This Is Bullshit

The past few days have been spent inveigling powerlessly against the virus that closed down the world. This morning I had a brief exchange with a physicist friend, the kind of physicist who is a physicist’s physicist, but who nonetheless holds down a top job in the real world applying his talent and skill. He, like me, thinks this shutdown is largely Democrat bullshit, and he and statistician friend, when US deaths were estimated to run to 2,000,000 were laying bets they would be more like 50-80,000. Deaths stand at 10,000 now, with curves flattening in all but the densest pockets holding those with the most dangerous preconditions. I bet they don’t even reach 20,000. But we have lost $10Trillion.

By the way, those most vulnerable, other than the elderly, are service workers who push themselves brutally hard because they feed us and their families and cannot afford to shelter. Mostly these are people of color, who use sugar to fuel their brutally hard lives, who are diabetic or pre-diabetic and are often obese. (Fast food being fast and cheap) Meanwhile, fit, trim office workers lounge around their flats, sharing their healing recipes on Instagram.

He follows this website, and now I do too. https://covid19.healthdata.org/

It shows that there are enough beds, ventilators and ICUs to weather the storm in every state but New York, which has the hospital ship and the Javits Center. Plus the deaths projections are way way way off.

This thing is nearly over.