OK this is a *very dark* thread in response to people saying it's time to reopen America, and they're not afraid, and you're more likely to be killed in a car accident, freedom, blah blah blah. Please don't read this if you have to go out to work at an essential job.

COVID is now the most common cause of death in the United States. You're now more likely to die of COVID than anything else. If we reopen America too soon, you or someone you know will almost certainly die or have a case that requires hospitalization on a ventilator.

This is what that will be like. First the ventilator has to be inserted. It may be inserted surgically into your throat by opening up your trachea. If it's in your mouth, it goes down your throat and is taped to your face. You can't speak. You can't scream.

You may want to scream because it will feel as if you're being choked to death, and you may be disoriented from fever. You may, in your confusion and terror, try to tear the ventilator out. For this reason, you will be sedated as much as is safe.

You will have a catheter and you will shit yourself. If there's a shortage of nurses, you may be lying in your shit for hours. There's nothing pretty about this death.

If the ventilator isn't enough, you may be put on ECMO. 10% of people who are put on ECMO experience brain hemorrhage or stroke as a complication.

Even if you don't get brain damage from ECMO, brain damage is a common complication of COVID itself. So are heart damage, lung damage, and kidney damage. You may never recover completely, or it may take years.

You may think you're safe if you're young, and maybe you find you can not think about other people you'll infect, and the agony, severe disability and death you'll cause them. But many otherwise healthy millennials are dying of this disease.

But regardless, you will never really recover if you think you've given the disease to someone you love and they die this way. That's not a thing you can come back from. Others may also not forgive you, if they know you took deliberate risks.

Please imagine someone you love having brain damage and lung damage, but barely surviving. And that person knows you deliberately took risks and probably were the one responsible for their condition now. And all the people you know also know it. How do you live?

I understand financial fear. I've been broke for years at a time, and it's awful. It messed me up in a lot of ways. But I would go back to that in a heartbeat if the other choice were living with the guilt of killing or disabling someone with COVID-19.

In conclusion, there's a name for facing and enduring serious adversity to protect other people from pain and death. It's called courage. Let's all please try to find that courage in ourselves. The alternative is unthinkable.