News Confirming My Analysis

In my last post, I was discussing what I was seeing in the direction of the coronavirus: basically that fall and winter was going to be miserable since the trend is up. The news have been saying the same thing: cases are increasing, just in time for fall. In addition, they are now saying hospitalizations are increasing, which they haven’t pointed out before.

Last night, the daily case count increased to roughly 67,000. I think it was last week that we were trending around 35,000 to 40,000; now we’ve jumped up to 67,000. The maximum daily case count was 76,000. (All of these numbers are quoted from Wikipedia: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases)

I just did a quick snapshot for today but the numbers are not yet in – I didn’t think they would be. I noticed that final numbers don’t roll in until evening.

Now, I said that the last projection that I could recall was another 200,000 deaths by end of the year (or about 400,000 in total for 2020). The latest readings say an extra 200,000 by February, so the situation has somewhat “improved”, but doctors are still warning about hard times. They wanted us to reduce our daily counts to below 10,000. See my last post for a visual explanation of why one would want to start from a lowered daily count.

Also in the news is the fact that former Governor Chris Christie is saying that he regrets not wearing masks before he got sick. I think, although he is not saying it out loud, he got sick enough to require hospitalization due to asthma and his weight issue. He got scared enough to be saying that he was sorry for being so cavalier earlier and he is now warning everybody to wear masks. This coronavirus is not the flu; it’s more serious, potentially more deadly than the flu. I’m glad he is going public with his warnings to counteract the Republicans’ insouciance because we really need to pull together if we want to fully re-open. The economy can’t fully re-open if a few people won’t wear masks, social distance or heed health guidelines. It just can’t.

I almost forgot – the main reason why I’m doing this post, other than to say the news confirm my analysis, is another thought about what this new surge in cases could mean. Previous surges were driven by certain areas of the country rather than spread across the US: in the spring the spread was mainly in the Northeast (mostly New York) with Washington state and California chipping in; the summer was the South’s turn with California still in the mix. But now, all areas of the US are seeing surges, even the West and the surges are happening in the rural areas, not just the big cities.

It looks like ALL of the US will be in one big surge.

The implication of that is that earlier, if one area was running out of staff, doctors and nurses from other regions could fly in to help out (and learn how to combat the virus at the same time). However, if all regions of the US face surges and all start to see depletion or lack of staffing to aid those in need, states can’t call in for more staffs from other areas. The same will go for supplies: all regions will be fiercely need those protective supplies.

This scenario is probably what the doctors are thinking of when they are warning that the fall and winter will be bad; they just aren’t communicating it very well.

The rurals will be severely impacted as they already don’t have enough hospital resources – some hospitals have closed in the past few years, but they won’t be able to call on their city brethren because cities will be fighting the same thing.

There just won’t be enough of anything to aid the rurals.

Our vaunted capitalist system has already failed: they couldn’t drum up the supplies fast enough earlier in the year. Unless companies have been planning for this fall/winter scenario, I fear they will show the same lack of supplies. They just haven’t lived up to their “promise” of being able to respond to crises.

Hopefully I’m wrong and companies have been planning for this type of scenario.

Anyway, the virus is now spreading in the rural areas – the bedrock of Republicanism – and now they will see the ravages that they have ignored this year. They didn’t want their government to impinge on their right to live as they please – socializing and maskless – so now they will face the consequences of not heeding to the medical guidelines.

We’re only in the beginning stage; we’ve got maybe four and a half months to go.