truth over facts

I've been reading about all these different countries, how they're managing covid19, how well it's working, etc. Then I saw an ad for pizza delivery. They say it's all safe, no contact, but it's food, it has to be prepared by people, transported by people. I'm sure they have precautions every step of the way, but people make mistakes. Check the reviews and yep, plenty of evidence for it, too.

Then, you don't get sick. Never even knew you were infected, but a brother's friend's mother inexplicably gets really sick weeks later. Good luck with the contact tracing.

Americans are being far less careful than they are in places like South Korea, Switzerland, and China. Even the most well intentioned among us often don't understand why these measures need to be airtight. No pun intended, right? Papa Johns is not an essential service. All sorts of things are still open that are not essential. America just can't give them up, and that's one reason our curve isn't flattening at all.

While we're talking about it as if it's on the decline - people are literally saying that new cases are on the decline - but the data is right here. It's not. Daily cases are very much still going up. We're succumbing to the pressures from all different sides, and lying to ourselves about it. I'm sure that'll work out great.

Ironically, partially opening up is the right thing to do, with one huge America-will-fuck-it-up caveat. It requires all sorts of serious precautions and public awareness and cooperation. Maybe that's three caveats, but we've got none of it. Everything from factory farms to restaurants to preschools just figuring it out on their own. It's great that they're trying, sure. Except it's not, because the lockdown is not a mitigation strategy. It's not just a way to keep infections to a minimum.

It's supposed to be a strategy for safely reopening everything. For that strategy to work, it's almost all or nothing. We can't ever reopen safely, if we can't get new cases down to zero, not just in regional pockets here and there, but much more broadly. We can never reopen safely with ignorant laughable precautions, like putting shower curtains in restaurants. Sure it might help, but if even a few people are getting infected, the entire thing is a failure. The virus remains uncontrolled and uncontained, making it impossible to do anything safely.

This is where the country is stuck. The lockdown strategy isn't working. It can't. America is just way too broken. This means the way we're going might be the only way we can go. People will resist, the economy and everything will suffer anyhow, many places will try to lockdown again, only to be unsuccessful again. 

In the meantime, we'll never be able to fully open. As the death toll keeps climbing, no one is going to be wanting much physical contact with strangers. I suspect lots of business will be having more serious problems, even if allowed to open. Even the lockdown protesters will start seeing the deaths, if not dying themselves, and I find it tough to believe that won't shake their convictions a bit.

On a somewhat more positive note, new studies have shown SARS-COV2 is actually much less deadly than we thought.. but also much more contagious. Turns out far more people have antibodies than they expected to find. Being a novel virus makes that 0.1% fatality rate much more severe than it sounds.

I guess we do have herd immunity against the flu. We have no immunity against this, which is why this good news isn't all that good. In ten years though, when civilization is a smoldering heap of rubble, it will probably be even less deadly than the flu is now. In the meantime, on an individual level, it means even the compromised have a much better chance of surviving an infection than we thought. You often don't even know you've had it.

Unless these serology studies turn out to be completely wrong. Who knows with any of this.