This CDC thing about a small minority of the COVID deaths being among previously healthy individuals? A few thoughts.
First, we already knew that SARS-CoV-2 is ruthlessly Darwinian in its assault on human beings. Our responsibility in the battle with COVID is overwhelmingly to protect people who are vulnerable.
Second, this is true of almost every fatal disease. Cancer, heart disease, strokes, certain forms of trauma. Some violent deaths (e.g., suicide, homicide) disproportionately affect the young and healthy, but almost everything else affects people who have other health problems.
So if you want to dismiss a disease because most of the people who die from it have other health problems too, then you end up deeply (and blindly) nihilistic to the point of complete absurdity. Almost no disease would be fatal anymore by this logic.
Third, look around your family and friends. What CDC is talking about is not people who are on hospice and already actively dying. They're talking about people with a couple medical problems too. Most people know lots of these people, many of whom have
decades more of life. So pretending that someone who had 15 more years of life and dies just after they get COVID from complications of COVID didn't die of COVID somehow is grossly wrong and incorrect.
Fourth (this is last but not least), as a religious person I'm horrified by the notion (implicit and sometimes explicit) that we ought not to care about deaths of vulnerable people. Feels like the opposite of ~ three millennia of consistent teaching in Abrahamic religion.
