Where we're going

We'll be like this forever. There are not enough tests -- and there are questions about the tests' accuracy, with patients believed to be recovered in multiple countries testing negative and then positive again. There are not enough testing sites. The Times reports that there are also not enough personnel to process the tests. Not enough chemicals. Not enough lab space, not enough scientists. It's like the resources for seriously ill patients; doctors, nurses, PAs, masks, hospital beds, ventilators, the meds you need ... so many elements, a shortage of any one of them affecting everything else in the supply chain, almost like a shortage of all of them, and then when supplies of that resource are adequate again, a shortage of something else.

A shortage of good governance and administration at the federal level. Congressional action that's also inadequate, one party too stuck trying to preserve what was the status quo, with old ways of thinking focused too much on business, not enough on people; the other party trying to profit from pandemic (and succeeding). A figurehead ... enough about him, except to say that he's going to 'reopen the economy' in the next two weeks. People will return to work, to bars and restaurants, to subways, to movie theaters, months and months too soon, with no vaccine available until 2021, likely at best. Hell, some cities and states are still refusing to 'close the economy' now, for the first time. He'll 'reopen the economy,' and then the numbers ...

Ok, listen: The numbers have not fallen. This whole thing has been story after story about how this country or that city had its number of daily deaths fall for the second straight day, like that's an adequate sample size. So desperate to prematurely declare the whole thing over, the way President Dummy keeps thinking he can fix the economy, like that too won't drag into 2021. But if you put all your stock into 'flattening the curve,' the way we're apparently supposed to, like it's not just the next step but the beginning of the end or whatever, like it's not wayyyy more important to death totals from overcrowded hospitals than it is to the end of the spread of the thing ... like we can just ignore how many never get tested, never mind how many deaths aren't counted yet for the same reason ... he'll reopen the economy, and then the numbers will look materially identical to the wave we've had, at least in states that follow his lead, and they'll need to shut down again. And maybe *then* we can elect Biden, who even my 14-year-old knew to call 'the lesser of two evils,' thanks to my brainwashing him, but who'll do better at listening to healthcare experts, at least. And most governors will ignore the lamest of ducks in history, and we can all hunker down to wait for a vaccine, which probably sounds reassuring if you ignore that even the flu vaccine, which we've had in one form or another for 75 years, has something like a 30% to 60% effectiveness rate from year to year. We won't really be like this *literally* forever. We'll be forced out into the dangerous world like babies who could die within weeks. But we should.

Doomsaying. This reads like doomsaying, right? Even I see it. Predicting the worst, the worst possible outcome short of 100 million-plus deaths worldwide, over the course of the thing. Better cheerleading. Better caution. Better we stay positive. Better we keep our heads in the sand and ignore the thing entirely, some people think. Better at least cautiously optimistic. Better you go somewhere else for that. Seemingly literally anywhere else; they sell it everywhere. Better, I think, we see it for what it is and for what it's most likely to be, accept it, find a way to live with it. Not good, maybe, but better.

What I'm thinking

I am just a formerly intelligent man who follows the news -- straight news aggregated from the Washington Post and some other more mainstream organizations, and hybrids of news and analysis and even opinion from a spectrum of lesser-known sources. Not everything I've read has been verifiable, though I try to vet before passing anything along. I don't waste time with broadcast news. I do read accounts of Trump's pressers, because it's important to know what he plans to do (today), but I believe myself adept at knowing when he's been scared straight and when he's blustering and when he's just lying. I bring my own biases to this process. I have no science background or really any science proclivities; I can only dig in so far before I'll get lost. My main strength, as I see it, is a genuine interest in gathering accurate-as-possible high-level data and anecdotal accounts and interpreting them and aggregating them into a coherent picture in hopes of having a decent idea of what's ahead of us. I want to see what's gone on elsewhere, how those places have approached it and how those approaches worsened or mitigated the damage; to compare that information against the situation here -- both how prepared we were before this year and how prepared we are now, which in turn is greatly determined by the approach in this country -- and feel comfortable about my estimation of what will happen. I haven't predicted, to myself, exactly how long quarantining will last, or in what month the peak truly will come, or a specific number of cases or deaths. I'm not remotely qualified. And I am regularly surprised by events; I did not foresee the arrival of additional PPE last week, which will make at least some difference in some places. But I can tell you that the broad outlines I've seen coming have so far proven true. I am not special for having seen back in January that we would be dealing with this. Many others got the same sense of scale from looking at Italy that I did. Plenty of people I regularly read have seen the same things I have in the administration's mishandling of it, or expected the same arrogant, defiant stupidity and disobedience from too many of the country's local leaders and people, and predicted the same trends I did in my head. But perhaps you don't know any of these others. Or perhaps you're just tuning in now. My point is, most of what I see is not represented in the media that I think most people see. Much of what *has* been in the media, of course, has been way wrong. You have no real reason to think I know what I'm talking about. But in case someone wants to hear an informed guess at what's to come, if only to treat it as a worst-case possibility in their planning, here is mine. I believe that there will be waves of infection across the country, prolonging the crisis. I believe there are waves still to come in Italy, where people from Lombardy fled elsewhere in the country ahead of the lockdown. I believe that there will be at least one more wave in China; it might already have started. I believe the infection numbers will crest in different places around this country and then shift back to some places the virus has already visited. Whether due to faulty tests or possibly recovered patients contracting it a second time, I think it will be 2021, when a vaccine is approved and made available, before infections decline to anything like acceptable. I think the only x-factor — that we know about today — that might change this is the plasma replacement being discussed now, involving plasma from recovered patients. I wonder who would pay for this, were it in fact successful. How many could afford it? What will infection rates look like in the remainder of the population? I believe that the administration, and parts of Congress, and Business will be unable to abide that timeline, and will essentially force people back to work well before it's advisable. I believe this will contribute to the incidence of cases remaining high. I believe the numbers of cases and deaths will still be high enough to cause those governors who've been smart enough to help their states, so far, to keep their states as shut down as possible at least through September. I believe there will be no baseball season, that the NFL will not begin its season in front of fans. I believe the smart states will not reopen schools in September. I believe that there will be supply problems at hospitals, and I believe healthcare professionals will contract the disease at the highest rates. This will have a snowball effect; not enough masks/etc. means not enough doctors and nurses, which soon will mean not nearly enough doctors and nurses, which will mean many, many more deaths. Even the number of ventilators will be almost immaterial by that point. I believe the actual number of cases will be unknowable, due to inadequate testing. But I believe between 50% and 70% of us will contract it, and that there will be municipalities where testing is widely enough employed to extrapolate that number, that health analysts will publicly say at some point that the rate is likely that high nationally. I believe the actual number of deaths will be unknowable, for a number of reasons, including that we won't have the resources or motivation to determine the causes of all of them. But I believe the number of deaths reported will be close to ten million, and that this is an extremely conservative estimate — and that there will be more deaths than that when factoring in those who die of other causes due to not receiving proper care due to constrained resources ... in other words, the number of deaths we'll have this year compared against the number in 2019. I *believe* that the number of deaths will actually be higher, like a hysterically high number, but I can’t find the data to support that belief right now. I would love to be embarrassed someday at how wrong I’ve been. troy 4.1.2020

How I'm Doing

I am obsessed with the coronavirus.

There are charts you can look at, ones plotting the number of cases in each country, and new cases on a given day; total deaths, and deaths that day. You can see how many more cases a country has than another country, your country, how many more deaths. How many cases or deaths that day; in your country, in that other country. If the country had an outbreak before your country did, you can see how many days behind that country your country is. Your country had X new cases today, and the other country had that many new cases 12 days ago; they had 40 times more new cases today. Your country had Y deaths today, that country had that many deaths 14 days ago. Each country has its own demographics, each country’s response has varied in how competent it has been, and how effective, so extrapolating is imperfect. But you can see that you are 12 days behind this country, 6 behind that country. You can see how many new cases and deaths that country had today. You can see the future.

There are also charts for the states now. The ones with the most cases and deaths here, up top, all the way down to the last state to report a case, though of course all of the data is imperfect, especially when a state or country likely is not reporting accurately, as if it can lie the problem away. In my country, we have all gotten to see … the president, I guess; now it seems more important than ever to call things what they are, to tell the truth, at least for as long as we can stand it. Soon the numbers will make way for visceral, firsthand experience — they already are, in some places — and we won’t be able to stand the truth about either the numbers or the experience. He is the president. Of this country, somehow. We have all gotten to see him try to lie the problem away, literally day after day. Once every few weeks someone gets through the fog of dementia and narcissism, makes him just for a second see things as they really are, to the best of his limited capabilities, and he sounds sobered when he speaks, and the things he says are not so awful, but it never carries over to the next day’s so-called briefing, or even to the end of this one.

I am obsessed with the coronavirus charts.

The charts for the states also show how many deaths have been reported today. You can see that the deaths in this one state are still plugging along, getting a real head of steam there, increasing by a higher percentage each day, though of course the whole thing is just barely getting started in this country. We did not have enough hospital beds. We did not have enough ventilators. We did not have enough masks, though we were warned. The president was warned, the president even inherited multiple resources and structures that could have helped, but he ignored or dismantled them all, they’re all gone now, it’s too late, he ignored or dismantled them because he is insecure and petty, and those are not even anything like his two worst qualities. I would not say this was all so avoidable. It seems more important than ever to tell the truth. I would say so much of this was so avoidable, so much of what’s to come.

The chart I refer to almost exclusively … sorry; it seems more important than ever to call things what they are. The chart I have had open on my screen for weeks now, just refreshing it repeatedly daily, closing it only when the page won’t cache right, immediately opening the page in a new window … the chart I always have open, so that I can see it immediately after any rare time I have an interaction with someone that makes me forget for 10 seconds what’s yet to come … the chart lists the new deaths in a column that starts to turn red as the first new death each day is reported in each state, each country. Early in the day, right now, only a few cells of the chart are red; deaths in the worst-hit states so far getting reported early in the morning. By day’s end, the top of the column is all red, but the chart gets more fascinating as you scroll down. This state didn’t have any deaths today; only three deaths since the whole thing started, it’s still early there, they have no idea. That state had a death today, its first. The column somehow is more like a map, you can see the outbreak developing; I’ve seen a graphic that was a time-lapse map of the world, showing the first dots back in January, in China, then dots getting a foothold in neighboring countries while China’s dots turn into a blob that gets bigger as the time lapse continues; now China’s blob is huge and there are blobs in Europe and dots in this country and you don’t have to keep watching, though you do, but you don’t need to, you get it.

This column of new deaths, red except for the states with no new deaths today, yet, gives off a sense of motion just like that time-lapse graphic. But without the time lapse, the virus actually becomes even more daunting, scarier, the numbers refusing to change while you’re staring at them, in real time, the virus seeming even more terrifying for it, like a slasher movie where the killer never speaks, only keeps coming, slowly. Implacable. Impersonal; nothing personal, just doing what viruses at this level do: killing people today, infecting people today that it will kill in a few weeks, today’s new cases tomorrow’s new deaths. It does not seem animate, it does not seem like it can talk; it just keeps coming. Not literally unstoppable, but close enough. Inexorable, at this point, anyway; let’s call it what it is. We don’t have enough hospital beds or masks or ventilators, and as the doctors and nurses contract it — already they are beginning to die — and staffs are halved, care will get worse. Is getting worse, already. It seems more important than ever to tell the truth. To make this anything like a fair fight, we would need enough beds, enough ventilators, enough masks, enough medical staff. Insufficient numbers of any one of these would create a domino effect; having enough of the rest would matter less and less as time lapsed. We already have insufficient numbers of all of these. The president, in his fourth year in office, blames it on previous presidents. The same people dumb enough to still not take the whole thing seriously, to purposely, defiantly gather in large groups, often against laws passed by their governors under the powers granted to them by the states of emergency they have declared, maybe these people are the ones dumb enough to believe him. Beats admitting they were wrong, evidently. For now. There were enough of these people to elect him in the first place. We will be punished with death for living in a country that lets people this stupid vote.

The column of new deaths is partly or mostly red, depending on what time of day you’re looking, on the chart of cases and deaths by country, too. But once they introduced the chart for the states, once there were enough deaths and cases that it made sense to do so, the countries chart lost some of its force, at least down there toward the bottom, where the virus has only just started to take hold, or at least to be reported. The countries chart started seeming more abstract. Terrifying, still, but in a less immediate way than the states chart.

There is no one I can talk to about any of this. One of the two main people in my life who I would be most likely to talk to has anxiety issues, and copes with them through hardcore avoidance. This person avoided the news even before any of this happened. This person also has an underlying condition, so I must keep almost all of the news — which I am following obsessively, it will not surprise you to learn — to myself; I can’t negatively impact this person's immune system. The other person I most want to talk to is 14, so I must likewise be thoughtful about what I share with him, all the experts say so. I’d much rather see him near tears over the realization that he cannot have friends over to the house on his birthday than to see him a basket case. I'm sure I'm already freaking him out plenty on my best behavior. I talk to my boss sometimes — he’s taken to checking in with us every few days, now that we’re working from home — but mostly I post. At first, I posted dire statistics, because it seemed clear no one else was taking this near seriously enough. I continued posting scary numbers once my circle began to grasp what was happening; I told myself I did it because so many around the country were still acting so irresponsibly, and because so many businesses and schools still were refusing to close. I told myself I was doing it to scare them straight. This has evolved mostly into political posts; this new detail about how unprepared the president was, still clearly is, how ill-equipped to handle this; that new story about how the Republicans, even now, are using the pandemic as another opportunity to loot the country. I tell myself I still post to spur people into action, that they’ll ultimately get mad enough and demand of somebody, somehow, that we get someone the hell in here who can tackle this competently, even though so few people respond or otherwise acknowledge even seeing the post. I even wrote my representative and senators, asking them to find some way to get that guy the hell out of there — I imagine to be able to say I did it if anyone calls me out on throwing doom and horror at them several times a day. Why are you doing it?, I imagine them asking. Of course, I am actually doing it to cope; I only realized that today, but really, that’s mostly it. It seems more important than ever to tell the truth.

Some number of people will get the virus. Some smaller number will require hospitalization. Some smaller number than that will die. But it will be a smaller number, not a small number. Some of the stupid people allowed to vote are also allowed to go on TV, and try to trivialize the whole thing — more people die of this every year, more people die of that — as if today’s number is what will end up in the textbooks, as if we can wait to act until the numbers here are terrifying. They are not obsessed with the charts. They have not seen the future. They have not read the accounts of doctors and nurses trying to convey the horror around them as they write — first in another country, by now in this one. Even some of the experts offer final numbers that just seem way, way too low to me. ‘Thousands? That’s cute,’ I post. The ripple effects are entirely unpredictable, I am convinced. It will be the biggest story of any of our lives. Today’s comparisons to world-changing events like 9/11 will seem so quaint.

It hasn’t seemed real to people, seems to be the upshot. People gather in large groups, go on cruises in the face of all logic, keep their employees at work until the state forces them to close, or just fail to work up the outrage commensurate with how it’s all being spectacularly mismanaged, because it’s not real to them. It’s something happening on another continent, and then in other states, in small numbers, at least right then. They are not obsessed with the charts, though maybe some of them look at one every now and then. Maybe they see that this state, which they have never been to, anyway, didn’t have any deaths today; only three deaths since the whole thing started, it’s still early there. That state — maybe their state — had a death today, its first. One death! More people died in automobile crashes today. They have no idea. But I am obsessed with the coronavirus charts. I have seen the future.

troy
3.27.20