COVID

COVID Essay…

COVID and the NBA

10/3/21

Facts:

On 3/11/20 the NBA shutdown for COVID for 4 months, then returned to a bubble for 1 month of training camp and the final 8ish games of the regular season. Then another 2 months were played in the bubble for the playoffs. They then had an off-season and a new 72 game regular season (10 less games than normal) that was played in front of no fans (or extremely limited fans with restrictions). Then 2 months of playoffs. Then another off-season. Today (tomorrow for most teams), 10/3/21, is the start of the 3rd NBA season impacted by COVID.

Despite over 6.2 billion doses of the vaccine administered worldwide, there are more daily confirmed cases of COVID than anytime during the NBA shutdown or bubble. Rates are an at all-time high in Maine, Alaska, Kentucky, Idaho, Montana, Washington, West Virginia, and other states. Rates are trending down in less than 20% of states.

Conjecture (infused with facts):

Flattening the curve destroyed more lives than letting the virus run its course. It slowed the spread of immunity. It allowed time for variants to arise. It killed more people overall (including, or not including, suicides). It likely doomed economies (and work ethics) for decades to come. Even for the very old/sick/weak/predisposed individuals that were “helped” the most, almost all of them would have been dead by now anyway, and the restrictions prevented many of them from seeing their loved ones on their death bed. Years of education and normal

social and physical development were disrupted and compromised. Overall health and long-term life expectancy may be/go down due to less activity (including avoiding hospitals) for 2 years.

In Japan more men died by suicide than from COVID. That’s something I predicted to my staff before the initial shutdown. I purchased “SteepenTheCovidCurve.com” at the beginning of the pandemic, but I never developed it. I apologize to the world for not doing more.

Besides the well explored “Sunken Cost Fallacy,” I’ve noticed a tendency in people (including myself) to have trouble admitting mistakes. The most important part of admitting a mistake is it allows you to start correcting it, instead of digging a deeper hole. Maybe it’s time the world admits that we made some mistakes during this pandemic. When we first heard of this contagion in late 2019, we were told 100% of people died from it and there is no known treatment. We assumed it targeted everyone equally. We’ve known otherwise for a long time. We have masks and vaccines plentifully available. Despite that we’ve changed our reaction to this virus at a snail's pace. We’re dooming the 99% to (at best) help the sickly 1% (most of whom already outlived the average life expectancy, as the median age of death from Covid is in the 82.4 range). There’s an interesting conversation to be had in comparing that 99:1 ratio to economic policies and whom they hurt/help, but at least with the economic policies there is no argument that at least 1% actually benefit.

(Mic drop)