My cousin got COVID. He's a lawyer and judge, and had been going in to the office periodically which is probably where he contracted it since his law partner had it too. We only found out when the rumors started going around the family and after calling the likely hospitals he was a patient at Clara Maas. Luckily, even though he's about 72, he was released after 5 days with supplemental oxygen and is recuperating at home.

When people say this is a hoax or overblown I have the urge to punch them in the throat and stand over them asking "How do you like not being able to breathe?" Ok, that's an over-reaction and I would never actually do it, but the list of dumb things I've heard about the virus makes me very, very angry. The sheer stupidity of the American people absolutely baffles me when all evidence runs to the contrary of what they're saying, just by looking at the international nature of the virus and the numbers of people who have been affected.

I also have a particular aversion to downplaying this since I've been on a ventilator, and let me tell you, you want to be unconscious if it happens to you. Besides the pain and panic of mechanical breathing, my lungs were recovering over a week later and I was only on it 13 hours, so I can't even imagine what days or a month on a ventilator would do to you. Granted my experience was twenty years ago but I can't imagine that the technology has advanced that much more.

There will be books written, studies done and retrospectives of all kinds in terms of how this virus happened, the sociological, economic, and epidemiological consequences, and hopefully something can be learned for the next time so that we don't botch the response again. This is a time period to read about, not live through, but we aren't lucky enough to choose that. I'm sure those who lived through the Great Depression and WWII said the same. Endure. Continue. Protect where possible, mitigate elsewhere, and hope that there will be better days.