On Tuesday morning there were still 0 cases in my state of Michigan. Late Tuesday there were two. Yesterday we found out there were 12, and this morning we wake up to 25, according to this NYT map.
News broke yesterday that 3 of the cases were right here in my own county of Kent, 2 women and a man, all over 60, all three travelers to international hot spots. Gee what a shock.
At least one of these cases had been up and down a main shopping drag where I do some of my shopping. He or she went to the gym, a pizza joint, a steakhouse, and two (!) submarine sandwich shops between March 6-8. How pedestrian the tastes of these jet-setters.
Trump is criticized by Democrats because of his Feb 1 travel restrictions on China.
I fault him for not going far enough. He has brought Wuhan into my backyard because of what he has not done and easily could have done.
Trump should have shut down all travel on Feb 1, especially by air, to protect America from the spread of this disease and its impact, which has been enormous. Every plane was a missile. Every passenger was a warhead, and now they are all going off all over the place.
Local and state governments are scrambling to shut down everything they can, disrupting the lives of millions because Trump couldn't bring himself to disrupt the privilege of a class of jet-setting globalists, elites and wannabes, among whom the disease is spreading, according to the headlines and in fact. Trump himself may come down with it because of this.
I carry no brief for the Chicoms, but Xi Jinping is the great man Trump only wishes he could be because he did what he had to do to protect his country from the virus by locking down Hubei Province. Who cares what the motivation was, whether it was saving face, saving the power and privilege of the communist party, saving his economy, or some other more broadly understood conception of patriotism. In the end Xi Jinping understood what he had to do to survive and prevail before it was too late for China. It took him about one month. We are going on two months, have an Emergency declaration as of yesterday, but you are still free to move about the country, spreading the disease.
There were just over 1000 cases in the US on Wednesday. This morning over 2000, which will be 4000 in a few days, then 8000, then 16000, and so on. The time for locking down travel is long past, but locking it down even now would help.
University of Washington researchers are finding 7-9% positivity results for coronavirus in their daily testing of sample lots approximating 1000. If that turns out to be the morbidity rate and this virus spreads like the common cold, our country could easily have 30 million SARS-CoV-2 infections, 20% of which will be serious. Those 6 million serious cases will overwhelm our healthcare infrastructure, and many will die because of that. There will simply be too many people to treat effectively.
All for muh freedom.
