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