> I don't say these things to whip people up in a panic, I say them because we are about to get hit hard here in the US.
The average person in the US rightly did not have much reason to be concerned a few weeks ago, but that's not the case anymore. It's important to understand that the situation has evolved rapidly for the worse here, and our response ("panic level" if you will) must escalate accordingly.
In particular:
- Each one of us is now at much higher risk of infection, possibly orders of magnitude higher than the official numbers suggest. The bungled testing rollout, the high level of community spread and the number of deaths together suggest the official numbers are grossly under-counting. [1] This is very different from a few weeks ago when the cases where mostly imported or had known transmission routes.
- A few weeks ago, the CDC was still hoping to contain the epidemic by tracing and quarantining cases. But that has changed. Whereas China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc have succeeded in containing the disease so far, the US has already failed and the CDC now expects it to eventually spread to most of the US population. [2] Its strategy is now to slow it down enough to avoid what's happening in Italy.
- The situation in Italy has shown us the magnitude of human suffering that will result from people "under-panicking" and going about their daily lives at a similar stage of the epidemic. There will be a rapid explosion in cases, leading to a meltdown of the health care system. Many of us will lose our loved ones, and many of us will die unnecessary deaths from hospitals being overrun. Not to mention the impact on the economy, which we can't measure yet in Italy but could well be greater than the cost of locking down early.
So stop thinking "it's fine". It was a few weeks ago. It's not anymore.
100% agree with what you are saying. I really meant more so that I don't want to encourage hoarding or panic buying to the level where other people can't get what they need. You should be worried, you should be preparing in anyway you can (2 weeks+ food, isolate yourself as much as possible, discourage gatherings of any size).
Yep, 100% agree. No reason to go rob-a-hand-sanitizer-factory crazy. But as you said, everyone one of us should be worried enough to go prep and do our part to slow the spread (WFH if possible etc).
The average person in the US rightly did not have much reason to be concerned a few weeks ago, but that's not the case anymore. It's important to understand that the situation has evolved rapidly for the worse here, and our response ("panic level" if you will) must escalate accordingly.
In particular:
- Each one of us is now at much higher risk of infection, possibly orders of magnitude higher than the official numbers suggest. The bungled testing rollout, the high level of community spread and the number of deaths together suggest the official numbers are grossly under-counting. [1] This is very different from a few weeks ago when the cases where mostly imported or had known transmission routes.
- A few weeks ago, the CDC was still hoping to contain the epidemic by tracing and quarantining cases. But that has changed. Whereas China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc have succeeded in containing the disease so far, the US has already failed and the CDC now expects it to eventually spread to most of the US population. [2] Its strategy is now to slow it down enough to avoid what's happening in Italy.
- The situation in Italy has shown us the magnitude of human suffering that will result from people "under-panicking" and going about their daily lives at a similar stage of the epidemic. There will be a rapid explosion in cases, leading to a meltdown of the health care system. Many of us will lose our loved ones, and many of us will die unnecessary deaths from hospitals being overrun. Not to mention the impact on the economy, which we can't measure yet in Italy but could well be greater than the cost of locking down early.
So stop thinking "it's fine". It was a few weeks ago. It's not anymore.
[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/summ... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cfYC4YLsu4