As for COVID-19, I am self-isolating myself. Dr Fauci has already told me all I can do is self-isolate at my age and with my existing respiratory ailments. So I am self-isolating.
Beyond just me, IMO, macro-considerations outweigh micro-considerations when groping for some means to look at the rest of the world and try to see what kind of a path for contagion lies before us. So, what is out there to look at:
- Iran, not at all relevant to the US
- China, not a Free Society thus not at all relevant to the US. We can't do what they did and I am not at all convinced we want their result either
- SK, would be very relevant to the US if we had adopted the test regimen SK adopted. They are a Free Society that is Democratic. However, that horse has left the barn. Don't think SK tells us much other than wishing the horse had not left the barn here.
- Italy, a Free Society and Democratic, with a very good Healthcare system, better than ours actually.
- Germany, thinks its heading for a mess though their basis for that is testing. I am inclined to think they are headed for a mess excepting that since they did start testing early and with high throughput, they have that advantage. Plus they are ......well......Germans. Ever flown Lufthansa and Alitalia? Ever even watched Lufthansa gate operations and Alitalia gate operations? Every actually watched Lufthansa gate operations and any US carrier gate operations for that matter. A "mess" for German government representatives tends to be something like the pencils are not sharpened this morning.
So at a macro-level Italy is pretty relevant to us. The overall average age of their population, societal standards, smoking, what have you.....can be considered. But at a marco-level Italy is the closest world experience we have to the US. They started testing late and with not nearly enough throughput, just as we did. So Italy's Healthcare Delivery System was overwhelmed before they knew it. The early sloop of Italy's bell curve for contagion looks like our early sloop of the bell curve for contagion.
We have one big advantage over Italy that IMO does fit into the macro-level category. Our State and Local government and business leaders just swept aside the prattle, gibberish and nonsense coming out of the White House and did as much as they could without Federal assistance to blunt a steep rise and steep fall bell curve for contagion. Will that be enough to spare us Italy x 5 (our population is 5 times theirs)? Will our late to the game Federal Effort that is still not doing enough and appears not to understand how to use the resources at their disposal now that a National Emergency has been declared be enough? I just don't know.
Dr Fauci is probably right. The other day he stepped to the microphone and held up his hands not parted by more than 6-8 inches and stated, we have a window, meaning a window to try to truly blunt the curve of contagion. Its about a two week window when we might actually blunt the curve of contagion in a meaningful manner here. In all likelihood, too many people have been amongst us that have been carrying the virus and simply did not know it with the long incubation cycle of COVID-19 and virtually no meaningful testing being done.
Its nice that we are gong to employ a high throughput test method using dedicated swabbing/testing facilities at some point "soon" [whatever that means]. Particularly good that we will not be driving every person that wants to be, needs to be swabbed right into our Healthcare Delivery System at Doctors Office Parks, Clinics and Hospitals. THAT WAS ABSURD and to the extent that we continue to do swabbing outside of people in ICU beds in Hospitals that way, its still absurd.
However, while we are getting to some sort of sensible test regimen, we need to ramp up our Healthcare Delivery System in ICU beds and ventilators and the means to protect our healthcare professionals. Not every hospital bed is a potential ICU bed. You need an oxygen line running to a ventilator to use a ventilator. We are woefully short of ICU beds to the potential need. THAT is what killed Italy. The avalanche of need for ICU beds overwhelmed them and their healthcare professionals got buried as well. Who smokes and who does not smoke country to country will hardly end up mattering.
Trump needs to understand how to use the National Emergency now that he has declared it. We likely will need all of the resources of the Army Corp of Engineers, FEMA, regular US military before very long.
Of course the entire focus of this morning's Administration COVID-19 Task Force briefing is.........how much and how quickly the Federal Government will pump money into the economy. While sending money to citizens and small businesses needs to happen pretty quickly, IMO all this discussion of money to corporations is a bit premature. Its like pushing on a rope IMO, intended to influence the stock market.
We are left as the richest country in the world now drawing to an inside straight to try to beat this thing back in an effective manner because the Federal Government was slow to respond insisting on happy talk and a single travel ban.....China....instead. The travel bans to and from Europe came far too late.
