I’ve been following the tracker since its inception. I’m trying to get a sense of what’s going to happen in the US.
First interesting thing to me is that there are roughly as many cases in France and Germany, yet Germany has about ten times less deaths. Germany has one of the highest rate of ICU per 100,000 citizens in the world, that could explain that. The tracker is overwhelmed and states 91 deaths in France but French news confirm about 120 who died from the virus.
Italy is insanely concerning. Stratospheric rise of cases and deaths. Almost 400 dead in one day today, that’s crazy.
Spain is growing massively too.
What I get from this is that older white folks from South Europe are extremely sensitive to covid-19. I still connect this partially to the dismissive culture that enabled that mess in the past month or so. Now they pay the price.
Which is going to be exorbitant here in the US. They barely started to lock down things this weekend, in a country way bigger than Europe. People stuck for 6 hours in an airport? Before spreading out all over 52 states? Oh boy. People were still partying last night at the end of the street.
I still can’t believe this presidential press conference on Friday. What the actual fuck. They’re absolutely not ready, at all. Epidemiologists must be losing their shit, yelling at White House staff for the past four weeks at least.
So now knowing that the pandemic is brutal in countries with way better healthcare than the US, we’re not ready. I wouldn’t be surprised if the virus mutates to an even more potent form here. But before that, tons of people are going to die.
On the business side, because everything is so tight, there’s going to be a wave of bankruptcy like we’ve never seen before. If no one works on that $10B stadium that no one wants to go for a while anyway, it’s going to crash. Hard.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.