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The Lost Art of Connecting Dots: Part Eight

The world has gone into Phase 3 Panic over the Delta variant of the coronavirus. I readily concede the fact that such a thing isn’t terribly surprising since empiricism, common sense, and intellectual curiosity died. Nevertheless, my first inclination when we find ourselves in the grips of any global hysteria (hello, climate change) is to ask four things: (1) What’s all the fuss about? (2) What will I find if I follow the money? (3) Who’s trying to control what or whom? (4) Why? Since Eddie and Sammy did a pretty nice job on climate change almost two years ago, I decided I’d take on the coronavirus all by my own self this time. They were both sleeping anyway.

As is my typical wont, I decided to start with big pictures. First, how many people have died from the coronavirus worldwide? That information was available courtesy of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which was good enough to supply this graphic:

Pulling out my trusty Sharp Compet VX-2126A calculator and using my trusty right index finger, I was readily able to determine that as of August 21, 2021, at 3:21 p.m. EDT, the global mortality rate from the coronavirus stood at 2.09 percent. Granting my subjectivity, I don’t know that I’d have started a global panic and destroyed lives, businesses, and national economies until the global mortality rate hit 3.2 percent. But what do I know? Anyway, to get my bearings and to establish some kind of relative scale, I decided to see what the global mortality rates from other maladies might be.

According to the World Health organization, there were 5,019,000 deaths from cancer in 2020. That’s 598,016 more deaths than were caused by the coronavirus. No panic? According to the World Health Organization, there were 17,900,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease in 2019. That’s 13,479,016 more deaths than were caused by the coronavirus. No panic? According to the World Health Organization, 1,300,000 people die from motor vehicle accidents every year. Okay, that’s 3,120,984 fewer deaths than were caused by the coronavirus. I’ll give you that one. But we still ought to consider taking away the keys, no?

The next thing I wondered about was the extent to which coronavirus deaths were related to age. After a little digging, I found a paper distributed by medRxiv that said this, in part:

In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has listed 12 comorbidities within the first tier that increase with the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 … 39,451 COVID-19 deaths were identified from four States that had comorbidity data, including Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York. 92.8% of the COVID-19 deaths were associated with pre-existing comorbidity. The risk of mortality associated with at least one comorbidity combined was 1,113 times higher than that with no comorbidity … The comparative analysis identified nine comorbidities with odds ratios of up to 35 times significantly higher than no comorbidities … comorbidities show surprisingly high risks of COVID-19 mortality when compared to the population with no comorbidity. Major comorbidities were enriched with pre-existing comorbidities that are common with increasing age.

After that, I headed over to Statista and found this graphic:

Well, now. Given what I’d learned so far, this doesn’t appear to be the best time to be elderly with compromising health conditions. On the other hand, if you’re in reasonably good health with a largely uncompromised immune system, you probably could have expended some of the energy you expended panicking on more enjoyable pursuits like … oh, I don’t know … living a normal life.

I’m Your Captain

Shortly after I started thinking about the relativities of global panic, government control, the legitimacy of and the reasons for either one, I happened to hear Grand Funk Railroad on the radio in my car. That got me to wondering about what’s going on closer to home. So, I did a little more digging. Given the fact that our esteemed governor, Uncle Ned “The Weathervane” Lamont just reinstated some mask mandates, I suspected my timing might be good. The first thing I found was this:

Whoa! That looks like a little spike there, for sure. Maybe there was something to all the hubbub after all. But the second thing I found was this:

Hmm … almost 1,000 new cases but no new deaths.

Mark O'Brien
Mark O'Brienhttps://obriencg.com/
I’m a business owner. My company — O’Brien Communications Group (OCG) — is a B2B brand-management and marketing-communication firm that helps companies position their brands effectively and persuasively in industries as diverse as: Insurance, Financial Services, Senior Living, Manufacturing, Construction, and Nonprofit. We do our work so well that seven of the companies (brands) we’ve represented have been acquired by other companies. OCG is different because our business model is different. We don’t bill by the hour or the project. We don’t bill by time or materials. We don’t mark anything up. We don’t take media commissions. We pass through every expense incurred on behalf of our clients at net. We scope the work, price the work, put beginning and end dates on our engagements, and charge flat, consistent fees every month for the terms of the engagements. I’m also a writer by calling and an Irish storyteller by nature. In addition to writing posts for my company’s blog, I’m a frequent publisher on LinkedIn and Medium. And I’ve published three books for children, numerous short stories, and other works, all of which are available on Amazon under my full name, Mark Nelson O’Brien.

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2 CONVERSATIONS

  1. Mark, I always love an article with a gentle sprinkling of facts. I agree, this pandemic has been “used” at various levels, as a political tool. This will continue. I am curious about the “end game”. We are already at restricted movement and tracking. Resource access is currently being played into the game. And, the money is running the hell out of here. So, will follow your dots re possible end game connections.

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