costs

i want to talk to you about the costs of opening everything up for business.

there are people right now who act like it's no big deal if 1 to 2 percent of us die, because that doesn't seem like a lot.

if a plane crashed and a few hundred people died, the news cycle would be all about that and we would feel like it was a national tragedy.

if there was a salmonella outbreak and a few dozen people were hospitalized, we would panic.


but somehow our government is trying to cast covid-19 as not that big a deal, and the resulting deaths as a price we ought to be considering to save the economy.

let's put this amount of death into perspective. the worst aviation disaster in history killed 538 people.

more people are dying than that every day in new york.

the fukushima tsunami in 2017 killed 2,129 people.

the number of KNOWN covid-19 deaths in the US yesterday alone was 2,174.

every time you heard about some disaster and heard the stories of the survivors or we read out the names of the dead, do you remember how shaken you felt?

do you remember how much we mourned after 9/11? how we dropped everything and went to war about it? a war that is still not over?

more new yorkers have died from covid than were killed in 9/11.

over 34,000 people are dead in the US alone, and we're not done dying. we're a month into what is likely going to be two years' struggle.

i'm not staying home because i'm afraid to die.

i'm staying home because i am afraid of being the disease vector that kills people.

taking care of yourself and your neighbors is maybe the bravest thing you're ever going to have to do.

do NOT allow anyone to tell you it's no big deal. do NOT allow anyone to suggest in your presence that the lives of your neighbors are worth less than the profits of walmart.

do you remember, after 9/11, the solemn reading of the names of the dead? we should start doing that. it should be compulsory listening for people who are angry because they can't get their hair done.