I don’t really get caught up in conspiracy theories. But I like to analyze things and connect the dots. So I came up with a strange theory about the Covid-19 Coronavirus. I was listening to a podcast of “Hidden Brain” about population, called The Bomb That Didn’t Explode: Why Our Fears About Population Growth Didn’t Come True. For most of my adult life, social scientists pushed the theme that over-population causes problems for the world and that pretty soon, we would be in trouble. Anyway, in this podcast, the author of the research explains that it didn’t happen,
“We actually thought that the maximum world population was going to hit about 24 billion by the end of the century,” says Sarah Harper, a professor of gerontology at the University of Oxford. The fear was that if people didn’t control population growth, war and disease would.
Harper claims that the population explosion didn’t happen for several reasons. People started to have fewer children for one thing. But as I was listening, she began to explain the downside of fewer children being born, with fewer young adults working to pay taxes and the cost of taking care of old folks. So we have a generation of centurions coming up — soon people will live to be 100 years old. Supporting the elderly is a monetary cost, a time cost, and an emotional cost. Plus, older adults do not usually contribute to society. Instead, society must support them.
I then thought about how this Covid-19 targets the very old — especially those in the long-term facilities. The virus seems to be a population control method of unburdening society with the aged. For example:
Across the United States, about 79% of coronavirus deaths have been people 65 years and older, according to the National Center for Health Statistics data submitted between the beginning of February to the beginning of May. (Statesman)
The other high statistic for deaths is those with underlying health problems — another cost to society. I know, I know, I sound a little crazy. But the virus, the Covid-19, seems to be a virus that targets these people in our society. I just find that interesting. And curious. Of course, older people and those with health problems are probably more likely to die of any disease — be that the flu or pneumonia or falling an breaking a hip. So maybe not a grand conspiracy theory. And we do not really know how accurate the data is for deaths from Covid-19.
The herd immunity will definitely thin the herd. But I don’t think it will be that drastic as long as my 89-year-old mom is not included in the thinning! Here are some cool graphics:
https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death
Here is a cool graphic showing the stats of how many people die of various causes each day :
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-many-people-die-each-day/
https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death
