Category: health care Page 12 of 35

And so, what has happened is that the (mostly) blue states which got hit hard at the start got Covid-19 numbers down (in a fumbling, incompetent and delayed fashion which cost tens of thousands of lives.) Meanwhile other states reopened early or never properly closed and a new wave is hitting.

On April 21st I wrote:

So, right now we have five states in the US that never bothered to self-isolate.

We have the Governor of Georgia announcing he will allow gyms, barbers, and fitness clubs, among others, to reopen on the 24th.

We have the Governor of Florida reopening Florida’s beaches. Good thing Florida doesn’t have a lot of old people!

There are astroturf protests asking for an end to isolation. “Let us die, let us die, let us DIE!” (Also, let us kill others.)

Then on May 11th:

So, the numbers seem to be in decline, and there will be removal of restrictions, and then the numbers will start increasing again in two to six weeks. Because infection rates will be moving off a larger base, they will create a second wave where people start dropping like flies–much larger than the first wave.

Well, that’s where we are now. Enjoy. Multiple states, including Florida (always obviously going to be a problem) have increasing numbers and no sign they intend to reimpose social distancing, let alone track and trace and mandatory mask use.

This is going to go on and on and on, made worse by the fact that the Federal Reserve and Congress have chosen to bail out the rich and give peanuts to everyone else. Riots and protests will continue, because why not? People don’t have enough money, are going to lose their housing, the jobs to go back to don’t exist. Provocations which before were barely tolerable now set off firestorms.

The rich don’t care: they were scared at first, because a lot of them got infected in the first wave. Rich people have a lot of social contacts and travel a lot, BUT now that they know there’s a problem, they can self-isolate and protect themselves, and if they do get sick they receive the best care. Most poor people can’t self-isolate: they live in group housing, their jobs are often physical and usually put them around other people.

So there’s little incentive for Covid-19 to be handled properly: the rich are fine and pretty much safe, they just have to stay home a lot, in their big houses and multi-bedroom condominiums. They’re fine financially. What happens to other Americans is of little concern to them, so why not make them go back to work?

Something like a quarter to a third of small businesses are likely to be destroyed by this crisis. Whatever’s worth buying will be bought up for cents on the dollar by the rich, and they’ll consolidate further control over US real-estate.

Crises are good if you have cash money, and the rich are salivating. Let this drag out, let them take further advantage.

So, the second wave is starting.

If those states which did, in their fumbling and laggardly way, manage to reduce numbers want to keep those numbers down, they will need to find a way to close their borders to all non-essential visitors from out of state. That’s probably unconstitutional, but do it anyway to buy time while it winds thru the courts.

As for everyone else, just know that the second wave is here: it’s a second wave in states other than the ones that were hit hardest the first time BUT it will mean that no states will be able to actually eliminate Covid, because there will be out of state people constantly re-spreading the disease.

It’s going to be a long hot summer and autumn won’t be any better.

Understand that this is a chosen fiasco. All that was required was reasonable subsidies, a moratorium on rent, mortgage and other loan payments, track and trace, mandatory masks and shelter in place orders.

Once your lords and masters realized they were mostly safe, they stopped caring about the crisis. Some states dealt with it acceptably, but on a national level, this is a totally forseeable, and thus essentially planned clusterfuck.

Sorry if you lost or lose people you care about. Or even people you don’t know, but since you aren’t a sociopath, think shouldn’t die.

It’s you, or your elites. Until you remove them from power, by whatever means necessary, they will kill you and let you die whenever it is convenient to them, or just inconvenient to keep you around. (You may have thought it was only brown foreigners like Iraqis they were willing to kill hundreds of thousands of. Wrong.)

As the country reopens, our benefactor has other work to occupy them, so this will be the last Covid-19 data post. Of course, I’ll keep a weather eye on Covid in the US and write if anything significant happens, including a change in trend.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Our benefactor writes:

This is called the Memorial Day effect at the moment. The NYTimes, in my morning news feed, refers to the holding of new cases at about 20k on average as a good thing because of increased testing, an assertion that is not made in the actual referenced article. To quote, ” But the actual trend may be more encouraging. The number of tests being conducted has been rising rapidly in recent weeks — which means more virus cases are being uncovered than otherwise would have been.” This is the article.

My secondary source, The Guardian, was using Johns Hopkins data, but they seem to have ceased updating for more than 24 hours. I’ve switched to Johns Hopkins source data. Their data does not include U.S. territories, so it’s cleaner anyway. We’ve had lengthy power outages in the Philly region due to storms.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Our benefactor writes:

Even with the suspension of testing in many locations, COVID-19 persists. Maybe the thinking is that we could just ignore it, and it would go away. It’s nice to see many protesters fully masked.

You’ll notice that the charts haven’t declined that much. With relaxation on restrictions, there’s no reason to believe they will, though I suppose testing less may give the illusion they have.

And so it goes. The riots, of course, will cause a spike as well.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

And the cases and deaths just keep piling up.

Our benefactor writes:

My prediction is that we will have three million cases and 200 thousand deaths by late July or early August, with occasional spikes and local hot spots. It will become the new normal and will continue through the fall. There may be a spike, but not because of most of the big cities. NOLA has opened restaurants at 25 percent capacity, but that is a really tough arrangement. Most conventions and conferences will be and have already been cancelled through the end of the year. Las Vegas will remain at 25 percent capacity into 2021. This is the new 25 percent economy and a recipe for more unrest.