666,141
822,432,
Two interesting numbers.
Try to guess what they represent.
If you follow the news, you might have a clue that the second one is the most recent total of the number of Americans who have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago.
The first one isn’t as easy, but if you think a little about a number that might be an interesting comparison to the coronavirus death total, you might guess that it’s the total number of American combat deaths in every war fought from 1775-2019.
That includes the Second Opium War (1856-60, 12 dead), the Santo Domingo Affair (1904, 1 dead) and Operation Provide Comfort (1991-96, 1 dead) as well as the big ones.
The number is a little bit misleading because it only includes combat deaths. If you add in war-related deaths from bombings, massacres, disease, suicide and murder, the total is much higher — 1,354,664. In fact, until World War II, deaths from causes other than combat exceeded combat deaths.
So where is this leading?
Where indeed. Disease has historically been one of the great killers. The Bubonic Plague in the middle of the 14th Century is estimated to have killed somewhere between 75 million and 200 million people. More recently, AIDS-related illnesses have killed more than 36 million people.
But at least in First World countries, we have gotten much better about reducing disease-related deaths. That’s why what is happening in the current pandemic is so frustrating. If there is one thing that has been proven in all this, it’s that getting vaccinated lowers the rest of infection and/or death from COVID-19. Yet tens of millions of Americans are refusing to get the shots.
There appear to be two different motivations in this, both of them rather silly.
First are the people — mostly on the right — refusing for political reasons. They’re also fighting against things like mask mandates and vaccination requirements for things like schools and workplaces.
Second are the anti-vaxxers, who believe there is a downside to vaccinations that outweighs the value of the protection they provide. Of course, vaccination all but eliminated diseases like smallpox and polio in the U.S., to name just two.
Both types are examples of the tendency so many people seem to have these days to claim their individual rights matter much more than their societal responsibilities,
One could certainly argue at least in the current pandemic that with vaccines available for more than a year, catching the virus — or at least risking it — is a behavioral decision. The problem is that when they do catch it, they want the same medical care as everyone else.
So hospitals are filling up again and we’re approaching another crisis of medical availability.
The death toll clearly is awful and may eventually top a million, but most of those dying now are people who said it was their right not to be vaccinated or to wear a mask.
Yes, but it isn’t their right to infect other people.
That’s where their right to throw their fist ends.