I used to read the front page of the Stars and Stripes...

...when I was in Vietnam. I would check to see how many Americans had been killed and whether there were any from back home or any that I might have gone thru training with?

They were usually able to get all the names on the bottom part of the page. The names were important to me. I was one of the lucky ones.

I was there from September of '67 until April of '69. I was there during Tet of '68. There were a lot of people killed.

It was traumatic for our country. They build a black, shiny wall in Washington to commemorate those that gave their lives. Almost every family was touched in one way or another by the Vietnam War. When it ended, there were more than 58,000 Americans killed.

In the last two months, there have been more people killed by the virus than were killed in Vietnam during the entire war. That is a shocking statistic for such a short time span. But, it is more than just a "statistic". These are people with families and loved ones, just like those that fought in Vietnam.

For me, it does help to keep the threat in perspective. It is not a hoax. It is not the flu. It is not a common cold. It is a pandemic with no vaccine and no cure. Nobody knows how many will die before it is over?

However, we do need to try and save as many lives as possible. It is not wise to shrug at threats to our humanity. It is a challenge to keep our country and our freedoms, at the same time we are fighting this deadly virus.