COVID-19 June 26, 2020

It seems that at least some of the criminally negligent state leaders have suddenly become aware of the trends.  Time to hit the pause button on re-opening, they say.  Nope.  Wrong answer.  Today's data is a reflection of the conditions two or more weeks ago.  Pausing simply means that the conditions that allowed for the explosion of new cases will remain in place.  So, we'll tread water for a few more weeks until the situation becomes catastrophic, and then we'll probably see some back-tracking to more restrictive policies.  And even when that happens, we'll have to wait several weeks to see any effect.  And that assumes that things haven't gone so non-linear that reverting to prior lockdown policies are ineffective.  I'm rather concerned that we are nearing the equivalent of critical mass in a nuclear reaction.  Boom.

The exponential doubling rate for new infections went from a little over 18 days yesterday to 17 days today.  The doubling rate is accelerating.  It's been a couple months since we had to deal with exponential growth, but you can do the math.  35,000 new cases today.  70,000 per day in 17 days.  140,000 per day in about a month from now.  At 140,000 per day you would have close to 1.5 million new infections in only 10 days.  And all this assumes the doubling rate doesn't continue to increase.

There is, potentially, a way to slow this down.  It's clear the answer isn't going to come from the state or especially the federal government.  It's going to take collective personal responsibility.  In the U.S. that basically means we're doomed.  Selfishness is a way of life.  Rugged individualism.  There is no greater good.  This is why we don't have universal health care like the rest of the civilized (and even uncivilized) world.  I will say you'll never look as rugged as when you're dead.  Nevertheless, wear a mask and stay as isolated from the rest of the world as much as possible.  I know it's hard to do when you see others behaving like selfish jerks.  Why bother to make (small) sacrifices for others when they won't reciprocate?  Integrity.  Character.  Be a better person.  Like the virus, altruism might be contagious.  Everyone is eventually going to learn what needs to be done.  Some understand it now.  Some will learn the hard way.  But, at the rate we're going the reality of the situation is going to force most everyone to eventually accept that we are all on the same sinking ship.  We either have to bale the water together or we're all going to go down.

I'm angry and frustrated that I've spent the last three months personally doing what had to be done. The curve did flatten and fortunately, the hospitals did not become overwhelmed.  We had the opportunity to not only flatten the curve but squash it, like they did in Europe.  But greed and stupidity were too much.  And now we are right back where we were two months ago.  It's actually worse than that.  Two months ago we were at the peak and the curve was flattening.  Now we are at the same peak and accelerating upwards.  We really are stupid apes.