By Randy Rossi -
Those of us who have lived in this great country for sixty five or more years are absolutely stunned to see how far we have fallen in just a few decades. We remember hiding under our desks at school in 1962 to practice nuclear bomb survival techniques during the Cuban Missile Crisis and then going out for recess to play and have fun. We faced the very real chance that millions of Americans could be wiped out by the Russians in a nuclear war, yet we lived our lives as normal and enjoyed life and had fun. Today we have a nation hiding in their homes because there is a 1% chance that you could die from the Coronavirus if you are unlucky enough to catch it. And if you are under the age of 50, the odds of catching and dying from the Coronavirus are less than 0.00025 which is a little higher than the odds of being hit by lightning. You are almost as likely to die in a car accident then you are to catch and die from the Coronavirus. Yet we are shutting down our schools, sports, theaters, air travel, cruises, and millions of jobs because of a 0.00025 chance of catching and dying from this Coronavirus. What has happened to us?
Where did I get this 0.00025 statistic? South Korea did the world’s deepest Coronavirus testing because they are right next to the source of the Coronavirus, China. They randomly tested 140,000 South Koreans and found that 6,000 of them had the disease (0.042) and 35 died from it (0.00025). Based on those statistics, the odds of catching Coronavirus are 0.042 and the odds of catching and dying from it are 0.00025. The odds of getting killed in a car accident are 0.0001. Should we stop driving cars?
By the time I was 20, I had worked 5 of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America during the summer which included farming, working at a foundry, cutting down trees, etc. That was thought to be manly at the time and I was proud to do it starting at age 13 when I drove tractors and trucks working on the family farm. As kids we rode in the back of a pickup truck with our dog and there were no seatbelts. We rode our horses without a saddle and without a helmet (I don’t think there were helmets back then!). There was a loaded gun by the back door in every farm home to shoot the fox in the henhouse or the rabbit in the garden and I learned how to shoot guns at the age of 9 at summer camp! All that was normal stuff and I got my first “assault rifle” at 13 (.22 semi-automatic) as did my friends which we used to hunt squirrels and rabbits as kids. Can you imagine that today? People would be freaking out! That was back when boys were boys and girls were girls which of course is very sexist today. We played and loved “dodgeball” back then which is considered far to aggressive and intimidating today at many schools. What has happened to us?
Back then we were respectful of adults and said “yes ma’am” and held the door open for women as a sign of respect. Today that is considered sexist! But even worse, we are watching an entire nation (and world) freaking out about the Coronavirus to the point that we have caused massive economic pain and destroyed the wages and jobs of millions of workers and shrunk the stock market and retirement incomes of millions of Americans by over $8 trillion. All because there is a 0.00025 chance of catching and dying from the Coronavirus, close to the same odds as getting hit by lightning. I remember living through the “Swine Flu”, MERS, Pneumonia, Tuberculosis, and other epidemics which had far greater fatality rates without anywhere near this level of hysteria. As a young kid I caught and survived “Scarlet Fever” which once had a 15-20% fatality rate and life carried on. Back then it was understood that life is dangerous and instead of hiding and crying about it, we followed the old British theme of “Keep calm and carry on” in WWII as London was being bombed every day by the Germans. In fact, those realities actually made life exciting and the goal was to be strong and independent, not weak and dependent like we are today. What has happened to us?
Today, I have actually seen grown up and intelligent adults freak out and weep about the Coronavirus even though there is only a tiny chance that they could die from it. At the grocery store, I couldn’t believe seeing that they were completely out of toilet paper, bottled water, hand sanitizer, and even meat as people stock up to survive the Coronavirus while the odds of them catching and dying from it are 0.00025. It is clear that we are becoming a nation of wimps and that is very dangerous. The world is and will always be a dangerous place. How did our ancestors survive the “Spanish Flu” which killed between 50-100 million people? How did they survive the Cholera plague which had a 50% fatality rate? Simple, they understood that life is tough and to survive you must be strong and resilient. Today, we are becoming weak and hysterical wimps.
