Six days ago, there were 13,355 new coronavirus cases daily in the United States.
Just today, we'll be pushing 23,000 or 24,000 new cases.
I think Dr. Fauci needs to be clear(er) that avoiding doubling new cases every 24 hours is an *infinite* distance from a "flattening out."
Just today, we'll be pushing 23,000 or 24,000 new cases.
I think Dr. Fauci needs to be clear(er) that avoiding doubling new cases every 24 hours is an *infinite* distance from a "flattening out."
PS/ While I understand Dr. Fauci is looking the last 96 hours—when we've gone from 19,452 news cases/daily to 23,000 or so—I think the focus on New York City appears to be blinding the administration to the growing crises in 25-30 other cities, whose numbers are far from peaking.
PS2/ Louisiana had 485 new cases yesterday; it has 1,212 new cases today—that's way more than double in 24 hours. Florida is at 1,037 today—up 33%+ from yesterday (754). New York: 6,646 yesterday, 8,470 today (up 25% in 24 hours). Georgia: 785 now, 349 yesterday—well over double.
PS3/ In Italy, new cases are flat—not declining—while deaths (as expected, given the illness' duration from infection to death or recovery) are still rising/remaining high, and will be for perhaps a couple weeks. But we're both "behind" Italy and *also* on a different trajectory.
PS4/ I get nervous when Fauci or others compare us to Italy—as there's great reason to think we'll keep seeing worse outcomes than Italy 1) because we're doing no contact tracing, 2) because we're still not testing enough per capita, 3) because *we're not on a national lockdown*.
PS5/ So Italy is *weeks* into its national lockdown, and all it's seeing is a flattening of new cases—or maybe not even, as doctors there say the record-keeping has become a disaster, because they're overwhelmed. Meanwhile, we're... well, *zero* days into *any* national lockdown.
PS6/ Fauci can say "Trump is listening," but I don't see it—not when there's no national lockdown, and so many mixed messages were sent about an "Easter reopening" that many *in states with stay-at-home orders* ignored them, thinking them "over-reactions" (following Trump's cue).
PS7/ In other words, we continue to ignore the fact that *we know what works* and we're *not doing it*. A national lockdown works to—within a few weeks—either flatten new cases or make their rise very slight. But that's *not* the trajectory Fauci and Trump seem to have us on now.
PS8/ So that's the backdrop against which Fauci—seeing a six-day rise in new cases/daily from around 13,000 to around *23,000*—says he's detecting an "inkling" of us starting to "flatten out." My take is, he needs to be 500% firmer with Trump about an immediate national lockdown.
PS9/ I recognize "my take" has only the value it has—I'm an attorney, not an epidemiologist—which is why it's not really "my take," but how I'm seeing experts around the world interpret the data we all have, as compared to how Trump's people (Fauci and Birx) are interpreting it.
PS10/ Avoiding exponential growth is great. But we've had 150,000 new cases—*not a typo!*—in the last *week*, and this coming week we're looking at 200,000 new cases. 33% growth isn't exponential, but it *will* bring America to its knees, eventually. We need dramatic action. /end
NOTE/ New cases today are now at 23,161—with 5 hours to go in the day.
NOTE/ New cases today are now at 23,533—with 4.5 hours to go today.
UPDATE/ I don't know why I said "23,000 new coronavirus cases today"—optimism, I guess. It'll be over 25,000—with 750+ deaths. And there's more than 2 hours left. I'll learn, I guess—we all will—that things (e.g. the bad USPS news) may be worse than we fear. And we're leaderless.
UPDATE2/ I admit it—I thought Congress (for Trump) and the legal system (his compatriots) would be first to register, for all of us, how dangerous it is to have a criminal POTUS. But we—all of us in law—failed America. Now it's doctors, nurses and patients who'll bear the burden.
UPDATE3/ And yes—I *am* saying that Trump's horrible decisions, lack of leadership, and absence of thought for anyone but himself are some key reasons that one of the richest nations on Earth is going to experience this crisis as though we didn't have two pennies to rub together.
