Our encounter with the coronavirus/Chinese Virus/Wuhan Flu/COVID-19 is still full of known unknowns. Much of our risk analysis is based on extrapolating numbers. And we’ll see how those extrapolations hold up in New York this week.

New York City’s coronavirus death toll soared into the triple digits Monday night, with 125 people dying from the illness, city officials said.

The number represents an increase of 26 city fatalities since Sunday night.

Since Monday morning the number of coronavirus cases in the Big Apple jumped from 12,339 to 13,119, according to City Hall.

There is a debate that ought to be had about the calculations and extrapolations. Medium’s decision to shut down this debate is deeply unhealthy. 

There’s also a debate to be had about the balance between the economy and coronavirus risks.

No one seriously argues that money is more important than human life. The issue is not human life vs. a portfolio. That’s the Left’s false choice. The economy isn’t some hypothetical Wall Street tycoon, it’s the hundreds of millions of jobs that make up the economy, that feed into each other, and keep the country going. Some of those jobs are replaceable. The entire social network isn’t. And it can’t be suspended forever or subsidized forever either. And it it goes, that will also end up costing a lot of lives, not tomorrow, but it eventually will.

A look at the opioid epidemic and the national suicide rate are a small sampling of what we’re looking at.

There is a balance between different kinds of risks and on both sides there are some of the same variables, a healthy society and human life.

A serious debate would begin by acknowledging that.

Nobody is disposable. Everybody’s life matters. Nobody’s life should be sacrificed to abstractions. As we gather more numbers, we’ll have a better sense of what the risks are.