Culture and society – Page 10 – An Echo That's Reversing

Coronavirus – Wed 18 Mar 2020 – first pass at growth prediction, SARS and MERS

Posted by Kurt Eichenwald yesterday at 5:17 PM:

Day 1: 15 cases
Next 25 days: Grew to 1,000
Next 3 days: 2,000
Next 3 days: 3,000
Next day: 4,000
Next 20 hrs: 5,000
Next 5 hours: 6,000

To which I’ll add: 7,769 (Johns Hopkins) at 5:00 PM today. Walking backwards with the day counts he gives, the first day is 14 Feb 2020 (ikr) and those values pretty much match what can be found in other sites. The trend is, as expected, exponential:

Coronavirus – Mon 16 Mar 2020 – the day of the DJIA drop, sites that aggregate case counts

The markets tanked. DJIA dropped almost 13% by end of day. S&P 500 down almost 12%.

Trump told state governors to basically fend for themselves. “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment–try getting it yourselves.”

The night before our company’s 2 week wfh policy and the whole country shutting down

Airports filled with lines of people waiting to re-enter. Arbitrary shut down of flights to/from “Europe” (which countries?) that was declared by That Guy on Thursday night causes an influx of travelers that overwhelmed processing lines and any plan (hint: there was none) for medical mediation.

Notes on COVID-19, during the President’s address and prior

Most taken from Twitter “friends”:

WHO declared it a pandemic today. (NPR link, I cannot find a WHO link.)
South Korea performing 10,000 tests a day. US performed 8 today.
“Misstatements” during the address, which was scripted, yet had to be corrected within 10 min:
- Ban all travel from Europe, s/b ban on foreign nationals and not trade or citizens. Most of Europe has equal or fewer cases than the US.
- Health insurers waive copay for treatment, s/b only for testing (insurers quick as fuck corrected that).
- Promises payroll tax relief, relief for sick workers, and waivers for small businesses, s/b Congress is reviewing those measures.
Just yesterday, president said “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
Gen. Michael Hayden: “I’m scared”.
Dow futures dropped 3+% during his 11 min speech and up to ~5% an hour after.
NBA suspends season. Rudy Gobert mocked COVID-19 on Monday by exaggeratedly touching every reporters’ microphone and is now the single cause of the shut down.
2 weeks ago: Italy had 322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, 1 week ago: 2,502, Today: 10,149.

Where are we at

I’m losing track. It started with the inquiry.

We just had an impeachment in the House (Wed 18 Dec 2019, mark this day). This outcome was written before the vote came; Democrats had the majority and had voted on impeachment three times prior. Those previous attempts were certain to fail–and are now held up as Democratic bias–but relatively inconsequential otherwise. Let’s face it: if the Republicans didn’t have an excuse for the accusation of bias they’d create it anyway. This time, the impeachment, stuck and it stuck with such gravity because of those who came forward.