Sometimes those things we can least influence scare us the most.
Exactly.
It is a comforting thought to blame humans for creating this. The real scary part is that infections like this can emerge anywhere at any time.
Freakier is that they have been recurring like clockwork once a century in world spanning outbreaks.
I doubt that speaks about the viruses. I suspect it says something about humanity.
The Indian variant may be and likely is -less- virulent, based on where the mutation affected.
However it points out a grave danger. The longer this thing is extant in the world, the more copies exist in more bodies. Each reproduction is a chance for a new variation. Each variation is a chance for an even scarier disease. And with more people infected comes more co-infections and the opportunity for cross over, and the creation of some new monster.
With variation also comes the potential that the variants require distinct vaccines. And the potential for difficulties, such as occurs with the five variants of Dengue and its vaccine.
On a different note.
It appears that self isolation as done in the US is resulting in something like a -1.5% “growth” rate. I.e. a 0.985 x/day change day to day in the number of new cases. This is excellent news. However, it is - slow. At that rate, and without massive testing, contact tracing, and isolation of those infected, it means that provided this holds across much of the US (unknown) that the new case rate about May 1 will be something like 75% of the new case rate today.
And what that means is that if self isolation / quarantine is lifted on May 1 as threatened by Donald the Dumb, and people actually return to their normal lives that the case rate will begin rising at between 1.18 x/day in mostly rural areas and ~1.355 x/day in urban metro areas.
It will take 10-11 days to see that begin to show impacts on numbers. It will take about a week of increase to persuade decision makers that they have erred. And in that time the new case rate will have grown to between 35 and 235 times the rate the day the decision was implemented. If that is 75% of the case rate now, then the case rate will have bloomed to between 25 and 175 times the new case rate today.
And in many areas, with the peak in rates being about now, now is when many areas hospitals are at or near saturation. At 25 to 175 times today’s rates, pretty much everywhere will be in saturation. But those rates will continue to rise for another 10-11 days to 130 to 5,000 times today’s rates, before the restored quarantine begins to show effects. Should that happen a whole lot of folks will die who would not have died at lesser rates. That would take the nominal 4.5% CFR for hospitalized cases much much higher.
All of this is of course guesswork, with all sorts of questionable assumptions. People are likely to be gun shy to go back to their normal lives. Many, if not most, Governors are likely to show Herr Dumkopf their middle fingers. So the reality is likely to be much less severe than these numbers might suggest.
Then again, the stacked Federal Courts courtesy of Minnie me McConnell might well trash the Constitution and the tenth amendment and decide that the Commerce Clause supersedes everything.
Still, the impact will be bad. We can only hope that he isn’t as much of an imbecile as he appears, and that he doesn’t try to “restart” the economy on May 1, or anytime in the two months after that, without dramatically changed policies that drive the infection rates to near zero before trying to gently and tentatively restart the economy.
That is of course a vain and ridiculous hope. Our dear loser of a leader has demonstrated at every turn that he is a thin-skinned, self aggrandizing, malignant narcissist, sociopathic liar, conman, bully, idiot, fool, moron, imbecile, racist, zealot, misogynist, and utterly failed business man. Everything he touches turns into a heaping fetid pile of stinking shit the likes of which no one has seen before. There is no reason to hope or believe any decision he is involved in regarding this pandemic will be any different.
And whatever happens he will of course claim to have done the most perfectest and smartetest thing any President has ever even dreamed of doing - never mind the reality. And his troglodyte troll followers will genuflect obscenely and obsequiesly to French kiss his ass as he does it, while simultaneously blaming everything on the commies and their fantasy “deep State”. All the while, our neighbors will be dying for the economy.
Sam
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