Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
Nov. 5, 2020
By Bill McCann
Imagine a coastal chemical plant explosion that kills more than 1,000 people in a nearby town and a day later a mid-air aircraft collision kills another 1,000 in the air and on the ground. And the following day a train wreck and resulting explosion kill another 1,000.
The initial shock would bring the usual thoughts and prayers from politicians, followed by endless news coverage, investigations, grounding of aircraft, and crowded congressional hearings, with finger-pointing alleging that people died needlessly. We might erect memorials to those tragedies, like we did for the nearly 3,000 people murdered by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.
Last week more than 1,000 people did die needlessly in three consecutive days Oct. 27-29 and most folks probably didn’t know. It was lost in campaign political news and the latest antics by President Donald Trump. The cause of the deaths was the COVID-19 disease. No, it hasn’t magically gone away as Trump promised. But apparently it has become old news. After all, the president and his enablers keep saying we’ve turned the corner on COVID-19. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has done nothing to halt its resurgence nationwide. In fact, Trump and his allies have made the situation worse by regularly lying about it.
On Oct. 29, the president’s doofus son Don Jr. said COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have dropped to “almost nothing.” Tell that to the friends and families of the 1,041 people who died of COVID-19 that day, according to the pandemic tracker Worldometer. Tell it to the worried friends and families of the 101,461 new cases reported in the U.S. on Oct. 30. It was a record daily high. Tell it to the worried friends and families of the 579,000 people in the U.S. who tested positive for COVID-19 last week. Tell it to the grieving friends and families of the nearly 6,000 Americans who died from the disease last week and the more than 236,000 who have died in the past nine months.
Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of health care workers, first responders and others who have been struggling firsthand with a resurgence of infections in 47 states, including Texas, which is leading the nation with more than 960,000 COVID-19 cases, according to the worldometer. Texas has the second highest COVID-19 deaths in the nation with nearly 19,000 reported.
Most of us have family members, friends, colleagues or acquaintances who have faced COVID-19 directly or indirectly. Several of my friends have had the disease. Fortunately, their cases were not serious. But two former colleagues died. A family member recounted a chilling story of a colleague who spent weeks fighting off the disease in the hospital. A close friend reported several cases, including two deaths, at his Austin senior living facility. During a call to a local service company last week, a staffer told me that several employees contracted COVID-19 this summer, seriously threatening business operations. Two employees were hospitalized.
Still, the occasions when I venture out I see people in stores without masks. Medical experts say masks help prevent the disease spread. Some maskless people seem to be playing a political game of COVID chicken, defiantly daring someone to challenge them. At a Bastrop County election ballot board session last Saturday, it was easy to tell the Democrats from the Republican board members. The Democrats (and county election staff) wore masks. Several of the Republicans removed their masks, even when working close to others. One didn’t use a mask at all.
I wear a mask because it is a sensible, caring thing to do. Is it that important for some folks to make a political statement by going maskless because their president does? Is it a defiance of science? Or do they just not care about others?
