The drum beat accelerates

The current CoronaVirus report.

Worldwide with 179 countries reporting cases:   

•  245,613 cases; 230,588 cases this morning. 
•  10,048 deaths; 9,390 deaths this morning.
•  88,437 recovered; 86,261 recovered by this morning.

 U.S.

• 14,299 cases; 10,816 cases this morning (It's double what it was on Tuesday.)
• 218 deaths; 161 deaths this morning.

    

Trump's dismissive denial & lethargy has put us on Italy's curve

Here are today's stats on the Corona Virus:

Worldwide with 177 countries reporting cases:

• 230,588 cases, 219,217 as of last night,
• 9,390 deaths, 8,966 last night
• 86,261 recovered (1/3 of the total cases)

U.S.   

•  10,816 cases, 9,417 last night.
•  161 deaths, 154 last night

(Source: https://factba.se/topic/calendar, their sources are linked.)

Notes CV-19's exponential growth:

1.  The world's first known case of CV-19 occurred sometime in November 2119.
2. The US identified its first confirmed case on January 21st.
3.  By Friday last week, the US had 2,882 cases.
4. According to Rachel Maddow, the US's growth curve is very similar to Italy's
5. No measures implemented now are going to have an effect for at least a month.
6. On the current growth curve, US could expect ~40,000 cases by Thursday next week.   
7. Also on the current growth curve, 10 million cases by this day next month is plausible.

The stats above are already obsolete since I started writing this. See: https://factba.se/topic/calendar for the current numbers.

This is scarier than any horror story I can come up with. I could only say please don't commit suicide. We're going to need every person we can spare to get through this crisis.

Place the blame on Trump. He didn't have to fire the White House Pandemic Response Team in 2017,  nor cut the CDC budget for epidemic response. He knew about it happening in China as early as December, and at the very latest, should have responded to the first US case. Instead, he dismissed it, called it a hoax, called it fake news, and asserted it was all about attacking him. He pissed away at least 9 weeks, then responded at first by appointing a task force for spin control. That time lost will cost us hundreds of thousands of lives, and leave us with an economy that will cost us more. 

Italy, which is suffering the worst from this pandemic reported 470 people died of it yesterday alone. (It's not certain that number includes people who died complications like bacterial pneumonia.) Their medical system is in total collapse, and it was rated as excellent by WHO. Like Trump and the US, they were dismissive of the virus at first. Like Italy, we are two months behind an exponential curve. There's no way we're going to catch up on the curve before our healthcare system collapses from the strain.

Meanwhile, the markets are showing their confidence in Trump, dropping whenever he announces another measure. Never mind that he's using the war powers act to take over industries. Trump's poor administrator, and there's no doubt of this. I also fear that after years of cuts and humiliation from Republicans, the US government is no longer structured to handle such an emergency. Add to that: Trump hires for personal loyalty and nothing else. His other hires have been clueless or careless. Trump putting himself in charge of our industries is like Tsar Nicholas II taking personal command of Russia's military during World War I. All he's going to do is turn it into a clusterfuck and discredit him even further.  

How bad is this?

For those calling the Coronavirus a hoax, reality's rebuttal came fast. The Senate just passed $8.3bil in funding to fight CV-19.

Note 1: It passed 96-1.

Note 2: the Senate is Republican and pro-Trump. They'd blame a conspiracy if they could.

Note 3: By comparison, in 2018 the budget for the entire National Institutes of Health was $37 billion.

Note 4: Also by comparison, the NIH budget for Alzheimer's research was only $1.8 billion.

You might call this funding for CV-19 "significant."

https://thehill.com/.../486147-senate-passes-83-billion...

Also, the WHO has put the mortality rate much higher than initially thought, at 3.4%. [Added on edit: 0.4% for this season's flu, which is moderately severe.] Trump says he thinks it's a "really false number," then quotes his "hunch" as saying it's less than 1%. He says people are getting sick and never go to the hospital. Shouldn't he ask first if health researchers don't consider that before he reports his "hunches"? They're professionals, of course they have.

Ten thousand deaths from the flu this year? That's actually only moderately high for the seasonal flu, which has never been a joke, BTW. Its death rate is only 0.1%. [0.4% this year]. That's news, but not news enough to grab the front pages.

Note: At 3.4%, CV-19 mortality rate is 𝟑𝟒 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 [seasonal] 𝐟𝐥𝐮 [is normally, and [it's] about as contagious. [Note: it's 9 times as fatal as this year's flu.] Take a moment to wrap your mind around that. Unless something lucky happens, the deaths from CV-19 could be in the hundreds of thousands or millions. If 80 million people in the US catch this, a completely plausible number, 2.7 million people could die. Everybody left alive will know somebody who died of this. We are in 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 trouble.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB10MMRK?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Hell of a way to run a government, with a president denouncing expert data because he considers a conspiracy to wreck his own unsullied record more likely; because he presumes people must be thinking about him at all times to the dearth of all other crucial matters. Any possible "shadow government" or "fake news outlet" would also be afraid for their own lives, and therefore would want accurate news about this.

To prevent the spread: wash your hands. I would also recommend using hand-sanitizer. Do your best not to touch your face. Cough or sneeze into your shirtsleeve. If someone coughs or sneezes in your presence and doesn't cover, leave the room or the area. Use disinfecting wipes to clean surfaces other people have touched, otherwise, get some gloves and wear them. This is especially true for shopping carts.

The virus can live up to nine days on surfaces. So, if you get a box delivered, handle it with gloves. I might recommend a mask for opening the box. Otherwise, I generally wouldn't. Tearing the box open will make particles fly, so open carefully. Cutting instead of ripping will reduce airborne viruses. Clean the removed item thoroughly after its unwrapped. Then wash your hands and face.

As an alternative, you could allow the box to sit for nine days before opening.

Given the contagiousness of this disease, everybody will catch it ultimately. However, it's best that it happen later than sooner. Slowing the spread will give it a chance to mutate into less virulent form, and will allow herd immunity to eventually take hold. Or even a vaccine and treatments might come about. 

This is going to be terrible. It's possible that every survivor will know somebody who dies of this, but we will get through this.

PS. I don't write these things to spread panic. And I don't think I'm a pessimist. I think there's a cult of over-optimism in this society, a social pressure toward it, that needs to be confronted. Over-optimism about Trump is what powers his support. Optimism is good for supporting hope which maintains our daily function. Pessimism is good for recognizing when caution is called for. But they're both ill-advised and disadvantages if they're kept as general rules.

I write this so people could take a sober look at Trump and what he's done, and what we might expect in the coming year. Remember this on Election Day.