Because I listen to medical professionals instead of bogus memes and politicians
Easy there. I am sorry your wife is ill. I have two friends undergoing Chemo and they are terrified. I don't blame them. Their immune systems are compromised and they really need to avoid exposure if at all possible. Regarding the overcrowding in your local hospital, do you live in a state that banned the use of Hydroxychloroquine? Cancelling effective early treatments because Trump mentioned them has cost thousands of lives in this country. Once people end up in the hospital, especially the ICU, they are much less likely to recover. Early treatment saves lives. Google and FB are actively blocking access to studies and papers that don't agree with the current party position. In fact, it is difficult to find old opinions on the efficacy of masks for the healthy prior to the Wuhan virus made everyone crazy. Anyone with respiratory symptoms should self isolate. Everyone who is in a danger category should wear masks and gloves and hide out until they can get the vaccine.
I merely suggested that rather than listening to people who have an agenda (the media), you might want to do your own research. In some parts of the country, society is actually functional and in others it isn't. There is no proof whatsoever that lockdowns (at this stage of the infection) actually do anything. There are situations where isolation can be effective but not here and not now. Our real best option is herd immunity sooner rather than later. The vaccine will contribute to that except of course that the politicians are prioritizing people they deem important rather than the elderly and ill who are the ones in danger of dying from the virus. This is what single-payer healthcare looks like. Just ask people who have it. If they can't afford private care, they are likely to be shuffled to the back of the list because care is limited and so it is given to some less ill people over others who are more ill based on a committee's opinion. Even Canadians come to the US for healthcare. I have a friend from my days in Kuwait. They have socialized medicine in Kuwait and everything is "free". I can actually attest to that given we had an emergency when we were there and I had to take my daughter to get stitches when she cut her foot on a piece of glass while wading in the Gulf. It was free but the line was 4 hours long. To their credit, someone walking the line saw that she was bleeding and decided she was not in danger of bleeding out before she could be seen. My friend comes to the US at least four times a year to visit his doctors. So much for "free".
If you believe that "cases" = illness, then the media has done it's job. If you are in a danger category, please stay at home. If you are not, you might want to look at the statistics and see who actually dies from the Wuhan virus so you can better assess your danger should you be exposed. Last time I did the calculation, the OVERALL AVERAGE death percentage in the US was down to .199. The more people tested, the more people are found to be infected, the lower this death rate goes so it is getting "better" not worse as the media would have you believe. The flu kills on average .1 to .2 so the death rate from COVID is currently at the high end of an average flu season. If you break down the numbers by age, you'll see that people over 80 or with co-morbidities are in the most danger. Also, keep in mind that the CDC changed its instructions on how to classify deaths last March or April which artificially inflated the number of COVID deaths by their own admission in order to give more money to hospitals. Some states are restating their counts. Here's the link to the CDC website as well as a copy of the chart by age. As you can see by the numbers, people less than 65 represent ~85% of the cases but only ~19% of the deaths. But, hey, it's just numbers. The woke politicians in Mass are prioritizing the incarcerated over the elderly because apparently if you are a criminal, you're more valuable to society than a grandmother and so should get the vaccine as soon as possible.
CDC COVID Data Tracker
