As anyone in the world knows now, the U.S. is really ramping up our number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus, and according to the scientists it’s going to get a lot worse. Predictions are 100,000 or 200,000 deaths as a best case scenario if we continue to remain at home and practice social distancing! That’s crazy.
This is a war. In Vietnam the U.S. lost 58,220 soldiers and in Korea we lost 128,650 personnel. This outbreak may be bigger than both of those combined–I say it again, this is crazy. People need to wake up, if they haven’t already…can you hear me Florida and Missouri and too many others.
I have been working from home since 19 March, having come into the office only today, 31 March, to plug my computer into the network so it can update itself. I think I saw three or four people here in what would usually be an office of over 40.
I have asked a few people I saw today if they knew anyone that tested positive for the virus. All answered no, which is good. I was told that currently there is no one from our command that has tested positive.
As a federal worker I am very lucky as I am permitted to work from home and am still getting paid, unlike so many others. I do really feel bad for so many. The federal funds that will be issued to most people will help, but it’s going to take too long to get to them, and it’s not nearly going to be enough.
We live in Washington State, not far from Seattle as the crow flies, but on the other side of the Puget Sound. It’s much less populated on this side, with people spread out more. When those first cases hit the Seattle area hard, the Governor did a great job of locking those few counties down, and it seems to be making some difference now. The rest of the state was told to stay home around the 23rd of March. As of 30 March our county had 63 confirmed cases, and it’s obviously growing daily. The estimated population of the county is 220,550 people. That works out to a super low rate of 0.0002856, or less than three per 10,000 people, a percentage of 0.0286%. Compare that to New York which has 75,795 cases with a population of 19.49 million, a rate of 0.003889, or about four per hundred people, a rate 13 times higher than our county. The scientists have said they believe that it will kill an estimated 0.66% of people who get the virus.
The best solution is not to get the coronavirus at all, but not sure that we can all attain that, especially after the stay at home restrictions are removed and we all start coming together again. Everyone needs to stay at home and allow the healthcare system and the scientists get this under control.
If you have an affinity for number and charts, recommend you go to the HealthData.org website where you can see data for the entire U.S. or for an individual state.
Stay Safe.
