Like you (probably), I wondered how this coronavirus could spread throughout the country so thoroughly and so quickly. And never mind the U.S., this thing spread around the globe like the proverbial wildfire!
The Chinese only admitted to the world that they had a problem in December of 2019. Believing anything the Chinese tell us would be horribly naïve. We can safely assume that they were aware of this novel coronavirus "at some time" before December.
My curious, skeptical mind makes me think that this coronavirus was probably in the U.S. waaaaaay before "patient zero" showed up in Washington State. I won't venture to say how long ago, but I'd bet the virus has been here for "a while." I believe that quite a number of people have gotten COVID-19, mistaken it for the flu, and gotten over it already.
WHY THIS IS IMPORANT
When the government publishes a timeline of COVID-19 penetration into our society, they always show us a bell curve graph. The big question is: where does that timeline begin?
Linked HERE in a very interesting article published by a woman who theorizes that the U.S. may already be as much as sixty days earlier in the spread of the disease...that we're already at the "peak" of said bell curve, contrary to what we're being told by the authorities. And maybe we're even past the peak. If she's right, then some of this pandemic panic has been meaningless and unnecessary. Intuitively, I've agreed with she's saying, but I haven't been able to put it into words like she can.
Here in my Florida county, we've been practicing mandatory social-distancing for well over two weeks. My kids think I don't love them anymore. Instead of tucking them in bed and kissing them goodnight (which I always considered to be coddling), now I merely wave at them on the upstairs landing as I sit in my recliner in the living room, drinking my beer, binge-watching "Tiger King" on Netflix and composing nasty emails to their mom (my ex-) in my head.
If what the authorities say is true - that you cannot get COVID-19 simply by breathing the same air as a person who is infected, then we should not be seeing a big spike in new cases. If Walmart employees start showing up disproportionately in the local numbers, then I'll worry.
Out of 315,000 residents of Escambia County, 136 have tested positive for coronavirus. That is .043% - less than half of a tenth of one percent of the population. In other words, a tiny number. In terms of confirmed cases, we're seeing an increase of about ten people per day. Nine people are in the hospital, and only one person has died. Epidemic, you say?
So yeah, the disease is still being transmitted, just not at the huge, exponential rate that "experts" were predicting. Sooner or later we're all going to have to get back to work - restaurants and bars and our beach, etc. will have to re-open. We can't stay on a statewide lockdown forever. And so the virus will continue to spread until we come up with an effective vaccine. If we're already at or just past the peak, that would be a very, very good thing.
Who Am I?
- Bob Barbanes:
- A nobody; a nitwit; a pilot; a motorcyclist; a raconteur; a lover...of life - who loves to laugh, who tries to not take myself (or anything) too seriously...just a normal guy who knows his place in the universe by being in touch with my spiritual side. What more is there?
5 comments:
I guess I have a different view of things. Comparing a curve that has seen a peak already (China) with a curve representing Covid-19 cases in the U.S. and assuming the time frame is exactly the same is very wishful thinking. China implemented martial law quickly, drug people who were close to infected people outside their houses and put them god knows where. We are living in a country where beaches are still open, there are still a handful of states with no shelter in place orders and even in the hotspots of NYC there isn't any martial law or attempt to stop people from leaving. I know this because my brother has had to shut down several campground in his state full of people from NYC who fled the stay at home orders.
So we have no idea what part of the bell curve we are in at the moment because they can't be defined by a time element. To say we are at the peak, one must see a leveling off of the graph and if you take a cook at the website for the CDC at the current graph, it is anything but leveling off.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
Very interesting article, Bob. My daughter in Louisiana said she's read two different things along the same line and it's had her wondering....
Her family had a table at a large craft fair (in Natchitoches, I think) in mid-December. They were in contact with hundreds of people. The following week their 6-month old son was diagnosed with RSV. Within days, she and her husband had the same thing. She told me it's as sick as she's been in her adult life. Turns out, there were lots of folks in their area (north LA) that had severe upper respiratory viruses in Dec/Jan. Now she's starting to question if they actually had Covid-19. From my viewpoint, I hope they did. That's better than worrying about them getting it now with compromised lungs from the December infection. Thing is, there's no way to know for sure. They've clearly determined it was already in NOLA in February, for Mardi Gras.
Okay, I know now that they do have blood tests to determine if you have the antibodies indicating you'd had it, even if without symptoms. I just don't know if it's available to have done where they live.
That's an interesting story Kelly. Like Bob, I'm inclined to believe that this was on our shores long before it was reported in Seattle and NYC. I know for a fact it was in our county long before we got our first official case and in both cases, it has to do with testing. My wife has seen a half dozen patients that met all the symptoms of Covid-19 but because they don't meet all the criteria for testing, they are simply told to go home and self isolate. She has later heard from others that some of those patients were later seen shopping around town. Bob mentioned this in an earlier post but probably upwards of 5 times as many people than have been diagnosed have it but had relatively mild symptoms and never got tested or required hospitalization.
Bob, the problem is that you're making sense, a quality that a surprising number of people seem to have lost somewhere along the way.
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