I see a lot of anecdotal reports of hospitals underutilized & closure of the excess capacity that was spun up in anticipation of a surge that hasn't yet materialized due to social distancing having an impact.
I think we're probably gonna re-open too soon based on that.
I think we're probably gonna re-open too soon based on that.
I'm starting to think 2020-2021 will see waves of overwhelmed hospitals in different cities at different times, as lockdowns are relaxed and then reimplemented. The impact on the actual economy will be pretty brutal, & everything will just get... janky, for lack of a better word.
There will be a kind of mass jankification of all the things. The mail will just sort of not run b/c the USPS will implement mass furloughs to stave off insolvency. You won't be able to book convenient flights b/c routes will be closed. There will odd shortages at supermarkets.
We're going to end up in a place that's pretty familiar to many third worlders & travelers in such countries, where many things things we took for granted just sort of don't work, or come and go at odd and unpredictable times. Just a general, pervasive jankitude in public life.
(I'm aware that this is how a lot of people from high-functioning Asian and EU countries already feel about the US -- a lot of parts of it are just more janky than what they're used to. Well, that'll get a lot worse.)
It's not going to be doomsday for everyone. It'll be different degrees of doomsday for different populations & demographics in different places. So it might be doomsday for your neighbors or ppl in another town or state - sudden hunger & desperation --but not for you. Or reverse.
A lot of countries already operate this way & have for a while. I traveled in San Salvador a bit in the early 2K's, for instance. Many ppl there live in what preppers would call a SHTF situation. Some people in the same city do not. Everybody just tries to deal.
I now expect that through multiple cycles of hospital overwhelm + death and regional/national lockdowns, we'll travel a few notches down in that same terrible direction. How fast & how far I have no idea, tho. But it'll be a process that plays out over a year or two.
And it will feel like an absolute eternity in Twitter years. We'll pass virtual decades on here in that time.
Yep, like we're going to get a big push to reopen on May 1. God help us all. washingtonpost.com/national/trump…
This big gamble with our lives is based on the "all the models are dumb & wrong" crowd's very most favorite thing of all: a model. And the foundation of that model is that same crowd's second most favorite thing of all: the fake Chinese numbers.
