Lunchtime pandemic reading.
Standard disclaimer: this is a roundup of informative pieces I've read that interest me on the severity of the crisis and how to manage it. I am not a qualified medical expert in ANY sense; at best I am reasonably well-read laity. ALWAYS prioritize advice from qualified healthcare experts over some person on Facebook.
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From the weekend talk show circuit.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb on the current situation: "Around the nation, hospitalizations and new cases continue to rise. So there's about 20 states we see a rising number of new cases Illinois, Texas, Maryland, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, have a lot of new cases on a daily basis. And so while mitigation didn't fail, I think it's very fair to say that it didn't work as well. As we expected, we expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we're just not seeing that. Well, this may be the new normal, we need to know what that looks like. And it's going to be a case where people who have comorbidities have conditions that could lead to a bad outcome, if they get infected are going to need to be very careful. That may be the future that we're looking at. You know, the challenges that if we see this slow simmer through this summer, maybe this summer is a backstop to spread, I think it will be but we see this sort of persistent 20,000 cases a day, maybe 30,000. But it probably comes down a little we see a persistent 1000 and more deaths a day. That's through the summer. But what happens when we come back in the fall and schools are back in session colleges are back in session residential college campuses, people are letting the guard down a little bit more people are back at work after an August recess. And then you can see this slow simmer explode into a new epidemic or large outbreaks. That's the concern that if we don't snuff this out more, and you have this slow burn of infection, it can ignited anytime."
Source:
One to two thousand deaths per day over the "summer slowdown" before we go full bore back in the fall? It is astonishing to me to hear people genuinely say they accept losing a Vietnam War every month, which is what 2,000 deaths per day works out to.
Raphael Bostic, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank on jobs reports. "And let me just say in terms of the numbers, I think we knew that the jobless numbers were going to be bad for March. They're going to be tough again this Friday. But I think the real question I think I'm focusing on is how many of these these jobs are going to job losses are going to be permanent, as opposed to those that are going to be temporary losses? We know that for many businesses, and for many families, they don't have six or seven or eight months of savings. Instead, they may only have one or two months of savings, which means we're getting about to the time when those savings are going to be depleted. This is why so many of the actions that have been taken have been so important, getting relief into families. And so what we're trying to do right now is understand To what extent is that really providing a service and keeping people away from those bankruptcies because it is not in our interest for those bankruptcies to happen. That will mean that much more of this is permanent and temporary, and we're going to do all we can to make sure that doesn't happen."
Source:
At the risk of being political and inflammatory, get real. There are millions of people in America who have zero savings. ZERO. Not two months, not a month, but zero. When you live paycheck to paycheck, and the paycheck stops, you're toast.
Expect waves of bankruptcies, business and personal, to hit the financial system hard because the federal government in America completely failed to estimate the size of the pandemic's impact. If you run a business, determine how near or far your company is from the financial effects that will ripple through the system. I can say for certain that every company will be impacted to some degree.
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COVID-19 was the #1 killer of Americans in April.
Source:
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It's not the flu. When was the last time the flu was a leading killer of Americans in any given month?
Expect to see this every month until vaccines and therapeutics are available.
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Total tests per 1,000 people, according to Our World in Data. The leading country? Iceland, by far, followed by Italy and New Zealand.
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-cumulative-total-tests-per-thousand?country=IND+ITA+KOR+USA+NZL+ISL+ESP+SGP+JPN+RUS
Testing is the only way out of the pandemic. New Zealand has contained COVID-19 almost entirely. So has Iceland. They have demonstrated that it is POSSIBLE to contain COVID-19 with technology and societal commitment. Every nation on earth COULD do this, if they had the resources and will to do so.
In the end, stopping the pandemic is about will, the will to do what is necessary. Some nations have done this amazingly well. Other nations have done the opposite. When this is all over, if you're thinking about where you might want to live your days, look to those nations who put the health and welfare of individual citizens above all others, and did what was right and necessary to accomplish those aims.
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Keep your eyes on CovidExitStrategy. As states end social distancing measures and begin opening up, it'll be instructional to see how the case loads change.
Source: https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/
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A reminder of the simple daily habits we should all be taking.
1. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home for any reason. Consider also spraying the bottoms of your shoes with a general disinfectant (alcohol/bleach/peroxide) when you return home.
2. Wear gloves and a mask when out of your home.
3. Stay home as much as possible.
4. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
5. Donate any PPE you can. https://getusppe.org/give/
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Common misinformation debunked!
There is no genomic evidence at all that COVID-19 arrived before 2020 in the United States and therefore no hidden herd immunity:
Source:
There is no evidence SARS-CoV-2 was engineered.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9