Covid is not over. But people are so over it.
It’s still killing us. But the chance to kill it is long gone.
Over One Million Americans already are dead and buried from Covid. That is more than all the Americans killed on all the battlefields in all of our wars — combined.
Our readers may remember the PLI Newsletter warned of Covid 19 before there even was a State of Emergency. https://homeinspectionschool.info/2022/05/covid-is-not-over/ You read it here first. (We got some push back. “Why a public health article? You never do that.” True, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime killer that would upend real estate and our work for years.)
Then PLI pushed the Board to enact emergency policy to keep inspectors from losing licenses because they would not be able to get required CE during a Covid lockdown. The Ky Bd of Home Inspectors adopted PLI’s recommended policies at the March, 2020 meeting.
About 300 more deaths are announced each day now, on average. That’s a lot less than the top of the last surge, with Omicron, when there were more than 2,600 deaths a day. But today, cases are rising in nearly every state and hospitalizations follow. So far, deaths have stayed low, though, thanks to vaccinations and treatments.
Our hearts ache for all the families left behind. They face the immense sorrows of every death – and the tidal wave of deaths that submerged their own loved ones and the usual funeral services – on top of the stark Covid anguish that their loved ones died alone. The lucky ones got to wave tearful good-bye through glass windows, one-by-one.
Just as sadly, there will be no memorial in the Capito Plaza, despite the astronomical death toll. Lots of people just want to forget about it. So we publish here the now-forgotten, and brushed aside, memorials from the Governor’s mansion and the Capitol Plaza in D.C. This generation should never forget all those caskets. History will not.
We also cannot forget the ones left behind – the orphans, widows, the children missing grandparents and parents, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. The home inspector who lost five close family members in about a month. The several inspectors feeling guilty for bringing it home and infecting his family, and church. All of you know more of the stories. They are endless. No one is counting on the government to take care of them.
We will hold our tongue rather than speak of the unspeakable politicians and public health officials who humiliated themselves and let the nation down. It is enough to stick with the numbers. America – the beacon on the hill for the whole world – had a death rate higher than almost any other wealthy nation. If we had the same death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved. (The two nations are a lot alike. Both are democracies and the media age in each country is 38. About 86% of Australians live in urban centers compared to 83% of Americans.) But Australia is near the top of nations that protected life. America is nowhere near the top, with a death rate about 10 times higher than Australia’s. We lost our grip on any claim to The Best and The Brightest.
The bitter, unspoken irony is, of course, that the pro-death politicians who fought vaccinations had about 11 of their unvaccinated supporters dying for everyone vaccinated death. Since Steve comes from a family of doctors, we often heard doctors lament the patients who asked if it was too late to get vaccinated – as they were rolled into the hospital, never to come out alive. It was deeply saddening, even pitiable.
And now we live with the specter of “Long Covid.” We know inspectors who fog out in the middle of a job and have to sit it out in their truck. We know inspectors whose fatigue just will not go away.
Let’s hope we can do a better job loving our neighbor this time around.