200,000

 The number of people who have died of Covid-19 reached 200,000 this weekend.

That’s according to Johns Hopkins and is considered to be an accurate, verified number.

Of course, a lot of people are good with that. Some people think that only old, already sick people are dying.

That’s not the case.

Doctors and nurses and young and old. Entire families in some cases. Moms and Dads and sons and daughters.

“The real death count is only like six thousand,” one woman said to me. “The rest died of other things and hospitals put it down as Covid so they could make more money.”

That’s the story going around.

It’s not true.

Every year there is a census of sorts that details the number and causes of death in this country.

We’ve had way more deaths here in 2020. That’s verifiable.

A fact.

I bring this up because on Sunday evening I saw a photo of a young woman. She had recently graduated from the University of Buffalo. She served as a doctor in Syracuse and then moved onto Houston.

She was helping others fight it when she contracted Covid-19.

She wasn’t old or sickly. The article did not give her age, but her photo had me guessing that she was in her 30’s.

She got sick, rallied a little, spent some time on a ventilator, and then she had a setback. 

She died during an emergency surgery.

Just one of the 200,000.

You know what’s worse to me than the anonymous people losing their lives?

It’s that millions of others are good with it.

Just the cost of doing business, right?

The idiot in charge spoke about ‘herd mentality’ recently.

He actually was trying to express herd immunity...

...a plan that would number the deaths in millions.

“Eventually it’ll go away,” he added.

How many deaths is acceptable?

If the number doubles to 400,000 (as it is expected to by 12/31/20), are you okay with that?

If it hits 600,000 or 700,000 by the time we get to the one year anniversary...

...will you just shrug it away?

Perhaps we need to hear more about the people behind the number.

We sat with my father-in-law for about an hour on Saturday night.

We watched him eat. He gave me a box of golf balls and asked me questions about how I’d been playing.

He spoke of his wife, who died in 2020, and we talked about all of his kids and his grandkids.

He’s 83 years old.

He wants to continue living.

We want him around.

What destroys me about all of this is that there are a whole bunch of people who don’t want to do the work to keep vital people here.

200,000 deaths?

Ah well.

To some it’s just a number.