TRUMP: "When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases." pic.twitter.com/tEX1uXQbmp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2020
"If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases" is a real Galaxy Brain take from a Very Stable Genius, the sort of brilliant public servant who believes that the virus will simply go away miraculously.
Back in late March, in a conversation with a coworker during our regular shift-change BS session, I predicted that the death toll in the United States would be just around half-a-million. He, being an optimist, opined that it would probably hit a million. Even then, the top browser result for our company smartphone was 'Worldometers', a data aggregation site which has become a fascinating, terrifying read. Right now, reported US deaths from COVID-19 amount to over eighty-eight thousand, and the piss-poor testing regime, compounded by the President's desire to delay testing to keep from driving numbers up, makes me suspect that the actual number is over one hundred thousand.
I don't believe that the pandemic will slow down appreciably, with a push to reopen non-essential businesses, a steady procession of protests in which social distancing is disdained, and a weird opposition to wearing masks to decrease the possibility of viral spread. Sure, if we can just stop the testing, the numbers won't fo up, just ignore the bodies being stacked up at the local skating rink. I still stand by my prediction of a half-million deaths, but remember, mine was the less cynical prediction.
I think half a million is a reasonable estimate by the time the pandemic has burned through all the most at risk members of the population, but that won't be the end of the pandemic. COVID-19 will keep reappearing, and the outbreaks will spread without any restriction because of the lack of testing, the lack of contact tracing, and the lack of cooperation with even modest restrictions on behaviour to curb the spread.
ReplyDeleteA million might be a tad on the high side. On the other hand, USA deaths will easily exceed 100,000 in 7 days from now.
I think the takeaway is...you're buggered. Sorry :(
It may be wise to avoid eating meat just now in any case. Workers infected with COVID-19 are facing the stark choice of showing up (and spreading the disease while they themselves are il) or staying home and losing both their jobs and their unemployment benefits.
ReplyDeleteWho knows how many CVID-19 infected meat plant workers have breathed, coughed, or sneezed into that package of hamburger, or pork chops you're bringing home?
I don't much love eating beans as a means of getting my protein, but I sure as hell prefer beans to COVID-19.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
The meat isn't the problem in the meatpacking plants. it's the people A hot spot in Oneida county in NY was centered on a produce processing facility...
ReplyDeleteThere is ZERO evidence (and they HAVE LOOKED) for transmission from groceries to people. IT IS ALL PEOPLE TO PEOPLE> Wear your effing masks!
If we could get 80% of the population to wear masks we could ride a toboggan down the curve!