: I think we are buying into fear at significant cost to our personal and collective well-being.
Other convos: Week 19: Polarization. Week 18: the wrong convo. Week 17: the convo. Week 16: the rant. <–so we’re clear, there aren’t any before 16. I just ranted to my family and friends, not the internet.