Protecting Seniors: What's the Right path?

Protecting Seniors: What’s the Right Path?
By: Lt. Patrick J. Ciser (Ret.)

Let me ask a question: What happens after every mass shooting in America takes place? Being a school, movie theater, nightclub, or wherever, the liberal politicians and media go crazy screaming for gun control. Facts go right out the window when they insist that we take all guns away from the American people. Hell, there’s even a movement to disarm the police! What insanity, right? But what do supporters of the second amendment, like me, have to say? Don’t take guns away from law-abiding people that simply want to defend themselves and their families, but get guns out of the hands of criminals. Austere penalties, including years behind bars for felons using guns, would go a long way in accomplishing that goal.

This article, however, is not about the second amendment; it’s about overkill!

Enter the world’s 7th known coronavirus, COVID-19, aka, SARS-COV-2. When the first day of the first wave of restrictions came out, I wrote on social media that I thought we were attacking the problem backwards! The biggest reason for this is that this particular virus, by all accounts, spares the youngest among us (approximately 50% of swine flu H1N1 victims in 2009 were between 0-24 years of age). Think about it. Why close all schools and businesses and bankrupt the country when we simply have to look out for the oldest and most vulnerable, rather than the entire population?

Most people that are 65 and up are retired anyway, so keeping most of them home under quarantine would make the most sense. People of all ages can make their own decisions about whether they’d like to venture out or not, with no government control. If older people live with younger family members, perhaps they could block off a certain section of the house for themselves. Millions of retired folks live either alone or with their spouse in senior housing, senior communities, or even nursing homes. Our government, currently paying out trillions throughout this ordeal, could rent entire hotels throughout the country for a couple of months and have many seniors with nowhere to go stay there rent free for 30 or 60 days. Many supermarkets recently came up with the idea of opening in the morning, usually 7-8 a.m. exclusively for seniors. Night crews can sanitize shopping cart handles and certain areas of the store before the seniors arrive. This affords the seniors a feeling of freedom, and gets them out of the house or hotel for a while. Others with pre-existing conditions can also take it upon themselves to self-quarantine, and perhaps be eligible for a hotel room, if they fit certain criteria.

Protecting our seniors shouldn’t be just against the virus. Who’s protecting them from bankruptcy and their 401(k)s from hitting rock bottom? Who’s saving Mom and Pop’s store whose livelihood depends on their business? Who’s paying into social security while the country is shut down? When this is over, will those looking forward to retirement actually be able to retire, or did we kill their dreams? If people lose too much, will they become suicidal? There were many suicides when the stock market crashed in 1929. Additionally, the biggest driver of that crash was panic! Everyone tried to withdraw all of their savings from their banks at the same time, due to fear and hysteria.

From April 2009 to April 2010, 60.8 million Americans contracted the H1N1 swine flu, remember? Most people don’t. This led to 274,000 hospitalizations and killed roughly 12,500 people. Many young people, in the millions perhaps, would contract COVID-19 under my plan, and they then would be immune and no longer able to transmit it to their parents and grandparents. ALL pandemics “run their course,” even with the Spanish flu of 1918 (which didn’t actually come from Spain, by the way), and eventually petered out without a vaccine.

As a society, I believe that we simply have to build immunity to it. We’ve seen so many diseases come and go through history, such as avian flu H2N2, SARS, swine flu H1N1, MERS, and now COVID-19. So why all of the panic? Is it a sign of our times? First World can’t handle Third World problems? Could it be political? The way the liberal media has hyped this virus only caused absolute panic (and no toilet paper!), and is extremely irresponsible at best, and frankly, quite reckless.

Initially, we thought that the mortality rate for COVID-19 was between 2.4 -3.4%. However, the more people that are tested, the more that number will decrease; about 1.3% in the U.S., as of today. What if our estimates are wrong because of our lack of testing, and a million people in the United States already had and got over the virus? Many young people anecdotally reportedly were infected and thought that they simply had a cold. In a typical year, 30 million people in the U.S. of all ages contract the flu. In the 2017-2018 flu season, 61,000 people died from this persistent virus; this is typical of every year! We should expect COVID-19 to come and go.

When it comes to pandemics, it seems like the science of estimating the mortality rate isn’t much better than our crystal ball for hurricanes and snowstorms. When MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) hit the Middle East in 2012, we were told that it would come here big time! It didn’t arrive in the states until 2014, and it was only a blimp on the radar. Ebola was another scare that never really materialized to the degree that we were told.

Putting life (and death) into perspective: there are probably 50 things out there that could kill us, now there are 51.

Preventable deaths in the United States: #1 Smoking, 480,000 per year. #2 Obesity, 300,000 per year. Take care of yourself, get some exercise, eat some fruits and vegetables, and throw that pack of cigarettes away.