Script said:
Should not really have come as a surprise. Colder weather is one factor. But also the result of too many people thinking that if everybody else complies with soft measures, then I can sure be the exception. Well, I assume we all knew from the start (with the extreme, highly undesirable,yet very effective example of Wuhan) what that is leading to.
Why would a government lie about ICU capacities and then spend billions of dollars for alleviation ? Sounds fabricated. Also, authorities should look at ICU capacities as a trend. It's not that inflow is suddenly gonna stop altogether the day after tomorrow at a quarter past nine. There's a lag of up to 14 days.
This seems like a slow moving problem, while a lot of people were hoping they could just get through it with short term adjustments. I don't know enough specific information to pontificate about CA but it appears, different states are having better or worse results. We should not read too much into these state results differences as each state is different, while there are probably some useful lessons there.
Soft measures only work as long as people play along. After that come consequences. Sad.
It is still not well understood by the public where the new infections are coming from (of course person to person), but governments seem focussed on shutting down small food/bar businesses, schools, and locations that are only indicated as a small fraction of transmission cases.
I expect spikes after thanksgiving, christmas, and new years, with new infections spread between friends and family. New year's with the addition of alcohol that impairs judgement could trigger much bad behavior. (Anecdotally a neighbor about 100 yards away from me had a NYE party, I got to watch a free fireworks show from my driveway).
Actually, I'm hoping for the virus to mutate at some point into a variant that causes less severe illness in the most affected (purely for its own survival), a variant which I hope will then take over. I'm not an expert in biology,, how likely is it ?
The so called UK variant, that is unlikely to be unique to UK, reportedly is less deadly but more virulent. Not killing the host sees useful to increase spread. In fact less symptoms will make it even easier to spread.
Until then I clearly prefer masks to curfews, 'please refrain from doing this or that'-requests to fining, and vaccination to ECMO. And I hope my neighbors feel the same about it.
I am hoping with the new year the state governments here will reflect on what worked and what didn't and make course adjustments.
People are understandably getting weary of the mitigation strategy, but they just need to be patient for several months more. I can't read their minds but am pleased to see reasonable compliance with mask wearing at my post office across the street, and my once a week walmart food shopping experience..
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It is surprising that states seem to be caught flat footed regarding jabbing tens of millions of seniors (older than me) and front line workers. The hospital workers can jab each other, but now the critical shortfall seems to be medical workers to jab everybody else. This too will work itself out but will likely take longer than hoped for getting the public immunized.
We are already hearing anecdotes about screw-ups but this is par for the course.
Good luck everybody. The only good thing about being old is that time goes by faster.
JR
