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| Part of sign urging visitors and those feeling sick to delay seeing residents. 3/12/2020 dwm photo |
Almost constantly, it seems, the various forms of media have warnings or suggestions on how to avoid or deal with symptoms of the world-wide outbreak.
Skeptics point out the regular flu is actually killing more people than COVID-19, but the mortality rate for Coronavirus is worse than the flu. Unlike the flu, there is no vaccine and no cure for it.
But lets back the camera out from a close-up on 2019-nCoV to our lives in general.
For the year 2017, according to the National Safety Council in a story by the New York Times in January 2019, Americans were most likely to die of heart disease (a one in six chance) or cancer (one in seven). An Opioid overdose kills one in 96, which is worse than our odds of dying in a car accident, one in 103.
It indicates we are actually more likely to die doing something ordinary, like falling down the stairs, then being struck by lightning.
Unless you self-isolate, we are more likely to be killed driving to or from work than catching something from a coworker or customer. I'm still driving, how about you?
When a passenger plane crashes, it creates big headlines, and send shivers down our spine with concern about our next scheduled flight. One in 556 people in a pedestrian versus vehicle accident die - more likely than dying in a motorcycle crash.
As we go about playing our part in the game of life, risk is at its core. Dressers can fall on children. Vending machines can the person trying to shake it into giving up their pack of Twizzlers. Even taking a bath can be deadly if a plugged in appliance falls in with you (my grandmother was blessed to survive such an accident when she was a young adult).
Speaking of my grandma, her brother died during the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918.
Fear and panic are not our friends - all they do is fill our closets with toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
Washing your hands is excellent advice no matter what illness is working through the office. So is buckling your seat belt and getting rid of tripping hazards around the house.
We measure risk through our own lens.
I'm not a swimmer and nearly drowned twice earlier in my life; for me it seems like a big risk to jump in the water. On the other hand, I enjoy long-distance bike rides over county roads.
You might crave the opportunity to jump in a lake, but avoid riding across town.
COVID-19 is a risk, a big one from the looks of it right now, just like the rest of our life.
Spring arrives tonight at 10:49 CDT - which is when the vernal equinox blog appears.
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