March 26. The US is Now the Most Coronavirus Afflicted Country

March 26.  The US is Now the Most Coronavirus Afflicted Country

The US now becomes the most afflicted country in Coronavirus cases, at 85,653, passing China at almost 82,000.  39,125 cases are from New York, and over 18,000 from New York City.  People think this is from the high population density where people are living.

The US has also passed the thousand death benchmark at 1,290.  454 deaths are from New York, of which 365 deaths are from New York City.

Italy will soon pass China, also.  Italy’s curve is starting to depart from the exponential growth curve.

The US:  too little too late in responding; too little too late in testing; too little too late in confining; too little too late in supplies; too little too late in funding; and so on into the apocalyptic future.

Unemployment filings were at 3.3 million last week, quadruple a previous weekly record.  But, a lot of people had trouble filing, so expect more.  Also, now 212 million Americans are asked to stay home.  The unemployment boom will go on for three or four weeks.

Peter Navarro, the White House China antagonist, was on CNN claiming that China could have informed us 6 weeks earlier.  That is earlier than the 3-4 weeks previously claimed.  I wonder if he has prevented the US from seeking medical equipment from China, which they no longer need.  He also tried to put blame on the Obama administration.  For some reason, Navarro is in charge of getting more US manufactured medical equipment to FEMA.  His performance was totally political and rude, discouraging those in New York and New Jersey, who are dying for aid.  He wouldn’t give a number for ventilators being produced, and discounted the need for a million, which nobody had really claimed.  The highest number that I have heard was 220,000, double the present number, including the stockpiled old ones.

Apparently, Trump said this evening on Fox that he didn’t think that the US needed 30,000 or 40,000 more ventilators.  The White House slowed down a contract for 20,000 more.

Why isn’t the US sending all needed national stockpile ventilators to New York, where they are needed immediately?  Is he holding back to give them to swing and Republican states?  He already said that he is not responding well to New York and New Jersey, since they are not showing him the required deference.

Our Irvine Representative, Katie Porter, has a cold plus temperature, so she was Coronavirus tested, and is awaiting the results.  I actually said hello to her at the drug store in the local market.  She was wearing a mask.  We wish her well.  She had been working on putting restrictions on the open ended initial Senate bill.

I wish that they would pass a bill requiring Trump to stay six feet away from the members of his pandemic task force on the podium, since we need them to guide us out of this, and inform the President, who is daily misled by Fox News.  The President daily sets a bad example for the nation in this personal enhancement TV behavior.  Also, his daily bawling about how painful the few second swab was, discourages others from getting tested.

I have to amend the discussion of the virus being airborne for a half hour, and even longer.  Those were under stagnant lab conditions.  The important thing is to keep air moving, either with the heating system in winter, and the air conditioning or open windows and fans in summer.  Even cracked open windows and heating in the winter.  The other necessity is to replace air filters with the highest quality ones, and change them on a regular schedule.  The city of Irvine had its filters upgraded in response to the virus.  Dr. Fauci mentioned the floating aerosols of the virus this evening.

Bill Gates said that the whole country has to restrict together.  It should last from 6 to 10 weeks.  It has to be a national shutdown.  He talked about the 33% a day exponential growth,  He is hopeful that we can scale up to make a vaccine in one year.  And maybe have therapeutics.

My own worst case scenario, if we weren’t confining ourselves follows.  Professionals say that 1/2 will be infected.  We have to focus on the 20% that need hospitalization and oxygen.  Of those, 5% of the total, will need a ventilator in an ICU.  They are already saying don’t resuscitate.  Since there won’t be enough of either, the 20% may die, but the 5% actually will die.  The hospital system will become irrelevant, except for saving the very rich.  The number of old and immune challenged exceed these numbers.  So it would be 1/2 of 5% or 2.5% will die for sure.  Maybe 1/2 of the 20% will die, for 10%.  If the 1/2 is wrong and all catch it, then 20% or 5% will die.  With 330 million Americans, these estimates range from 8 million to 66 million.  If the growth of deaths continue exponentially at 1.33 each day, the 1,000 deaths will reach 10 million, or an increase of 10,000, in 33 days.

Ventilators don’t reproduce ventilators at 1.33 a day.  Production lines work linearly with time.  So you can’t catch an exponential.  In Trump’s 17 days to Easter, the 1.33^17 = 127, so there would be 127,000 deaths.  We really have to stay strictly to the safe at home routine, and call on our Republican states to follow suit.

Here is the daily growth table for the leading US states with over 1,000 cases, and some other domains.  Before today, it was states with over 500 cases.  There are 15 states with over 1,000 cases, and 8 more with over 500 cases.

New Jersey is very high at 56%.  Los Angeles County is also very high at 51%.  Orange County is uncomfortable at 37%.  Washington used to be around 12%, so 23% is high for it.  Canada, Mexico and Brazil are low for the day.

For days I have wanted to include a logarithmic growth graph, but by the time a news organization approved it, it would be out of date.  Here is one used by Paul Krugman.  It is from Worldometers.  All of the data is collected by Johns Hopkins, CSSE.

The vertical axis is logarithmic, so a straight line is exponential growth.  The red line is the US and clearly exponential, close to the doubling every two days growth line.  Doubling every two days need a daily increase of 41.4%.  The black line is Italy.  China is an orange line, which has turned flat for little growth.  The days axis are from the first date that each country reached 100 cases.  The really successful countries have been Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, which reacted immediately.  That is where the US could have been, and should have been.