What is our end goal with Coronavirus?

What is feasible?

The question on everyone’s mind is What is the plan for the future?

With the likelihood that COVID will be in our lives for at least another year or two, what is the plan for the USA?

Is our goal to wait until we have zero reported cases? Till COVID-19's eradicated? Till we have a vaccine? Till every person's vaccinated? Or zero deaths? or even 1 death per/100,000 people?

The problem is, we don’t know.

I’m a planner. I like to think ahead or have things to look forward to. But I’ve been pessimistic since any plan I could make would be futile since there is no plan for COVID.

Like most American families. We did the right thing. We had been social distancing inside our home since February. We shut in, took the kids out of school, and complied with State rules. We wore masks inside and out. Crossed the street anytime we saw an older couple walking towards us.

We finally got tired of bunkering inside and we hit the road.

Rolling grass hills of Idaho. Long sunny days in eastern Washington. A scenic drive along Montana’s rivers. We passed towns with a population of fewer than 1,000 people.

But when we looked closer, if it wasn’t a big franchise restaurant or store. The doors closed. Boarded up. Small restaurants were only allowed to seat 6 tables inside and had long lines out the door.

It was sad to see small towns that depend on tourism caving in on itself. Closed indefinitely. Towns that will most likely never come back. Places that will become dependent on the state and welfare. They wanted to work but it seems now harder than ever to get anything done in the USA. We got to talk to people all around the and it seems like the average Joe and Jane's confused as well.

Regulatory rules prevent small businesses from thriving. Now public health violations are shutting down all other infrastructure.

Talking to people on the road, the first issue many of us point out. We are making our decisions based on the total number of cases (CUMULATIVE: not even daily average). Not the mortality rate.

We are making decisions about what a population should do, enforcing rules. But we need to do it while looking at ALL the data, Not fear. If I were a politician (thank heavens I’m not) I would be pretty scared if I saw the total number of cases in my state go up.

But going based off of the number of cases is the WRONG METRIC.

Depending on what graph you’re looking at it’s easy to make extrapolations and assumptions about the disease. But the disease isn’t the only thing we have to worry about.

The median age of death in the United States is 78, the median age of death for COVID is 81.

I’m not trying to disregard the 150,000 people who have died. Each life lost is terrible.

It seems like we are moving backward instead of forward. What we know about the virus and how to treat it is evolving. We now have better ways to treat it, we know how to keep safe the most vulnerable population. Yet the rules are becoming even stricter. Face coverings are becoming required even outside.

What is the best approach?

Is wiping out the virus worth it?

When realistically no country has truly eliminated the coronavirus?

(Check out Australia having a serge in cases after nearly eliminating it and are now back in lockdown?)