Let’s review:
The first confirmed COVID-19 death on US soil occurred on March 1, 2020. four p.m. EDT on April 2, 2020, the United States’ cumulative coronavirus death toll hit 5,808. Four days later, that number crossed the 10,000 line. There’s a long history behind the saying that while any one death is a tragedy many deaths —a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million— become statistics, but it certainly applies now: the American pandemic has entered its statistical phase.
This much is known about the tragic start to America’s epidemic. The first person to die was a man in his fifties, who had been hosptialized in King County, Washington. His name was not been released at the time, but it’s possible to reconstruct a part of his story: he was someone in the middle of a life who, only a week or two before its end, had no reason to think he faced his last days on earth. That’s a story we can tell ourselves; a loss we can recognize; a human being, however anonymous, we can mourn.
That one death is a marker in more than just timing. Health officials noted one key fact about that particular case. The dead man had no connection to the original coronavirus outbreak in China. He caught his disease here, from someone else in the United States who was already infected, in what is called “community transmission.” President Trump reacted to the news of his death within hours—by imposing travel restrictions on Iran. That gesture was preceded by reckless inattention, to be followed by a disastrous series of performative decisions by the Trump administration that has produced the current best-case scenario of 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dead by summer.
It’s virtually impossible to grasp the losses implicit in such large numbers. When quantities break the bounds of ordinary experience they begin to disappear from view. That’s the challenge: to see into what’s happening now, to extract from mere numbers both memory and meaning.
Here’s one way to do so: on September 11, 2001 2,996 people were killed in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC. As I write this on April 3, the US has already suffered almost two 9/11s.
Another: between 1956, when the first American died in the conflict, and 2006, when the last American fatality attributed to the war was recorded—half a century–58,220 members of the US armed services died in the Vietnam War. COVID-19 has climbed to ten percent of that casualty count in a single month.
Looking forward, if the most optimistic current projections hold, coronavirus will bring between thirty and seventy 9/11s to the United States, or two to six Vietnams. At those heights, the sheer scale of the misery again turns particular memories (where I was when the towers fell, what it felt like to run my fingers along the wall) into abstractions.
And beyond such numbers, should the best case scenarios fail to pan out, we’ll find ourselves in territory at the limits of national mourning. It took 405,000 American lives to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And should the US epidemic wholly overwhelms the still-patchwork effort to contain it, the only remaining national memory to measure our tragedy against will be America’s bloodiest conflict, the Civil War, in which an estimated 750,000 Americans lost their lives.
Back on the first of March, just one man lay dying of this awkwardly named new disease. Those who knew him could mourn him in his human singularity. Glimpsed now, through the lens of almost six thousand more dead, he is the unknown soldier in this viral campaign.
More than three 9/11s.
And counting.
Image: Pieter Breughel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, c. 1562
Jeffro
For the past week, and now for the rest of this crisis, I have been counting covid-19 deaths – especially when I talk/email with my TCNJ relatives and on social media – in terms of #s of 9/11s. I did it just a couple hours ago, remarking how we were now about “four 9/11s in…with dozens, perhaps hundreds of 9/11s to go”.
THEY own this, just as much as HE owns this
I’ll never let them forget about it, either.
egorelick
I beg of you. Use the 100k to 240k projection with a critical eye. The numbers DO NOT support it (unless you include “uncounted” deaths). You are setting up Trump to claim “success” when the actual count is below 100k.
oatler.
I I always wondered why Breughel had those dead people hoisted up on wagon wheels.
Another Scott
Well said.
Putting numbers in context is important in understanding budgets (as Dean Baker reminds us), in talking about disasters created by mismanagement (as you remind us above), and in working to mitigate a disaster.
(repost)
(9:40)
tl;dl – Millions of units and tons of PPE cargo doesn’t mean anything. What is meaningful is “Days of Supply” at particular hospitals, etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
OT: Alexandra Petri in the WaPost: Look for the helpers. Then fire them.
With a photo of the deplorable Acting SecNavy Modly.
Ksmiami
@egorelick: @Elizabelle: hanging would be more appropriate and satisfying though… Tom you alluded to the famous Stalin quote, “one death is a tragedy, a million dead is a statistic.”
Elizabelle
CNN report: is this Trump gaslighting, or did they get a clue how terribly Modly’s rant went over? And how much the Navy and others will remember this debacle on election day??
Trump says he may ‘get involved’ in case of Navy captain removed from duty
When I saw the headline, my heart sank. I was afraid Trump was going to fire Crozier on the spot. But … Modly is actually out on the plank.
raven
I’m trying to figure out what to do. I’ve been having problems with my left leg (quad) for quite a while and had a lumbar MRI just before all this started. I called for quick consult and basically was told that the MRI showed no spinal issues. It’s not getting better so I called today to see about a telemedicine appointment and, after a number of calls, they said they’d like me to come in and see the doc in the morning. Their website has a bunch on conovirus info and it says people over 60 are considered “at risk”. I’m trying to be as careful as possible and I’m prepared with a mask and gloves but I keep thinking, “why would they have this on their site and then schedule me to come in”?
Salty Sam
Trump’s narcissism will claim success no matter what. He will gaslight, move the goal posts, and work the refs, whatever it takes, to claim that he alone led us out of the dark. Trying to strategize to avoid that is playing his game. Better to focus on objective facts that show what a monumental clusterfuck his response has been.
phdesmond
i’m watching maddow. something that nancy pelosi said stuck with me idea that it would make a good toast. “Bubble up for the workers.”
raven
All three businesses associated with the lawsuit are classified as “essential” under the local ordinance and allowed to remain open.
egorelick
@Salty Sam: The emphasis should be on the failures. 10,000 deaths 33 deaths per million population. Germany has kept it below that and other countries as well. The drumbeat should be that the numbers are already too high. Of course, Trump will gaslight, but be proactive in the message (which is not just politics, but true) instead of reactive.
Salty Sam
@egorelick: Exactly right!
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle:
How does this moron even tie his shoes in the morning?
Gvg
@raven: I don’t know that, but the local doctors groups are arranging for people to call when they arrive in the parking lot for appointments, wait in the car, then an employee comes out and gets you when an exam room is ready, including between patients sterilizarions. Some say they will bring paperwork to the car while you wait, all encourage doing that online before. So it may not be too bad.
on the other hand I got an official letter my doctors group is being closed in 2 weeks by the corporation that owned them for consolidation, by the way where do I want my records sent. Have not had a call back about where my doc will end up, assuming she will open her own practice. This is the doctor and the nurse practitioner that found my cancer early and I am 6 years cancer free. I don’t want to change, especially now.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: Until you mentioned it this morning, I had missed that this doofus flew so far to diss Captain Crozier. Had missed the little detail about him physically being in Guam …
He should have stuck to his decision to not fire Crozier, and gone down with the the ship if need be. Modly trashed his own reputation. And demonstrated his complete lack of character.
A pool for how much longer he is “Acting” and not “Former Acting”? …
raven
@Gvg: Yea, I guess I’ll just give them another call in the morning. Thanks
Brachiator
@Salty Sam:
Yep. Trump’s natural criminal instinct is to deny responsibility for anything bad, and to claim credit for anything good.
Trump’s failure has been spectacular and shameful.
You’re right. There is no reason to play his game.
Another Scott
Worldometers.info numbers just rolled over (it rolls over at 0 GMT). (These are slightly different from Martin’s JH numbers.) For the USA for yesterday:
USA:
367,004 cases +30,331 cases
10,871 deaths +1,255 deaths
19,671 total recovered
336,462 active cases
8,879 serious/critical cases
1,109 total cases per 1M population
33 deaths per 1M population
1,914,540 total tests
5,784 tests per 1M population
Spain is up to 285 deaths/M, Italy is at 273 deaths/M. 300 deaths/M would be about 100,000 for the USA.
I don’t think this week will be the peak in the USA. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Calouste
@Elizabelle: Modly committed the cardinal sin: he made the boss look bad.
egorelick
@Gin & Tonic: He offered a 3rd alternative. That the Captain deliberately leaked the letter and is subject to court-martial. This is an attack, not a walk back.
Martin
Data time:
At some point there’s an inflection off of the exponential curve were it starts toward something like a gaussian integral function. The graphs you may be seeing of infection is being modeled to a gaussian function because the historical trend for the number of infected is a gaussian curve, but because fatalities don’t drop, it looks like the integral of that function. The point of my models is to try and predict when that inflection point happens.
Historically, the gaussian is the result of herd immunity taking over, which we aren’t (hopefully) relying on here, so I don’t quite know how to model out the world after that inflection because we don’t know how effective various approaches are, where herd immunity is much more of a natural and therefore more predictable function. So, I’m looking for the point where the local (7 day, in my case) trend goes to 0, meaning zero growth in new cases over 7 days (people still dying fast, but the rate isn’t gong up) – that’s the first part of the inflection, but the slope doesn’t go negative as immediately as a gaussian function would suggest – it kind of plateaus out for a while – and then goes negative – the 2nd part of the inflection. I’m also looking for that point.
I also have a theory that fatalities takes 21days to show the first inflection and then another 10 or so days for the 2nd. That’s based on China’s data (which may not be accurate).
So, I think the x days since lockdown only works for the first lockdown, which makes sense. We’re not dumb, so we start taking precautions before we’re told to. The question is – how effective are those voluntary actions. In the case of Italy and Spain looking at China, not at all effective. In the case of Spain looking at Italy, possibly very effective. So, the US may degrade into a similar red vs blue situation where states that looked sympathetically (the populace, not the governor) toward CA and WA see outcomes the trend toward CA and WA timelines, and states that look antagonistically toward those states see outcomes that act more independently. This is foreshadowing toward American exceptionalism, by the way…
Conclusion – I’ll keep doing this but it’s already showing diminishing value. Googles travel data by destination is maybe among the most compelling data showing the effectiveness of the various lockdowns – both state mandated as well as voluntary social distancing, and would probably give us a lot of insight into how various states will bend their local curves. My guess is that we’ll not hit the most catastrophic predictions for near term fatalities, we’ll not hit a number like 10K per day, but we’ll get stuck between 1K and 5K per day and stay there for a long fucking time as the mechanisms to get out of that state don’t get implemented because of federal inaction, and political objection to the kinds of big brotherish steps that would be necessary.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle:
Puts down drink to read Ms. Petri’s work.
Another Scott
@egorelick: He’s flailing around, trying to save his skin. And it’s not working.
Modly is Acting secretary and knows that he’s not going to be Secretary (Donnie nominated someone else).
TheHill:
Modly’s days are numbered.
But Donnie can only appoint someone as Acting who has been confirmed by the Senate for a position. (Modly was confirmed as Assistant Secretary.) Given the dysfunction in Donnie’s Administration, there might not be anyone who could (legally) take the slot…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@Another Scott: Given that the southern states (TX and FL most especially) put off their lock-downs/social distancing/stay-home orders/whatever until what, a day or two ago…they are in for a really rough ride.
That plus the overall lower quality of health, lower number of hospital and ICU beds, etc etc.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
trump doesn’t care who gets blamed for what as long as it isn’t him.
He’ll sacrifice anyone and everyone, even if he told them exactly what to say and that’s what they did and even if he did it all on live TV. What is important to him is him. He likes/needs people dumber than him or who at least think he’s smarter and who are malleable, either because they fear or revere him. He’d like it to go perfect but he’s been a fuck up for so long, a big part of his ability is to back up over all the bodies he leaves in his wake. I don’t think it’s working for him in the spotlight but his repertoire of talent is noticeably weak.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle:
@Calouste:
Modly is not trumpov; he cannot get away with the things trumpov can, for now, get away with; he dismissed and then dissed an aircraft carrier captain whose crew cheered him as he walked off the ship.
trumpov is all about PR. Especially when it comes to the military and ‘STRENGTH!” No doubt that he will try to set this to rights, at least in his mind and whatever it perceives as a PR ‘win’, but the damage is already done. Good.
Whereaway
@egorelick: I hope you’re right, but fear you’re wrong when all numbers on the tail end of the curve are counted. Too many states and regions are not self-isolating, and compared to Spain and Italy, we’re doing a poor job of self-isolating. I despise the orange-shitgibbon, but I’d rather see him over-estimate deaths than more people die.
‘
LesGS
@oatler.: Google “broken on the wheel.”
eemom
@oatler.:
Just thought I’d take the opportunity of this nightmarish reality to mention that I’ve always liked your “.”
Patricia Kayden
MoCA Ace
100,000 to 240,000 deaths is the best case scenario. THIS IS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. We may not hit worst case scenario but, given TRUMP, I’m bracing myself mentally for 500,000 and praying I am not right.
When this is over the degrees of separation between any of us and someone who died because of the orange shit-stains incompetence will be 2… or less.
ziggy
That’s my fear. I see the deaths as not being too overwhelming (after this surge), but just unending, and that will add up. I don’t see how we get past a “long tail” without competent federal management. If South Korea is still fighting outbreaks, how are we ever going to get a handle on this before a vaccine comes along? And the damage to the economy because of that, ugh…
Patricia Kayden
Shocked!!
Martin
@egorelick: So, Let’s look at Italy’s situation. Things were bad there. They locked down at 233 fatalities. Their rate of fatalities basically stalled out around 3/20 when they had a total of 4,000 fatalities and north of 600 per day. 18 days later, they’re still north of 600 per day with 16,500 fatalities.
Italy declared a sort of victory on 3/20 at halting the growth, but 75% of their fatalities have been since then. If today was the start of the decline, it’ll be at least another 4,000 fatalities and likely many more since I don’t see any mechanism for them to get to zero in the near term. The US is probably at best 20% into this.
Trump’s proclamation was that we’d go from 15 cases to 0. Don’t reward his argument that staying under 100K would be a victory.
West of the Rockies
@Another Scott:
Your statistics reveal a glaring (to my eyes) misinformation issue.
We are told approximately 80% of cases are asymptomatic to moderate with general recovery in 2 weeks.
The figures show approximately 11,000 dead and 20,000 recovered. Shouldn’t the “recovered” figure be much larger? What precisely does recovery mean? I’ve see interviews where people who had the virus say it was terrible, like a gorilla on their chest, etc. So does recovery mean “I’m totally fine, like it never happened”? I know 3 people who weren’t tested but (based on exposure, symptoms, time frame) likely had it. They are ALL still struggling 6 weeks on.
I find it all a bit confusing.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
Agree, I don’t think we can meaningfully consider the US as a whole because there is no effective federal response and the states have been left to their own devices in crafting their responses. If there’s a bellwether I’ll pick New York. If they can drop new detections, new hospitalizations, death rates then there’s hope.
The Confederacy ™ will keep the pandemic alive, since that seems to be their sworn duty.
Jinchi
I’ve been trying to get my head around the 100,000-240,000 estimate we keep hearing, especially in the context that the number of deaths is currently just under 11,000, because it seems surreal. At the time most of these people were diagnosed, there were less than 160,000 confirmed cases in the US. Now there are 360,000. But that implies that the overwhelming majority of the predicted casualties (75%-90%) aren’t even sick yet.
Obvious Russian Troll
@West of the Rockies:
We’re not testing enough people to have any real idea of the number of people who have recovered.
We’re also under-counting COVID-19 deaths, but that’s another story.
Redshift
@egorelick:
Yeah. His idiotic argument was that the Captain must have known it would leak because he cc’ed at least 20 people. Translation: he didn’t just sent it to me or his commander so we could bury it.
He sent it (presumably) to military personnel and administration officials. One of these organizations runs a tight ship (as it were), the other leaks like a sieve. If it would obviously leak, it ain’t the fault of the Captain or the military.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden:
As I recall, Jared wanted Larry Ellison involved in Fauci’s efforts to coordinate vaccine research. Also, how small is trump’s “small personal investment”? This is somebody who will change policy if somebody spends five figures at one of his tacky hotels.
Jinchi
That’s an interesting question. 2 weeks ago the confirmed count in the US was about 50,000. It could be that you don’t count as “recovered” unless you’ve been tested and shown as negative after a previous positive test.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: also too
Aleta
@Another Scott: Thanks for that.
Russel L. Honore’ on twitter referred to this story today by the AJC:
Fair Economist
@Martin: How are you getting a positive slope for 7 day deaths in Italy? The lowest numbers for the past 7 days are in the last two days.
Subsole
@Jeffro:
Yeah. I honestly am scared to death. It is already looking grim here and Texas isn’t due to hit our peak until next month, at best.
All of this goddamn havoc, and for…what, exactly?
I swear, if we let these folks off the hook after all of this shit I am going to lose it. I mean, at what point do we hold conservatives accountable for fucking up again and again? How many of us do they get to kill before we are allowed to defend ourselves?
Seriously. What can we do to make sure these people are brought to book? I am tired of these fucking locusts ruining our lives every four years then hiding behind some media bullshit about even-handed fairness because some inbred poltroon on the NYT masthead wants to keep sucking down chardonnay at the next beltway champagne brinch.
Sigh.
Sorry to unload on y’all. It’s been an evening.
ziggy
One point I want to make about that “first death”–we do not know for sure that he was the first Coronavirus death in the US, because nobody was looking for it! (there was NO test, very dumb in retrospect). There were two cases of deaths in WA that were retroactively labeled as CV deaths, but I can’t recall when the deaths occurred. But if there were pneumonia-related deaths that happened previously to that “first death”, they would not have been tested for Covid.
Jinchi
I find it astounding that the US numbers per capita track Italy’s almost perfectly. Just delayed by 14 days. (Remember when we all though Italy was the worst case scenario?) If we keep on that track our numbers will have doubled again in 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I don’t think Italy has turned the corner quite yet.
Calouste
@Gin & Tonic: He has an Harvard MBA you know.
Although that should really count as a negative when assessing someone’s intelligence.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t even know where Trump got the idea that this drug is effective. We have a goddam president peddling snake oil.
And someone should make note of the names of the corporate bigwigs who associate with Trump and who may be foolishly participating in or helping to facilitate his grift.
Chris T.
No, but it’s not clear what it does mean.
If you’ve ever had pneumonia (I had “walking pneumonia” diagnosed once, no idea how I got it but it was probably bacterial given the diagnosis and the fact that they gave me antibiotics and I recovered), you know it’s really bad. It hits oddly suddenly, and the reason for that is obvious after the fact: healing requires energy, and energy = oxygen consumption. Getting better is work, similar to exercise. You feel the pneumonia because you’ve just crossed a boundary from “enough lung capacity” to “not enough lung capacity”, and now, in order to heal, you need more lung capacity.
(Hence the supplemental oxygen, which really should help a lot. I know they don’t do this because there aren’t enough hyperbaric chambers but I would go for one of those if I had a choice.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Salty Sam: Yes, watch Trump pat himself on the back for the numbers in the US West soon.
Aleta
@Aleta:
Jon Ossoff is running in the Georgia US Senate Democratic Primary election. The primary winner will run against David Perdue this fall for his U.S. Senate seat.
* via wiki: Others running in the primary include “former Mayor Teresa Tomlinson of Columbus; and Sarah Riggs Amico, who ran for lieutenant governor last year on Stacey Abrams ticket. Ossoff was endorsed by John Lewis.”
Jinchi
@Martin: Let’s hope we don’t see a spike in Wisconsin deaths due to tomorrow’s election.
Another Scott
@West of the Rockies: In addition to the lack of testing issue, we have to remember that we’re still very early in this pandemic in the USA. Most of the tested, confirmed cases are still active. (Because, as a result of lack of testing, only people who are sick are being tested.) And that will probably continue to be the case until we get well past the peak.
What scares me is the ratio of deaths to total cases at the JH site.
74,744 / 1,347,676 = 5.55% fatal world-wide
There’s still the issue with world-wide cases of not enough testing, but if we assume that the majority of people are ony being tested because they’re showing signs of sickness, then 5.55% fatalities is huge.
E.g. if we get 5 M confirmed cases in the USA, and that trend holds, then that translates to 277,500 dead.
BTW, Worldometers.info says 95% of world active cases are “mild”.
People in Donnie’s administration preparing to declare victory are getting way, way out over their skis (and might be doing their apparent stock market pump-and-dump game again based on what happened on Wall Street today).
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
For a little more perspective, 250k is about the current population of Lubbock.
So imagine a city of 250,000 wiped clean off the map. Like, GONE.
That’s the kind of disaster we are looking at. At best.
Wumpus
@West of the Rockies
Your confusion results from comparing two different sources of information that use different definitions.
The first source is information for the US. Note that there is absolutely no testing of the general population for the virus in the USA; with the exception of a few special categories (like health care workers … and celebrities) the only way most people in the US ever get tested for the virus is if they exhibit symptoms severe enough to consider hospitalization. As a consequence, in those official numbers, “recovered” means “people who had severe enough symptoms to get tested, but didn’t die and have been discharged from the hospital.” In other words, most of the people who had the virus and were either asymptomatic, or were sick but didn’t get hospitalized (like the people you mentioned) are not included in that “recovered” stat at all.
Indeed, the vast, vast majority of people in the US who have already had the virus are not included in those statistics at all.
The second source of info is the “80% are asymptomatic and recover in 2 weeks” [though that isn’t actually correct: the correct version is 80% of cases are not severe, in the sense they don’t require hospitalization; of that 80%, some cases are asymptomatic.”
Where does that info come from? Answer: not from the US, because again we have not done any truly wide-scale testing of everybody. Instead, that info comes from places which have done mass-scale testing, like China and South Korea.
Mnemosyne
I think I mentioned the other night that we’ve had our first loss of someone we knew. Not someone we were close to, but a former coworker of G’s that he worked with for 6 or 7 years.
We both know that it’s only going to keep creeping closer.
Jinchi
Does “mild” mean just a bad case of pneumonia? Or does “mild” mean “I never realized I was sick”?
Dan B
@ziggy: There were a lrger than typical number of deaths at the assisted living facility in Kirkland in February, as I recall. We will probably never know if there were Covid-19 fatalities among these since they are either buried or cremated.
L85NJGT
This country has never won a war, or completed a major endeavor, with a laissez-faire executive approach. It just doesn’t work.
Imagine these Trump admin imbeciles trying to build the Panama Canal.
Another Scott
@Jinchi: As with all of these terms, they get thrown around without a dictionary that we can refer to.
I assume “mild” means “did not require hospitalization”, but I don’t know.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Subsole: they need to pay – with their lives would be an acceptable offer.
ziggy
Does he even really care if it is effective? (I doubt it) If he can sell it anyway?
chopper
i count it in Epsteins, units of 500.
SFBayAreaGal
@ziggy: I know someone who lost her father in December. He had all the symptons of Covid-19. She swears that is what caused his death.
I believe the virus has been here earlier than January.
J R in WV
Imagine these monkeys trying to fight an actual real war with an opponent as strong as the US is… no, don’t. I’m sorry I brought the issue up.
Now I’m going to read some comic strips before going to bed. Ya’ll stay safe, you hear me?!!!
Jinchi
This makes me optimistic that the situation is getting under control.
Let’s just hope Jared doesn’t hoard it in his personal vault.
Another Scott
@ziggy: “Hey, what have you got to lose??”
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mai naem mobile
What I would like to see Dems say loud and clear :
Orange Douchebag trusted Xi but did not verify. That’s caused X number of American deaths.
Stop going into nuances. He didn’t do his job. That’s it.
Ascap_scab
I hope that someone is collecting the names of every Covid19 victim. It will make for the best Superb Owl halftime ever.
U2 Superbowl.
*yes, that’s sarcasm.
Kelly
Worldometers Corona virus deaths yesterday 1,255
Leading causes of death 2017 CDC
Heart disease: 647,457 for the year divide by 365 for a daily ave of 1774
Cancer: 599,108 for the year divide by 365 for a daily ave of 1641
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936 for the year divide by 365 for a daily ave of 466
Coronavirus is the third leading cause of death right now. Will be the 2020 third leading cause of death if this goes on
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
joel hanes
@ziggy:
he can sell it
What he’s selling is “Trump has a positive take, offers hope.”
This has been a winning product among marks in perilous circumstances for thousands of years. He doesn’t need to have a financial interest in the drugs — he wants his cultists to regard him as the man who told them what they wanted to hear : that the bad news isn’t real, and that if they just turn about three times clockwise while reciting “Trump Trump Trump” they’ll be safe.
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
I know someone who was sick for a week about 8 weeks ago. His description of the week sounds exactly like some confirmed case recoveries that I’ve heard of. Extreme pain, hard to breathe, chest very tight. He’s seemingly OK now, said it took him about 1 1/2 weeks after to feel normal. He hasn’t been tested so have no idea if he had this or not, but his comment was that this is the worst he’s ever felt in his life.
Chris T.
By the way, no matter what the numbers are in the end, it’s one Trumpidemic.
(although that may have started in Jan 2017…)
Connor Cochran
@raven: Could you describe what the leg problem is in a little more detail? If your lumbar MRI showed no spinal issues, you might be having a problem that can be treated using ART (Active Release Techniques). Depends on the actual symptoms.
Subsole
@Ksmiami:
They do. But the acceptable is not the realistic. I want to stop simmering and start working. You guys are smart folks with a broad range of experience. We should be able to work some solutions.
I just hate being the guy that complains without putting forward a fix.
So…how about we go after Fox? They have to be SOME kind of liable for this shit. Civil, at least.
Uncle Cosmo
You say that like you’ve never seen a cordovan wingtip loafer…
West of the Rockies
@Jinchi:
Good question. I just wish there was a little more information about what recovery looks like, what mild vs moderate looks like. Without testing, of course, it’s a GIGO scenario.
West of the Rockies
@SFBayAreaGal:
It seems likely that a few people traveled from Wuhan to the US in mid-late December.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
I don’t know who the key ear-whisperer was (worth investigating probably), but DJT was looking for an implausible plot twist, and was told about a well-understood, super-cheap drug(s) (chloroquine is cents per dose, hydroxychloroquine more expensive), that could be used to affordably medicate entire populations (such as the USA) given a ramp-up in production. With one or more vaccines down(up?) the timeline a bit.
Reality is not cooperating, at least not yet.
Sab
@West of the Rockies: My niece got it. Hospitalized but not ventilated. Sent home. A month later she is better but still not well. Tests negative but periodic bouts of fever. Weak as a kitten. Breathless.
raven
@Connor Cochran: I assume you are long gone but here goes. I’ve had tingling in my left quad for some time. Up until now I swam and we walked a couple of miles in the morning. Probably six months ago it really started bothering me as we finished the walk, maybe the last 1/4 mile. The thing is that we spent about 20 minutes drinking coffee at one mile then walked back. The walks we are talking not are without stopping and at about a mile and a half it starts hurting and feeling weak. I limped home on our last walk and it’s really hurting. I’m doing projects around the house that have me going up and down three flights of stairs and I have to sit down every hour or so.