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As it stands today, the United States has 45% of the world’s coronavirus cases while being only 4.25% of the world’s population.

The first confirmed coronavirus death here was on March 1 in Washington state (experts suspect others occurred before then, but were not diagnosed as coronavirus related). In two months we have seen over 70,000 Americans die of COVID-19.

At the same time, the number of Americans who filed for unemployment compensation at the end of April had reached 26 million, far more than during the height of the economic crisis of 2009.

In short, as someone has said, we have two pandemics hitting us at the same time, one having to do with health and the other having to do with jobs.

Donald Trump and most Republicans believe we have to make a choice between health and wealth (for rich people) or, more accurately between health and jobs for most people.

As I have said before, it’s a false choice that is now leading to unnecessary carelessness as businesses open up that will likely make that false choice a fatal one.

The local Ace Hardware store I have patronized for the past 22 years is very busy now that the weather is turning warm. The other day I went in to get some lawn mower parts I needed and was immediately struck (and upset) by the fact that not a single person working was wearing a mask.

Since masks are for the protection of others more than those wearing them, it seemed obvious to me that the store manager has little concern for the health of the customers who keep him in business. Indeed, I found his careless disregard for the virus threat was appalling.

Naturally, I made it a point to ask him why he was willing to put customers at risk. He said he gave his employees a choice about wearing a mask Because most of them are young they, of course, chose not to wear one. He also said he was washing his hands several times a day. I was dumbfounded by his dumb answer.

The good thing, though, is that people like the store manager are a minority. Last week a PBS poll found that 65% of Americans thought it was a bad idea for people to go back to work; 80% said restaurants should not open for customers to come inside; 85% did not support opening schools; and 91% were still opposed to large sporting event gatherings.

No wonder only 32% trusted Trump’s leadership in regard to the coronavirus.

Yet the push to reopen everything is moving right along, highlighting once again just how divided we have become as a nation.

The only constant in this tension of choosing between living and making a living is the coronavirus itself.

It is here, and apparently is here to stay for a long time, which means that what we do matters. What we do will affect how far and how fast the virus spreads. If we don’t realize that, the future could very well turn out to be far worse than you or I have yet to imagine.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert here at the University of Minnesota, believes “herd immunity” is an inevitable prospect given the time it will probably take to develop a vaccine.

“Covid-19 will go away eventually in one of two ways,” he wrote in a Washington Post March 21 op-ed. “Either we will develop a vaccine to prevent it, or the virus will burn itself out as the spread of infection comes to confer a form of herd immunity on the population. Neither of those possibilities will occur quickly.”

So how many people will have to get the virus before herd immunity becomes possible? Some 60% of the U.S. population, he says. That is 198 million people.

Think about that for a minute. There are some 1.2 million cases of the coronavirus right now and Osterholm is saying another 197 million of us will get it unless a vaccine is developed first.

Even worse news is that he says if 198 million Americans get the virus, that will produce around 1.6 million deaths.

I find those numbers mind-boggling. Over 70,000 deaths that have occurred right here in the United States already seems unbelievable to me. But over a million and a half?

I cannot even process that possibility, but apparently Donald Trump can. He is determined to put the economy back in gear. Some 198 million cases of the coronavirus and over a million and a half deaths is a risk he is willing for the rest of us to take.

I say the rest of us because he doesn’t have much to worry about. He and his family are well protected against the virus. It’s the rest of us who have to worry, which is why the overwhelming majority of us don’t want to choose between living and making a living.

We prefer the country to use caution rather than throwing it to the wind.

We want to slow down the spread of the virus with social distancing as businesses open that is real instead of the pretend social distancing we are seeing at places like Ace Hardware, the meatpacking plants around the country, in parks and on beaches.

Real social distancing at work and in leisure settings can continue to slow down the spread of the virus and continue to save lives until a vaccine is developed.

In short, racing toward herd immunity that will kill one and a half million of us is unnecessary, if we go back to work in safe ways.

Trump, of course, isn’t concerning himself with stuff like that. He has to do whatever it takes to try to save his job, even if he kills you and me in the process.

So here’s the deal for all Americans. Our only hope lies in a quicker than usual development of a vaccine because we have a President whose words and actions show quite clearly that he doesn’t care whether you and I are dead or alive.