A friend of mine made an innocuous post in these uncertain times

A friend of mine posted some of the most recent data from Johns Hopkins about the current pandemic. In the comments, people argued over whether the mortality rate was accurate or not. Some of the comments stating the mortality rate is lower than what Johns Hopkins reported seemed, to my mind at least, to be insinuating COVID-19/coronavirus/the situation that’s troubling all of us isn’t that big a deal.

I don’t really understand that.

We’re pretty much at 100,000 U.S. deaths. The number is likely to climb. Arguing about the mortality rate being lower or higher in some ways seems like a way to avoid actually grieving and bearing collective responsibility as a nation for what’s taking place. If you gave me the choice as an individual as to whether I am to contract the illness with the higher mortality rate or the lower one, then I’m obviously choosing the illness with the lower rate. That math and rationale, however, doesn’t work when you expand the hypothetical beyond the individual. If you ask a community whether it would rather be faced with an epidemic that has a lower death rate but more total deaths versus an epidemic that has a higher death rate but fewer total deaths, then that’s a much more difficult decision. That’s one of those dilemmas you read in absurd card games or in Gifted Education seminars…