We’re all getting frustrated and weary of the novel coronavirus. But it’s not going away anytime soon. The disease it produces in us — COVID-19 — is a slippery devil. And it’s still something of an invisible curse. It’s easy to catch it in crowds and close quarters. It shares symptoms in common with other ailments. An infected but asymptomatic person can spread it without knowing it. COVID-19 is a torture chamber nightmare for some people, and a relatively bearable unpleasantness for others. And it’s still impossible to predict who suffers excruciations and who doesn’t. The media leads with it but won’t go much deeper than surface statistics, which are, in themselves, terrifying. And now, the very simple methods of keeping large parts of our population free of it — masks and social distancing — have become objects of political hysteria.
What isn’t talked about very much is why catching it can be such a horror. The CDC estimates that 80 percent of the people who recover from it will do just fine. But the other 20 percent of the recovered will have debilitating side effects that could last for years and kill them in the end. And those who do die from it suffer a torturing experience, often paralyzed and on a ventilator.
Now more than 500 of us in New Mexico have died from it. And 92 percent of those are 50 years old and older. But nationally, COVID-19 is beginning to hit younger people who ignore simple precautions and congregate in defiant crowds.
And the terrible thing is that this coronavirus is not anywhere near burning itself out. It’s still just in the beginning stages.
It’s the roulette quality of COVID-19 that makes this all the more ghastly and troubling. No one, if they had a choice, would play Russian roulette with one bullet in a six-shooter. The odds of not getting a bullet in the brain are simply unacceptable, considering the cost of losing the bet with fate. The 80 percent recovery rate from COVID-19 is not something to bet on either, considering the organ maiming, dementia causing, suffocating death that’s far worse than a bullet if your luck has run out.
For those whom the wheel of fortune does not favor — any one of us at any given time — COVID-19 can cause crushing headaches, coughing jags that last for days, vast amounts of mucus and a struggle for breath, not quite like water-boarding, but close enough. There’s also the chance of having multiple little strokes that cause dementia, euphemistically described as a “new confusion.” Or a COVID-19 stroke could just outright kill you. Your gastrointestinal tract could get damaged and cause months or years of misery. If the infection gets to your kidneys, it could require you to undergo long-term dialysis. Your liver, and even your heart, could be compromised. Pneumonia could damage your lungs even if you recover. And there’s the increased possibility of getting blood clots. One particularly nasty development is a “cytokine storm,” where your immune system becomes overactive and begins attacking not only the COVID-19 but your own body as well.
Unhappily, recovering for some people is not very simple either. You could end up with a terrible, long-lasting fatigue, and you might not be up to speed physically for weeks and months. And if the pandemic spreads to half the population or more, or anything close, many people requiring special and expensive rehabilitation services will be out of luck because the American health care system is not any where near ready to deal with the massive numbers of COVID-disabled people.
Following public guidelines for sheltering at home, avoiding crowds, wearing face coverings and frequent and vigorous hand washing doesn’t completely limit the risk of catching this still mysterious monster illness, but it does put the odds in your favor. (It is estimated to prevent 60-80% of new infections.) And the truly horrendous potential consequences of catching this disease — as powerful and seemingly random as it is — are simply too terrible for any prudent, rational person to ignore. And this holds true both for yourself and for those around you. This is a disease you wouldn’t want to give it to your worst enemy — unless you’re a sadist — much less to the people you love.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Thank you for speaking the hard truth about COVID-19. I do not advocate living in fear, but ignoring the facts is just not acceptable. People need to wake up and take care—of themselves and others.