Or, hear me out, some of those in the media want to pretend that this is a disease that affects only old people so that we can re-open the economy and force “essential workers“ back to work, sacrificing their health for the economy while cutting off unemployment benefits while the business owners stay home & safe.
In other words, some people want to politicize what is in fact a medical issue. To pretend a pandemic isn’t a pandemic because “the economy!”.
And the fact is, we don’t know who this actually affects and how. We don’t know anywhere near enough about this pandemic to make sweeping judgments about who it affects and how.
there have been both old people and young affected. Healthy and unhealthy. A 40-something marathon runner dead in a week from it. A 90-something year old WWII vet with all sorts of maladies who survived it. Or a 30-something nurse I knew who passed away after a 5 week battle with it.
What we know now is so much different than what we knew at the beginning of this.
We see large swaths of elderly dying because they’re in homes with concentrated populations of people with age & other preexisting conditions. That tends to skew the numbers to where people say “see! It disproportionately effects old people! Young people have nothing to worry about”.
except now we know that’s just another false narrative. It will effect any large population in a small area & we still don’t know what underlying conditions make people more susceptible.
For a short time people blamed the obese - because that’s always an easy target for people who aren’t obese to blame victims for their own demise. Then we see an otherwise healthy, not obese 6 year old girl die & narratives go out the window.
what we do know is that
• anyone can get it
• it’s a disease that attacks blood vessels - which explains the broad spectrum of symptoms.
• A large number of deaths have not been attributed to COVID19 that should have been. Ex: Florida had the lowest COVID death rate of any state for a month or so, yet somehow 5000 people died of “pneumonia” in a 5 week period. The annual average was like 700.
• Strokes & embolisms are now being identified as a symptom.
• a % of those who get it will become much more sick than others
• a % of those people will require hospitalization
• a % of them will need a ventI later
• About 60% of that last group will die a horrible death.
what we do not actually know, but people think we know:
• what underlying factors contribute to who gets it & how bad
• what the long term effects might be.
it is that last bullet I’m concerned with for NFL talk. Because like chicken pox -> shingles, there may be some long-term impacts of this disease that we simply do not know about. And those might be in effect regardless of how severe someone’s symptoms are.
i’m not saying I know for a fact there will be long-term or recurring symptoms. I’m not a scientist & unlike some in here I won’t pretend to know how *anyone* who contracts it will recover, much less Their long-term prognosis.
all we know is that we just don’t know enough. And because of that, anyone who gets this, no matter how mildly, can’t be dismissed as “‘no risk”.
Does that mean you shouldn’t draft Zeke in dynasty? I have no idea. I probably would.
but I would do it knowing that there is risk. And that risk is greater than Zeke choking on steak or driving himself to work, because he does in fact have COVID19, allegedly.