Forgetting the Past

William G. Hoy
Baylor University

On the April 14, 2020 episode of the CBS hit drama NCIS, naval investigators Ellie Bishop (Emily Wickersham) and Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) interviewed a 95-year old Pearl Harbor veteran who quizzed the two. "When was the attack on Pearl Harbor?" he asked and neither could give a date. "How many died on the U.S.S. Arizona?" he asked more fervently, and again, neither could provide a number. "Then bring in the old Marine with gray hair; I'll only talk to him," the older man demanded.

In my clinical faculty role at Baylor, I teach History of Medicine--and I know a little of the older veteran's pain. Many of my young students have little sense of the specifics of what has gone before and when it happened, a point I take as dangerous for the culture in general. As George Santayana wisely reminded us: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Throughout the current Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, we have heard the terms unprecedented and extraordinary used more times than anyone could count. But is it really? Have we forgotten that just seventy years ago, 405,000 American soldiers died, mostly young men in the prime of life? And this was a small sum compared to the six million Jews who died at the hands of a maniacal regime called Nazism and the 70 million others who died from military action, disease, and starvation around the globe? Did you read that number: 70 million from a population that is one-third of today's global population. To approach the mortality numbers of that six year period, Coronavirus will need to kill 200 million. The wildest public health models don't get us there.

Please don't misunderstand me; this is a serious health issue. But it is not unprecedented. One million people die of malaria every year and 1.3 million more by tuberculosis. COVID is frightening, perhaps in part because of the way we are told it kills. In health care, we have euphemistic names for this condition like dyspnea and air hunger but lay people are more honest in their assessment: gasping for breath, dying alone in an ICU bed hooked up to a ventilator. And each time the media shows us another story with a name and a face, the fright becomes more personal and more palpable.

But those are stories, not facts grounded in the data. If current models are close to correct and somewhat fewer than 65,000 Americans die by August from COVID-19, that will increase our total number of deaths this year by about 2.5% and will place COVID-19 at about the # 8 cause of death in the U.S., coming in at about 10% of the number of Americans who die every year of heart disease and just higher than the number who die most years from influenza/pneumonia.

So what do we do? Calm down and compassionately care for others. Smile with your eyes when your mouth is covered by a mask. Stay physically distant but not socially removed. Take more time to talk instead of text. Meditate, pray, read scripture. Use the best means of virtual connection we have but do not forget nothing takes the place of a warm hand and a beating heart sharing a space with another.

And remember. Remember that there are dozens of people in our own circles who are scared to death right now. There are hundreds around us who are isolated, alone, depressed, and anxious. And what we know from every public health study ever conducted is that those conditions kill wildly also.

Comments

  1. Bill, this is so well said and so beautifully puts things into perspective!! Send it in as a letter to the editor of your local paper too! :-) Miss you, my friend....

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  2. Bill, I hung on every word you wrote. You are exactly right and we need to hear you on Fox News broadcasting the truth. This puts the pandemic issue into perspective. Thank you for taking the time to write this and share with others.

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