I keep waking up in the night with a surge of fear in my chest. I think I’m aging right in the mirror. It doesn’t help that I wake up two or three times a night before I finally get enough sleep.
So, I have questions that I’m afraid to ask anyone:
1) Since Mike has two different levels of risk, if he catches COVID-19 before the vaccine comes out, does the death rate for each add together to calculate his overall risk? The website I looked at said that the death rate is a person’s risk of dying if he catches the virus. Do they add together if he has more than one?
2) If everyone in my family catches COVID-19, do those individual numbers, the death rates, add together to tell me the risk of someone dying in my household? Do they?
I never studied statistics in all the math I took in college. I don’t know why. I passed four semesters of calculus and differential equations. I used math for physics, mechanics, and electronics. I really rocked that math, but I didn’t even get the basics of statistics. I remember doing something with dice in junior high, but it didn’t stick. All I know about statistics is that if you flip a coin seven times and get heads each time, the odds are still 50% that you’ll get heads the next time you flip the coin.
So my brain keeps trying to look for flaws in my logic as I try to figure out that combined death rate.
Because if all you do is add the numbers together, then there is roughly a 25% chance that someone in my family will die if we all get COVID-19. And that’s not including adding Mike’s age risk to his specific risk.
So as I’m trying to get back to sleep at 2:16 am, my thoughts move on toward my friends who’ve used the words hysteria and hype, and these are not MAGA types. I lie there, too angry to sleep. I realize that they’re not feeling the risk the way I am. If they have a kid, and they’re younger than Mike and I since we had our kid late, they’re only looking at between 1% to 2.8% combined chance that someone in their immediate family will die. That’s only if my math works the way it should and I’m not certain that it does.
Then, I realize why they aren’t all that worried the way I am. If I look at the person in my family with the least risk, me, I’m already three and a half times as likely to die than anyone in their family combined. If my math is right.
I picture four families like mine and figure that one of us is going to lose someone. If my math is right. They picture a hundred families and see only one family.
And then, I start thinking how those statistics go up drastically if I have someone in the hospital and the doctors are short of ventilators and they have to triage for the people most likely to survive. Then, because two of my family members are already high-risk, they would triage me out of two family members. Two. I only have two. It makes me think of the mothers that lost all of their sons in the Civil War.
That is the scenario behind my extreme response to this pandemic. This is why I’m so angry with my friends. I’m selfish. Yes. I am. This is why I do not want my family to get hit with COVID-19 when the hospitals are short of vents because in that moment, I would lose everything. Everything. I’m not sure I’d have the will to live if I lost them both.
Then, I think maybe Facebook will help distract me so I can get back to sleep. Scrolling through the pictures, I realize that I can barely stand to watch my friends post all the creative things they’re doing with all their free time.
Me? I can barely work a few hours a week. I can barely stand to go to the store and see people without masks and gloves.I have to imagine that cloud of breath around any person who talks to me. Even if we’re outside, I wonder if I’m upwind or downwind of them. I have to wonder about convection in the air. I have to come back home and disinfect each item in my groceries once I carry them inside. I don’t even let Mike or Nick help carry them in. Chlorox wipes for plastic, cardboard. I try to imagine how someone will pick it up. Soap and water for any container, like soda cans, that someone will put up to their mouths. Soap and water for fruits and vegetables with skins. Vinegar for fresh fruits and vegetables without skins. When I’m done, I have to clean the counters where grocery bags sat. Then, I put my clothes into the washer. I have to disinfect my phone if I used it as a list at the store. It’s exhausting.
My one percent friends aren’t doing any of that.
My one percent friends aren’t terrified at night.
I am.
Thank you for listening, jules