Good news on the case growth trend.

[thucythucy]

30. Are these numbers also included?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213200196

That's 115 new cases in Tennessee in one nursing home alone. How many other nursing homes are similarly at risk? And notice that not only are residents infected, but also staff, who go home to their families, and who have presumably been going out into the community and no doubt infecting others. Who in turn infect others. None of which will become apparent for another week or so.

So Tennessee is then another "wild card" that might disrupt your more optimistic scenario.

As for Louisiana, we've just started to see cases that were infected a week or more ago. And many of the folks who attended Mardi Gras have now scattered back to their home states--raising the potential for an even greater spread.

As the saying goes--hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

According to the experts our "best" case scenario is "only" one to two hundred thousand deaths. And the worst case scenarios are absolutely horrific.

One other factor to consider. Even if--and it's a big "if"--even if North America and western Europe are able to bring down the rate of increase, much of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Southern and South West Asia are just beginning to experience their own outbreaks. Imagine the impact of 200 million cases in Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia. Imagine 50 million cases in Brazil (where the federal government seems every bit as inept and anti-science as our own).

The public health and economic devastation this will cause will dwarf anything we've seen to date. Who is going to do the planting in those regions, who's going to bring in the harvest? Food shortages will in turn lead to more vulnerable populations, which will exacerbate the impact of the pandemic. We saw this dynamic during the flu pandemic of 1919, where populations weakened by poor nutrition during the war were super vulnerable to the disease.

We are in for a very harsh time. Better to face up for it and prepare--which can only happen when the right wing know nothings--in the US, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere--are made to make way for people with some measure of competence and empathy.

I strongly suspect that it's way too early to claim anything close to success in slowing the spread, here or anywhere else.

Though I also very passionately hope I'm wrong.