Disasters in Slow Motion (pt. 14) - Jun 20, 2020

May 30 (15:17 GMT) - Actual Numbers
Worldwide Cases: 6,067,574
Worldwide Deaths: 367,595
Worldwide Mortality Rate: 6.05%
Worldwide Mortality Rate (without US): 6.15%
US Cases: 1,797,087
US Deaths: 104,633
US Mortality Rate: 5.82%
US Total Recovered: 519,717

June 20 (16:03 GMT) - Actual Numbers
Worldwide Cases: 8,814,580
Worldwide Deaths: 463,756
Worldwide Mortality Rate: 5.26%
Worldwide Mortality Rate (without US): 5.25%
US Cases: 2,306,049
US Deaths: 121,552
US Mortality Rate: 5.27%
US Total Recovered: 956,358

Yes, it has been a LOT more than a few days. It is all so horrible I’ve not been able to drag myself back to looking at how mishandled the US response to Covid-19 has been. Rest assured, I’ll return to the timeline but, just for the moment, I’m going to leave that be.

Globally, things are looking a bit better (although not done by a long shot). The global mortality rate dropped by .79% in the last three weeks, so that is good news. Here in the US mortality rate dropped by .55%. While these numbers may seem small, they are significant drops when you are looking at mortality rates in the 5%-6% range. To put things into perspective (and at the risk of confusing people by looking at the percentages in a wholly different way) That means that the Global Mortality Rate was reduced by 13% of its total (.79/6.05) while our National Mortality Rate was reduced by 9.4% (.55/5.82).

This is good. I personally feel it represents what continued testing is doing to reveal the cases we didn’t know about. While US cases continue to go up, 28% in these last three weeks, moralities are not keeping pace. It has been said from the beginning that the likely mortality rate for Covid-19 would be in the 2-3% range. While we are still FAR above that, we are starting to move that number in the right direction. The overall picture looks a little better.

That said, the personal picture for folks doesn’t look cheery at all. In the past two days 1,466 Americans have died. At current rates, the US will surpass 200,000 dead sometime between Oct 3-10 and should hit 300,000 dead around the anniversary of the first known US death in February. Despite this, Americans have continued to politicize taking precautions against Covid-19.

Impeached President Trump has declared that people are wearing masks to signal disapproval of him, making it a literal point of support to NOT wear a mask. He’s holding a rally with 19,000 people in attendance - most of whom will not wear masks.

On a state level, here in Florida our Governor has declared that Florida will not reinstate any lock down measures - he won’t even slow the easing of restrictions - despite the fact that Florida is recording record highs in new cases each day. Test availability is up (my local doctor’s office receives - and uses - 100 tests a day), so too are new cases. My doctor’s office recorded 4 positives yesterday so...4% of people tested yesterday.

In Nebraska, things are even weirder. Nebraska’s Governor is threatening to withhold federal aid dollars from counties requiring people to wear masks. Seriously....this is where we are at.

Yet, if 80% of people wore masks that were 60% effective, we’d get this under control fairly quickly. We as a nation have refused. This should come as no surprise to anyone. We are the same nation frozen into immobility on gun violence in schools. If we, as a nation, don’t care about children being shot in school, why would anyone expect our nation to care about 100,000 adults dying from a plague?

This is where we are at. As a country, we are so self-entitled that we’d rather let hundreds of thousands of people die rather than suffer the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask. This is my country. I’ve long said, “I love my country but fear my countrymen,” and this serves as a stark reminder why.

I predict that, in the coming weeks, global numbers will continue to look better while Covid-19 continues to spread like wildfire here in the US.

I wish I felt that I would be proven wrong.