Our benefactor writes:
Well, we’ve crossed the one million cases threshold, with estimates of 3x to 5x that number of actual cases in the population. We’re about to cross the 60 thousand deaths threshold. NYC’s recent restating of their deaths upwards by over 30 percent to 40 percent due to analysis of normal death rates this time of year is also indicative of under-counting.
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Zachary Smith
On Wednesday I made drive to a not-too-far-away town to deliver a bottle of medicine and a bit of tasty food to a shut-in. Being already out, I took along a good mask, baseball hat, gloves, and windbreaker for my first in-store shopping in several weeks. Many, and perhaps a majority, of people here are now wearing masks. I didn’t see any older people wearing them badly, and I didn’t see very many younger ones wearing them properly. Shelves are slowly beginning to get refilled – I was able to get some facial tissue for the first time since all this started. I’m beginning to get worried about what I’ll call a “rebound” effect. Two people I know who were scared to death a couple of weeks ago are getting positively frisky about wanting to go out again. Both are extremely ‘brittle’ in the sense of Covid-19, and all I can do is chant No No No. Not Yet!
I don’t understand why stores which open don’t have up a sign saying No Shirt, No Shoes, No Mask, No Service.
Zachary Smith
A person looks at blog posts like this one and every day the numbers are higher. Some days a little higher, and some days a lot. Then you see a headline like this one: Covid 19 coronavirus: The countries with no cases – still
The latter story isn’t too remarkable – they are mostly places like tiny isolated islands or where record keeping is pretty shoddy. But now your attention is on places very lightly touched by the Virus, and you think of stories like this:
Inside Donald Trump and Jared Kushner’s Two Months of Magical Thinking An alternate title could be Lazy Florida Man hands US Presidency to corrupt and clueless Son-in-Law.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/donald-trump-jared-kushners-two-months-of-magical-thinking#intcid=recommendations_default-popular_b7c0f676-8d8e-47df-a2a8-df14268c27ba_popular4-1
Perhaps Jared will get a blanket Pardon from his daddy-in-law. If not, I’d predict he will move to the Apartheid state and never return.
RobotPliers
Zachary Smith:
I’ve seen similar sentiment online, that it’s not as bad as we thought, that we’re coming off peak, that we can start re-opening soon. It’s nuts.
People, even some very smart people I follow elsewhere, are being fooled by exponential distributions. Unless you’ve completely eradicated the virus, you’re either on the slow buildup, the quick rise, or the modest tail-off. People are seeing the quick-rise to tail-off (lockdown) of major metro areas and comparing that to places where it hasn’t happened *yet* and concluding that the virus isn’t a problem in those places. But, absent lockdown, testing, and aggressive quarantine, those places are on the slow buildup.
jessica
I knew this would happen, southern states would open too soon, deaths would increase, and they would deal with it by covering up the deaths. So the dead become the disappeared, not even counted. All so that they can continue with “opening up for business is working great, our count hasn’t gone up that much, never mind the piles of bodies and mass graves”.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/
I’m not saying it can’t happen even in non-southern blue states. I wish I had an “it can’t happen here” nonchalance about blue states. Sadly, I don’t entirely. But that it would happen in the south was almost a sure bet.