New Information, Scumbags, And The Ongoing Coronavirus Situation

If you have already read my previous post on this situation, the following will merely be updates; if you have not, please feel free to do so; the link is here, and please feel likewise welcome to share it as freely as you want. I prefer if you do so with attribution, but having the information - real, accurate, truthful information - get out to as wide a spread as possible is more important than having my name attached.

So, first, the numbers.

At this time, the U.S. has 19,469 cases, 258 deaths, and 147 people considered "recovered."

Worldwide, there are currently 275,531 cases, 11,385 deaths, and 91,533 patients recovered.

So, bad news, then scumbags, then good news, in that order.

Italy is really struggling; at this point their hospitals are triaging patients, and making some really tough decisions about whether or not to offer treatment to patients likely to die anyway. At this point it is unknown if their quarantine measures will prove to have been successful in slowing the spread of the virus.

Iran has moved from "struggling" to "totally overwhelmed" and is reporting a death every ten minutes.

Spain has passed 1000 deaths,  and they are concerned that as much as 80% of the population of Madrid might already be exposed.

France at this point has 1/5th of its total available hospital beds already filled by patients with COVID-19.

The virus is spreading at an enormous rate, and the worry in the U.S. that the healthcare system might not be able to keep up is a significant one. While I don't consider NBC News a consistently reliable source, they polled 250 healthcare workers in hospitals already dealing with SARS-COV-2, and they're not painting a pretty picture. Supply shortages are already a problem. The lack of test kits is leaving healthcare workers dangerously exposed to the virus with patients they know are sick but can't test for it.

Now, this is strictly my opinion, but I'd suggest that getting the doctors and nurses who will be critical during this pandemic ill with the virus themselves will make things 1000% worse and should be, generally, avoided.

During the time I've been writing this, the United States has had 53 new cases reported and 4 more deaths.

Now, I don't want to be a panic-monger. At all. A rational, considered response is key in containing something like this.

But by the same token, the rate of spread of this disease is terrifying.

So let me go through some simple things for you, before we move on to scumbags and then good news, ok?

The true threat this disease poses is one of collapse of the healthcare system. This is true in every country that's faced large numbers so far. If you can get treated, you will likely be fine.

Let me say that again in huge letters for emphasis:

IF YOU CAN GET TREATED, YOU WILL LIKELY BE FINE.

But the reality is that if you get the severe form of this disease, and leave it untreated, your chances are far worse. In every country affected, what we're seeing is that initially patients are receiving treatment, they're recovering, no big deal.

Then they run out of ventilators.

Then the death toll starts to climb, and it stops being something that only kills 80 year old diabetics with renal failure, and starts being a thing that kills everybody.

Do not let people fake you out with this narrative that I'm seeing on social media, "this is so overblown, it's not nearly as severe as..."

Yes it is. This virus is highly mutagenic; at least two strains so far are known to exist in the wild, and it is not beyond the bounds of speculation to suggest that the differences between the strains might be a contributing factor to the severity of the disease in patients. As yet, although as I mentioned in the previous article there are several drugs offering possible therapy, at this time no effective treatment has been verified to exist.

This is a health crisis never before seen in the modern world.

As long as people follow the quarantine rules, and deal rationally with the situation, the numbers will remain manageable. If they remain manageable, we will be fine.

At this point, the U.S. has about 88,000 hospital beds available to treat patients with severe COVID-19.

But so far today, the death rate is steadily climbing, and right now deaths in the U.S. outnumber recoveries almost 2 to 1, because the federal government thus far has basically not responded except by making speeches.

Several states have taken severe measures to limit contagion, including New York, Illinois, and California, but the response from the federal government has been a number of laws introduced that haven't been voted on yet - hold on, we're getting to scumbags now - because everyone in Congress seems determined to capitalize on the crisis for political gain by inserting their pet legislative projects as line items in each of the pandemic response bills; this has thus far resulted in the actual legislative response from the U.S. government being, well.

Zero.

They have passed no laws, they have made no changes, they have done nothing.

President Trump - whose decisionmaking here seems spotty at best and who has made some serious mistakes - at least seems to be trying, in his very Trump way, to get something done; he's made several executive orders that don't require Congressional approval.

But Congress has done nothing.


Wait, wait, that's not accurate entirely.

U.S. Senators Bill Burr, Jim Inhofe, Kelly Loeffler, and Dianne Feinstein all miraculously managed to sell off huge chunks of their investment portfolios immediately after receiving their briefings on the SARS-COV-2 epidemic.

They are all playing the "those people just work for me" card, and saying that they don't personally go click buttons to make stock trades, because they have people for that, but the fact remains that all four of them have been enormously enriched by this crisis; they have literally profited from everyone else's economic misery.

Even if they didn't personally click the button to do it.

And despite the fact that they're the ones that got caught at it so far, they're almost certainly not the only ones who did it; they're just the worst at hiding it.

They're not the only scumbags, however.

Although price gouging in an emergency is illegal most places, some businesses found out that that isn't universal, notably in Minnesota, where the Attorney General's office has received a slew of reports about price gouging among local retailers. In response, the state governor, Tim Walz, has issued an executive order forbidding it, with a legislative solution to follow.

Seriously, guys, the dirtbags buying up hundreds of units of critical items and reselling them online at hugely inflated prices is bad enough, thanks; we don't need retailers doing the same thing.

And one last corporate scumbag to call out: GameStop has not only declared their business essential, despite that being utterly untrue, they have actually told their employees to resist law enforcement if law enforcement tries to enforce a store closure.

Newsflash, guys: Steam exists. People can totally buy games at home. And I'd bet against your CEO remaining out of jail for long if he stands by that idiotic idea.

On to good news, finally:

As we know, several vaccine candidates using different strategies to defeat the SARS-COV-2 virus are currently being researched; the first to enter clinical testing comes from Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.

Now, clinical testing is definitely not a speedy process, but having a candidate in testing is a long step forward, especially considering most vaccines don't even enter clinical testing for over a year.

This is the point where antivaxxers all yell "insufficient testing" at you, so let me set your minds at ease.

The reason they're so far along so fast has nothing to do with cutting corners or any other silliness; it has to do with the fact that they started developing vaccines for SARS and MERS several years ago, and thanks to the scientists in Wuhan sequencing the genetic structure of the SARS-COV-2 virus almost immediately, several different companies were able to determine that this virus is similar enough to the originally noted SARS virus that the existing vaccine candidates could be rebuilt to work for it.

This means that a huge portion of the process that goes into making a vaccine effective was done in advance.

It absolutely does not mean that they're not testing adequately; the need for testing is precisely why the timeline for a vaccine is still a year or more away.

But what it does mean is that there are already several vaccine candidates entering testing.

No matter how bad this pandemic gets, there is light at the end of the tunnel; this bug can be, and will be, beaten.