We’re entering COVID-Hell

“Covid-hell”. That’s an apt description of what we’re about to enter in the next week or so. Trump said during the months of campaigning that the Covid news would miraculously disappear after the election; instead, it has been a steady drumbeat about hospitals getting overwhelmed, rising deaths, and doctors bleating to their political leaders “to do something!”

Since November 4th, we’ve been hitting over 100K in confirmed cases everyday. Here’s November data pulled from the Wiki site right up through last night (November 12th):

And here’s data from the Covid Tracking Project. The table on the far left shows the daily November confirmed cases.

And here’s yet another graphic – that of the monthly average of daily confirmed cases from the Covid Tracking Project: you can see November’s average skyrocketing and we’re not quite halfway through the month. (By the way, the data for November 13th slipped through, increasing the average for November, and that data showed yet another daily increase of confirmed cases – it showed 170K confirmed cases.)

So, since November 4th, the pandemic has been on a non-stop string of increases. Hospitalization and positivity rate have also been rising.

Yes, COVID-hell is a good description.

A news commentator – a doctor – described the current US surge as a “humanitarian disaster” and provided some comparative statistics of other humanitarian disasters and some projections as to what we could see by end of January 2021.

The growth is in all regions of the US. Currently, the Midwest is facing the direst situation but over the coming weeks, I would not be surprised if other areas suffer the same fate. Already hospitals are being constrained in the Midwest. Once the entire US has a resources and materials crunch, there will be no ability to send nurses and doctors from one region to the next because all regions will be facing the same crisis. We might be able to increase production of protective supplies and we can build field hospitals, but we can’t easily increase human personnel with medical skills.

Researchers are saying that the current growth is mainly due to small gatherings such as small parties in homes, reflecting an outgrowth of our COVID-19 fatigue. The growth might also be due to the campaign rallies and our recent efforts to vote. In the Republican campaign rallies, it looked like the supporters had gathered together without wearing masks and without social distancing. I don’t know if on the Democrat side there had been the same kind of rallies – I didn’t see any pictures of Democrat rallies. But there were multiple weekend celebrations last Saturday after the news organization had declared Biden the winner. While I did see a lot of masks, it didn’t look like there were social distancing at those celebrations.

People don’t appear to be careful; they are letting their guards down, probably thinking, “Oh, just this one time, how can it hurt?”

In about a week, we’ll have college students going home and people will be travelling for Thanksgiving celebrations. Can’t we just cancel Thanksgiving? Or at least do it differently this year? Can’t we just have everybody stay at home and celebrate at home rather than having extended family travel to congregate in a single house? In a few weeks we are all going to be regretting this.

I fear if we don’t cut off the surge now via reduced get-togethers, then all bets will be off once people start dying in droves. The virus will be so uncontrolled that we might have to go into lockdown, further stressing our economic system.

Seriously people, we have to change.

By the way, I think the world is going to start experiencing an accelerating surge. This graphic barely shows a sloping upward of an exponential surge. It’s hard to see the exponential piece but I’ve been seeing increasing daily cases for the world, so I think we are just on the verge. Europe has already undergone a dramatic surge.

And finally, here’s a graphic of the top 10 countries with the most cases of the coronavirus. You can see that the US looks primed to surge away from the rest of the world. Down at the bottom, you can see some of the European countries surging too, but they are starting from the bottom of the graph.

Additional Articles

Here’s a couple of scary articles that has come my way:

Happy Holidays!