I interrupt the WORDS ON THE LINE series, "Improving Style Through Syntax", for a far more important reflection on the coronavirus (COVID-19). My intention here is not to provide COVID-19 updates or analyses, but to take a snapshot of how the virus is affecting our psyche from the perspective of a writer.
Let's say you were born on January 4, 1995, in New York City, and you have lived there all of your life except for occasional travel. You have learned to live with some remarkable tragedies, politics aside. You were in the first grade during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when four planes full of passengers were intentionally crashed, and the World Trade Center collapsed not far from your home, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead in their wake and $40 billion in insurance losses. You were in your senior year of high school when Hurricane Sandy hit your neighborhood on October 22, 2012, leading to nearly 300 dead and $70 billion in damage. And now, at age 25, you would have been in the workforce the past two-and-a-half years when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted as a health concern and disrupted business worldwide, likely causing thousands, if not millions, of deaths and trillions of dollars in lost revenue. As of this moment, the United States and many other nations are in a state of emergency and economies are shutting down as 145,336 cases and 5,416 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported, with exponentially more predicted. Indeed, as a 25-year-old New Yorker, you might understandably believe that catastrophes happen once per decade, as a young man told me this week.
Trust me: you are underestimating. Let's look at your great-grandmother, who was born was born, bred, and died in New York with a lifespan from July 4, 1900 to August 2, 1975. In her 75 years on this planet, she lived through the flu of 1918, which infected 500,000,000 (27%) and killed as many as 100,000,000 (5%) of the world population; World War I (1914-1918), which left 16,000,000 dead; World War II (1939-1945), killing 73,000,000; and some 50 famines, occurring almost annually, taking more than 125,000,000 lives.
As staggering as these numbers are, using Americans as examples smacks of historical unawareness. Those morbidity statistics pale in comparison to a man born and bred in Warsaw, Poland at the same time as your great-grandmother. He would have seen 6,000,000 of his 35,000,000 countrymen die in World War II alone (17%). If that man were a Jew, he would have been lucky to have survived the Holocaust, when 6,000,000 of 9,500,000 European Jews were executed (63%). A woman born and bred in Saigon, Vietnam, also on July 4, 1900, would have had great-great grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren all living in a constant state of war throughout their entire existence.
These statistics are sobering reminders not that we are so fortunate compared to generations past (which we are), but that we should remain vigilant throughout our lives. Yes, we need an excellent military defense system, but deaths by human-made atrocities are second to acts of nature—the tsunamis, monsoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, landslides, volcanic eruptions, droughts, famines, and, of course, viral and bacterial diseases. We also need to invest in an excellent healthcare defense system, one with enough medical professionals, ventilators, laboratories, and testing sets, and vaccinations. Global tragedies are continuous. We must be prepared. We must listen to people who know better than we do. We must realize that the planet changes every second. We must do the right thing by changing our behavior.
Let's say you were born on January 4, 1995, in New York City, and you have lived there all of your life except for occasional travel. You have learned to live with some remarkable tragedies, politics aside. You were in the first grade during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when four planes full of passengers were intentionally crashed, and the World Trade Center collapsed not far from your home, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead in their wake and $40 billion in insurance losses. You were in your senior year of high school when Hurricane Sandy hit your neighborhood on October 22, 2012, leading to nearly 300 dead and $70 billion in damage. And now, at age 25, you would have been in the workforce the past two-and-a-half years when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted as a health concern and disrupted business worldwide, likely causing thousands, if not millions, of deaths and trillions of dollars in lost revenue. As of this moment, the United States and many other nations are in a state of emergency and economies are shutting down as 145,336 cases and 5,416 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported, with exponentially more predicted. Indeed, as a 25-year-old New Yorker, you might understandably believe that catastrophes happen once per decade, as a young man told me this week.
Trust me: you are underestimating. Let's look at your great-grandmother, who was born was born, bred, and died in New York with a lifespan from July 4, 1900 to August 2, 1975. In her 75 years on this planet, she lived through the flu of 1918, which infected 500,000,000 (27%) and killed as many as 100,000,000 (5%) of the world population; World War I (1914-1918), which left 16,000,000 dead; World War II (1939-1945), killing 73,000,000; and some 50 famines, occurring almost annually, taking more than 125,000,000 lives.
As staggering as these numbers are, using Americans as examples smacks of historical unawareness. Those morbidity statistics pale in comparison to a man born and bred in Warsaw, Poland at the same time as your great-grandmother. He would have seen 6,000,000 of his 35,000,000 countrymen die in World War II alone (17%). If that man were a Jew, he would have been lucky to have survived the Holocaust, when 6,000,000 of 9,500,000 European Jews were executed (63%). A woman born and bred in Saigon, Vietnam, also on July 4, 1900, would have had great-great grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren all living in a constant state of war throughout their entire existence.
These statistics are sobering reminders not that we are so fortunate compared to generations past (which we are), but that we should remain vigilant throughout our lives. Yes, we need an excellent military defense system, but deaths by human-made atrocities are second to acts of nature—the tsunamis, monsoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, landslides, volcanic eruptions, droughts, famines, and, of course, viral and bacterial diseases. We also need to invest in an excellent healthcare defense system, one with enough medical professionals, ventilators, laboratories, and testing sets, and vaccinations. Global tragedies are continuous. We must be prepared. We must listen to people who know better than we do. We must realize that the planet changes every second. We must do the right thing by changing our behavior.
