Please Stay Home

TL;DR: Stay home.

I responded to a FB post from March 9th that said that Jeffrey Dahmer had killed more people than COVID-19. That attitude is what is going to get over a million Americans killed. At that time I predicted 300 dead and 10,000 infected by Monday March 23 and 2 major US cities in lockdown. I was low. We are at 340 deaths and 24,378 confirmed. Entire states are on lockdown instead of just cities…but not nearly enough of them.

My prediction for 2 weeks from today – Monday April 6: 50,000 infected and 5,000 deaths. All hospital beds in major cities are full. Doctors are choosing who lives and dies by choosing who does and does not get a ventilator. This has already happened, we just haven’t seen it yet. We can’t stop those numbers. These are probably very low.

At this rate by next year – March 2021 – there will be over 1 million dead US citizens. That number will probably be closer to 2 million if we keep ignoring the inevitable by keeping beaches open and allowing people to move freely in and out of ‘hot zones’ like New York City. It doesn’t take many people out and about to spread this. Please stay home. I desperately want these numbers to be wrong, but nothing I see changes this.

Excuse: Italians smoke and don’t have good healthcare. Truth: Our numbers are tracking exactly with theirs regardless. And, by the way, they have an excellent healthcare system.

Excuse: But it stopped in China. Truth: Yes. But it didn’t just stop – they beat it. They beat it because they shut everything down. They were not allowed outside of their homes except for groceries and every single person’s temperature was checked at multiple checkpoints. *IF* we take those draconian measures for two months, yes, we too could get new cases down to zero. But we are not even close.

We must do this ourselves. We can be the cure. We can beat this without leadership telling us to. We can simply decide to do this ourselves. But it must be all of us. 90% staying home and 10% wandering around still leaves many, many people dead. If we continue to down-play this it will be too late. It’s already too late for the 4,500 who will die in the next two weeks, but hopefully not for the million who will die in the next year if we do not take a hard line.

Thank you for reading and please take care of one another and yourselves. And please…stay home.