Mardi Gras for New Orleans. A lot of beaches, and other popular spring break destinations, for spring break. (we should see more impact in those areas soon) Things have not been handled well.
The density in NYC is the greatest anywhere else. Hopefully the spread won't be as rapid as other areas. With most people not having a car in the densely populated areas, I don't know how you that should have been handled. If people didn't have to work, you could. But so many people need to get work, like doctors and those working at grocery stores for example. Maybe they could have issued those people something that would have had them be the only ones that could travel on public transportation? But then how do some people shop? I assume many might take the subway. What about those sick? If not bad enough for an ambulance, how do they get to somewhere for care? There should have been better plans for this, but honestly there's some things that I don't know how they could have handled once it was spreading rapidly.
In the state of Mississippi, some areas were going to have more of a lockdown. Instead, the governor of Mississippi on Tuesday ordered that you can't lockdown anything basically. On Thursday he finally modified that it seems and says his order was a floor, not a ceiling on what you could do:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/us/mississippi-coronavirus-essential-businesses-tate-reeves.html
The Florida governor is listening to some business leaders and is not willing to lockdown the state like others. My county, Hillsborough, with 1.4 million people, will be under a "safer-at-home" order starting Friday at 10:pm:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/03/26/hillsborough-agrees-to-keep-residents-home-in-coronavirus-times/
To be honest, it's really weak. But it's a bit of something. "Under the order, businesses that cant maintain a safe distance of six feet, or roughly three steps, between people must close." We just had our first death in my county today.
It's good to know you're staying safe. Staying safe helps other people be safe, including medical workers. People social distancing, and not going out when sick, helps people at places where some people need to be, like grocery stores.
I hope the rate is slowing some in New York. It's too early to tell. But even if it is, it's still rising too fast. New York is ahead of the rest of the country. What's happening there will soon happen everywhere. Different areas of the country will not peak at the same time. With the threat of telling people to open back up, even though governors will have that say, it makes things incredibly uncertain.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/25/opinion/coronavirus-trump-reopen-america.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/20/us/coronavirus-model-us-outbreak.html
One or both may require signing up for a free New York Times account.
Those have some interactive models about what could happen. They're just models though, no one knows what will happen. But the models show that the difference between doing something significant, and not doing much at all, is huge. But we just don't know what it will take.
Having the country not be on lockdown at the same time is a problem. Eventually, everyone that isn't will have to be. And if you open the places that are on lockdown now early, before the lockdown's in places that don't currently have one are placed and then ready to be lifted, we'll be back to where we are now eventually, or worse. It needed to be all at once, like China. We were never going to be like China, but some other countries on lockdown will hopefully have some success in slowing the rate and eventually flattening the curve of new cases so that we can get back to contact tracing the cases. We need to get back to not having community spread, where we can identify the line of transmission, having people isolate themselves if they came in contact with someone who is positive. But we need to get to that point somehow.
But this is going to happen in waves across the country as is. One area will get better as others get worse. Then the area that got better may get worse again. Even if we locked down at the same time, it would come back if we weren't vigilant enough. We would also probably have to leave our borders closed if we ever get back to that point, like China just practically did:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/26/821972324/china-temporarily-closes-its-borders-to-foreign-nationals
With either banning people from entering or having a mandatory quarantine.
It seemed like Dr. Birx at the White House briefing today was talking about how their models are not matching what we're seeing. I think this was very misleading today. She seemed to be talking about it's not spreading as fast as some of the models show when you compare it to a place like Italy. (More people should be infected there.) But it's understandable that we can't see how well a lockdown is working when we haven't done things like this before on this scale. As for here in the U.S., it's abundantly clear that many people are not taking this seriously. I think Italians were taking this much more seriously even earlier on during the lockdown.
If people are thinking Italy is a similar comparison for here and that we should somehow think we might be as good as Italy, that's likely not realistic.
I also didn't like Dr. Birx's response that seemed to be about how you keep people from a county that has a lot of infections, from a county with low infections. This is the problem with everyone doing their own thing. Once county can do everything they need. The county next door doesn't. A person in that county who has it goes to the county that did what they should and is then maybe opening up again. You then have a problem. Locking down some and not all is a problem. That doesn't mean you shouldn't lock things down of course, because if you don't, things will be worse. But the places not locking down mean everyone who did it early is going to have to be locked down a lot longer.
Lockdowns save lives. I can't imagine the PTSD by medical workers from this. We need these lockdowns to save lives and so that they don't have to be at a greater risk. I wish more were taking this seriously now. And earlier too, but it's too late for that. I'm sitting here listening to a doctor on CNN saying that even New York isn't doing enough. (in comparison to what China had to do, which is true)
I'm also thinking about all the kids having to live through this. This has to be extraordinarily tough, even if you don't know someone that will eventually be impacted. There was a piece on that tonight on the news with some kids and a psychologist. Scary time for adults, but even more for them. |