How COVID-19 Coronavirus Could Save America

(Image Credit: Lucas Sankey/Unsplash)

Recently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that “Given a virus for which there is no immunity and no immunization, we have to understand that many people will be infected. The consensus among experts is that 60 to 70 percent of the population will be infected.”

While many are lambasting that as damaging fear mongering, it seems that the United States could be facing just such a doomsday scenario.

For many, the outlook on COVID-19 is looking bleak: Coronavirus could kill 5M Americans, in part because, without paid sick leave and nationalized health care, individuals will likely not cooperate with self-quarantine. I’ve written about that more here.

It’s a near certainty that millions of Americans will be hospitalized by the pandemic. (Image Credit: Sharon McCutcheon/Unsplash)

It is worth taking a pause to be thankful that this contagion has a fatality rate that is as low as it is — even a 5% or 10% fatality rate would cast a much darker shadow on the days to come.

While there’s little hope to be found in successful containment in America, there is great hope that this expose many of the flaws in our current systems, and teach us lessons while the stakes low, relatively speaking — imagine if the mortality rate was in the double digits.