Category: Culture and society

My first post was on Thu 12 Mar 2020, six weeks two days, when the president made his first address on the virus. It’s not easy to remember what’s changed.

6 weeks ago

12 Mar 2020 – My first post and this was fucking deep into the problem. At the start, it was mishandled and downplayed by Trump. Govt studies and deliberations were being marked as classified. Racist terms were being floated to distract. Italy is imploding. NBA asshole Rudy Gobert acts like an idiot and causes the shutdown of all sports.

15 Mar 2020 |16 Mar 2020 – My company starts working from home. Airports overrun by arbitrary shutdown causing untold infections. Massive state-by-state shutdowns begin (schools/bars/restaurants). Bernie and Biden debate. DJIA tanks.

18 Mar 2020 – Growth starts looking exponential. I start documenting numbers and projections.

Thu 19 Mar 2020 – Continued racism from the president. Attacks on media as cause/source (?) of virus. Favipiravir/remdesivir/HCQ as potential treatments? China emissions down 25%. 13k US infected.

Sat 21 Mar 2020 – More lies from the pres: no testing, no medical ships, no Google website, and his preemptive shilling of HCQ does not look good. Our numbers start looking worse than other countries.

Mon 23 Mar 2020 – Republican passes stimulus that ends up benefiting large corporations. More proof of HCQ failure.

Tue 24 Mar 2020 – Medical teams discuss morality of choosing who dies.

4 weeks ago

Mon 30 Mar 2020 – Time line of this all went wrong.

Wed 1 Apr 2020 – Are masks useful?

Thu 2 Apr 2020 – Kemp sez he just now learned about asymptomatic infection.

2 weeks ago

Sat 11 Apr 2020 – Govt is stealing supplies from the state; SCOTUS allows people to die in the Wisconsin primary; Nichols: “With each briefing, Trump is making us worse people.”

Now (Sat 25 Apr 2020)

Wed 22 Apr 2020 – Battle for the shutdown, astro-turf to “re-open”, and ???s as to whether we have “contained the virus” (we have not).

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says he didn’t know asymptomatic people could transmit coronavirus from Newsweek, 2 Apr 2020

Individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours.

As shocking as his lack of knowledge on a pandemic that is changing the world society is, it’s important to note: “symptomatic” is to a degree subjective. Some people have higher base temperatures, are they symptomatic? Some cough regularly. Some have IBS. Unless there is an obvious degradation of health, there is really no well-defined checklist of factors to make someone symptomatic. So when is it safe to allow widespread personal integration and travel? I’m going to be an asshole and quote myself:

Viruses that show symptoms faster and that kill their hosts faster will have a more limited spread. COVID-19’s delay and lower fatality rate may be making it more widespread.

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

Here’s the timeline knowledge on transmission as best as I could find (I will updated if I get better info):

Continue reading Asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, subclinical