An open letter to COVID-19 deniers

In case you’ve been under a rock or, I don’t know, hanging out in the Big Brother hot tub, then you know life has become … different. The global pandemic of COVID-19 has drastically changed the lives of millions. In Illinois, we now have a stay-at-home shelter. New York is on lockdown. Italy is seeing death after death after death. And yet, for some reason that will forever remain unknown to me, there are still those denying the seriousness of COVID-19. So, let’s have a chat.

I know coronaviruses have previously existed. Thanks to an interview I conducted back in February with Gregory Ruthig, associate professor of biology, I learned that SARS (2002), MERS (2012) and even the common cold are all coronaviruses.

In that same interview, Ruthig acknowledged that the way in which SARS and MERS were handled was through quarantine, something he said would come to be the ultimate way to handle this outbreak.

That was before it reached pandemic levels. This was when the U.S. had only a few sporadic cases. Now, there are over 50,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. alone and a bunch of college students are out on the beaches of Florida, Spring Breaking. They are blatantly ignoring the warnings of not only the CDC and the WHO, but the nearly 70,000 COVID-19 patients of Italy, the 80,000 patients of China and so many others.

There is an utter dismissal, by American social media users particularity, of the effect this virus is having on real people.

Instead, they draw comparisons between the coronavirus and the flu; they point to (outdated) studies showing that young people won’t be affected; they blame the media for over publicizing and overdramatizing this new illness. All of which is beside the point.

Let’s start with the defense of “the flu is worse.” According to NPR, “Data from China show that each coronavirus case seems to infect about 2 to 2.5 additional people.” The average flu patient, on the other hand, spreads the flu to only 1.3 other people. More data from China shows that 20% of COVID-19 patients have symptoms so severe they are sent to the hospital. That’s nearly 10 times more than the average flu patient.

Moreover, the idea that we shouldn’t be concerned about an illness simply because there are other illnesses that result in more fatalities doesn’t make sense. That’s like going up to someone with peritoneal cancer and saying, “Oh we’re not as concerned with your deadly sickness because this person over here has breast cancer and that’s just way more common.”

But really, whether or not the flu is worse than the coronavirus doesn’t mean everyone needs to stop thinking about the devastation this illness is wreaking, for the old and the young.

It’s not just that “young people won’t really be affected,” which isn’t entirely accurate. The World Economic Forum reports, “Of the more than 500 people known to be hospitalized, 18% were 45-54 years and 20% were aged 20-44 years.”

And on March 24, L.A. health officials announced what is believed to be the first death in the U.S. of someone younger than 18.

It all comes down to one simple fact: People are dying. As of March 25, Johns Hopkins University reports that 19,784 have died from this virus.

But I literally had someone tell me that’s not really a big number because “more than that have recovered.” Which, yes, of the 441,187 total confirmed cases of COVID-19, 111,933 have since recovered.

But more than 19,000 people have died. How can anyone sit here and say, “That’s not bad.” Those 19,784 people were people’s loved ones. Have we so fallen so far that 19,000+ deaths mean nothing to us because “it’s not that bad” of an illness that killed them?

No matter how few or how many people have died thus far, there is no legitimate reason to dismiss the severity of the global situation at hand.

People’s lives have been upended, governments are woefully underprepared and families are facing legitimate concern for the safety of their older loved ones. For myself, every time I leave the house to go to the grocery store or to pick up my father’s medications, I’m scared of being exposed to someone who thinks this is all a big hoax.

I’m scared that that person will, unknowingly, spread the illness to me which I will then pass on to my older immunocompromised father and grandfather, both of whom live with me and both of whom are in the target age range for experiencing the worst of the illness.

I’m terrified that someone else’s belief that they are invincible and therefore have the freedom to ignore the shelter in place or the concept of social distancing will result in the death of people I love.

As a global society, we should be concerned with the rapid spread of COVID-19; we should be engaged in trying to find a way to contain the virus, especially as the number of confirmed cases continues to climb. We should be doing everything in our power to stop the spread of this virus, even if it means putting our drinking games off for a few weeks. Doing so doesn’t mean people are “panicking” or “overreacting.” Emptying the stores of all toilet paper is overreacting. But staying calm and staying vigilant isn’t.

Paying attention to what the CDC, WHO and other trustworthy and verified medical outlets are telling us is vital to ensuring that the number of deaths doesn’t overtake the number of recovered cases.