If you are in the US, stay home.

I had a different post but it is indeed a pressing matter to discuss the fact the US is slowly opening up in the middle of a rampant plague.

Here’s the kit and kaboodle – actually, let’s start from the basics:

Right now, on American news, there are constant reports of “we will never get transmissions to zero, might as well try the best we can with what we got”. Basically, when it comes to “flattening the curve”, the word around is that it will never be an actual curve but a floating line with a hopeful bump in the middle.

Meanwhile, in S. Korea:

This was reported May 6, 2020. They have had several days of zero new cases by now, as of date of this post.

This is what their graph looks like, obtained by Google by simply searching “Coronavirus in S. Korea” (you can also do the same for every country and state).

Graph goes up to May 14, South Korea has had 17 new cases on May 17, yesterday. Please note that the number is spiraling back downward.

You can see S. Korea is over their curve and pretty speedily, too. They never had a lockdown and they were informed/got the virus on the exact same day as the US. They were aggressive about testing, contact tracing and social distancing. Still are, too. They only got a recent bump (which the US would have ignored completely if it were here) where it went from 2 cases to 12 overnight because a bunch of clubbing in Seoul district, Itaewon. That small spike caused all the local Korean governments to shut down their clubs in totality, because no one wanted to be the new hot spot after Daegu, the initial hot zone for Korea. The height of the bump was 39 cases in one day and it hasn’t reached that number since. Yesterday, May 17th, S. Korea has had 17 cases. Basically, Korea is currently experiencing their second bump and what a pebble of a bump it is! All because of doing all the right things: aggressive testing, contract tracing, effective social distancing, better healthcare system.

Inb4 “South Korea has less people than the USA!”

Insert China, who has 1.4 Billion people. The most populous country in the world, literally holds 1/5th of the world population. And ground zero for the virus, they have been battling the virus since November, where they started out by making every bad choice you could think of (not listen to the scientists, ignore facts, stoke fear/place blame on outside sources instead of focus on problem). Now, since partly removing head out of derriere, China has been experiencing low numbers, like Korea.

Added scribble to illustrate curve, graph goes up to May 14. China has had 7 new cases on May 17, yesterday. Please note the near flat line.

Inb4 “These are Asian countries. No one from the West.”

Firstly, because the West is filled with pretty disgusting people (man, do we like that word to describe other people and places, might as well apply it here), there is a reason the Black Plague shredded Europe despite starting in Mongolia. Ditto with the Spanish flu (fun fact, despite being called the “Spanish Flu” because it was believed to be from Spain in 1918 – the first known case was on a military base in Kansas, in the United States of America. Does the nation ring a bell?) But because I like stats, let’s continue with Germany, a Western nation.

 

Graph up to May 17

Germany is driving the struggle bus just a little bit but hey, that’s a curve. They got the virus a little later than other nations and still handling it well. Not as well as Korea but well.

And here comes the United States:

Graph goes up to May 14. USA had 19,731 cases on May 17th, yesterday. This is not improvement.

There is no curve. At all. We are not at the end of anything. Above are three different nations who have had the same virus and radically different graphs from the US but similar to each other: they all have visible curves. They also have better healthcare systems.

The US has been severely lagging behind testing because we A) don’t have enough and B ) think tacking a staggering medical bill to one is a great idea. This means that there are way more people with the virus than this graph shows – and that is very alarming.

Also note that we have a towering number of deaths. More than any nation. The number of dead people we have aligns with the number of Covid-infected people in all of China. A bigger nation than us in a variety of ways, especially in population numbers.

And that’s not even acknowledging the fact all the other nations have a pretty close gap between “Confirmed” and “Recovered”. Then there is the US, which has a gigantic gulf of space between “Confirmed” and “Recovered” This means people are not bouncing back from the virus. Especially not at a satisfactory rate.

 

The numbers don’t lie, news and politicians do. Here’s the thing: Summer is pretty much cancelled, no one should be going out and socializing or anything. We, the US, do not have the tests, the health infrastructure, the leadership, nothing. It’s not impossible to beat the virus, several nations are in the process of doing that. This is just garden variety American stupidity driving the wheel. Just stay home if you can, wash your hands, maintain social distancing and know that we are still in the middle of a plague.