It looks like we’re going to have to learn the hard way. There is still no movement towards mass mask mandates. It’s such a simple thing but those anti-mask people just do not get it. They don’t know when they can demand for their own individual freedoms and when it is time to pull together and do what is needed for the general society. They are unable to distinguish the circumstances.

And people will die because of it.

There was a young 30+ year old man who went to parties because he thought the coronavirus was not real and it turned out he attended a party which a friend of his attended also, knowing he had the virus. The young man caught it and then exclaimed on Twitter or Facebook, “OMG, I think I made a mistake. It’s real.” And then he died the next day.

There’s a 21 year old who went out with his friends despite pleas from his mom to take care. The mom feared because her husband had compromised health conditions. Well, the son got mildly sick, the father really sick. The father is in the hospital now on ventilators. Now his mom is trying to warn the younger generations about the repercussions of not heeding the mask and social distancing suggestions provided by the CDC: they could bring the virus home to their parents through their heedlessness and end up feeling responsible for their deaths.

There’s a Texas family which is now trying to figure how the grand patriarch got the virus despite wearing masks and staying at home. The problem is the family would get together so someone caught the virus and brought it home. The mother, the father and the daughter are now dead.

There have been stories about people taking all kinds of precautions and still they get sick. I suspect it is because one person had outside contact with someone in the world and that someone had not been careful. It could be someone at a place of work or someone in the grocery store. So it may be the 3rd or 4th link that is the weak link bringing in the virus.

You almost have to be totally secluded.

Since this week I spent some time doing VBA to automate my data gathering since I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over to get the data, I did not get the time to do much else. I’m going to just throw up some graphics I pulled on Friday to show “our progress”.

First, here’s the top 10 in the world and the comparison of US against Europe. The source is Wikipedia.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic

Yeah, make America great!

Next, here’s the usual series showing the overall US trends and the regions. You can see the South just surging. The lines in the right most image, instead of clustering near the bottom, are spreading out as almost all of the southern states are facing surges. The Midwest and West are seeing the same kind of spreading of the lines. The source is again Wikipedia

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases

The next series of images show the individual states for each of the regions. Most of the states are just going up and up. Nothing is slowing down; instead the spread seems to be speeding up. The source is the same Wikipedia page.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases

We won’t get a control of this until the young ones, the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and the Republicans start to understand the gravity of the situation. It looks like the only way they learn is if the virus affects them, or someone they know, adversely. They have to end up in the hospital before they realize that this is no flu but something more serious. But, some of them die and that’s too late.

In the meantime, those who take this seriously could also end up in the hospital and die. That’s not fair to them. Somehow, we need to start equating no masks = murder, because at this stage – 7 months later, there is no excuse for ignorance. Just like driving and drinking is murder (if someone dies),

No masks = murder

I would imagine that once we get past this crisis, probably no sooner than one or two years, when businesses start to look at expanding again, they might look seriously at whether a city or town or region acted “smartly” during this pandemic. Businesses want people who display critical judgement and can work together for the greater good rather than work selfishly for their own gains. They might ask, “Did this town select someone who called for mandatory masks and complied with the order?” “Did this town consider the advice of their doctors and health officials?” If the town and its officials did listen to the doctors and did deploy mandatory mask orders, then that town might be a town where you would want to hire people because they displayed better judgement: in voting for the right officials and in complying for the greater good of their town.

Myself, if I were a business owner looking to hire people, I would look to see if a town voted predominantly for Republicans/Trump which could indicate non-critical thinking faculties, refusal to face faces and maybe even extreme selfishness. That would be an area I would not want to expand into, at least not for the next few years.

The way we vote this fall could have an impact on not only who we have as leaders but also impact messages to businesses as to what kind of town we are. The rural areas and the “red” precincts are going to come out of this crisis in a very poor position. This could be devastating.