Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump's Best-Case Pandemic Outcome is 100-240,000 Dead
The Trump administration has finally made a gesture toward the reality of the pandemic. At yesterday's briefing, the previous 15 days to mitigate the outbreak became 30 days. Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the White House task force, said, "There's no magic bullet. There's no magic vaccine or therapy. It's just behaviors -- each of our behaviors translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic over the next 30 days." If all the behavior is correct, the model shared suggested 100-240,000 dead. Without any mitigation efforts, 1.5-2.2 million Americans would die. The reality will tend toward the 800,000 to 1 million mark.
Mr. Trump finally took off his rose-colored glasses and said, "Our country is in the midst of a great national trial unlike any it has ever faced before. This is going to be a very painful -- very, very painful two weeks." This journal believes the words should be "three months."
Then, he put those spectacles back on and announced, "It's going to be like a burst of light, I really think, and I hope. Our strength will be tested, our endurance will be tried, but America will answer with love and courage and ironclad resolve."
The change of tone seems to stem from a loss of faith among some of his usual supporters. Mike Francesa, a New York sports radio talk star and Trump fan, had an on-air rant that ran, "Don't give me the MyPillow guy doing a song-and-dance up here on a Monday afternoon when people are dying in Queens," Mr. Francesa said. "Get the stuff made, get the stuff where it needs to go, and get the boots on the ground! Treat this like the crisis it is!"
He went on, "How can you have a scoreboard that says 2,000 people have died and tell us, 'It's okay if another 198,000 die, that's a good job'," Mr. Francesa said. "How is that a good job in our country? It's a good job if nobody else dies! Not if another 198,000 people die! So now 200,000 people are disposable?"
Of course, Mr. Trump cannot stay on message for long. After admitting the bad news, he went back to whining. "For whatever reason, New York got off to a very late start, and we see what happens," he opined. He complained about New York Governor Andrew Curomo, "For some people, no matter how much you give, it's never enough."
The various models suggest that New York is in for a bad ride over the next couple of weeks, but they also point to the entire country having a bad couple of months. If this disease follows the path of the 1918 Spanish Flu (and it is a reasonable assumption as it was the last global pandemic of real magnitude), the first wave will die down sometime in July. It will then revive in October as people move back indoors due to the weather. The third and final wave of the Spanish Flu did not end until June 1919, a total of about 15-16 months since the disease entered the human population, which in the current case would provide something of an "all-clear" in April 2021 or so.
Mr. Trump has set the bar very low. If America loses fewer than 240,000 people (equivalent to the population of Fort Lauderdale, Florida), he will claim victory.
For the record, South Korea and the US had their first cases on the same day. As of today, South Korea has had 9,887 cases of Covid-19 with 165 deaths. The US has six times the population of South Korea. To meet the South Korean level of effectiveness, the US would have to have fewer than 60,000 cases and fewer than 1,000 deaths. As of today, there are 190,000 US cases, and 4,080 deaths. This is the true standard by which the American response should be judged.
© Copyright 2020 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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