It's even worse than it appears.
Wednesday March 11, 2020; 10:23 AM EDT
  • I know pretty much everyone who reads this blog probably loved math in school and won't need a refresher in how exponential growth works, but just in case.#
    • 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576.#
  • That's 20 steps. We started out with two cases of Covid19, and after 20 weeks, assuming a doubling of cases every week, we're at over a million. And I'm sure you can go on from there. It isn't very long until everyone on the planet has had the disease. No one is immune.#
  • It kills a fair number of those people, even if they are hospitalized. But at some point, say the 15th week, we will have completely used up all the hospital beds, and then the death rate will go way up. Maybe you don't get killed, but some large portion of your friends and family do. Even if you survive, you may wish you hadn't.#
  • We're venturing into the unknown. Life is always like that, but at most times we can hide it from ourselves, we go on with our usual routine. Most days are pretty ordinary. We have a hard time understanding that sometimes the comfortable daily humdrum can break. #
  • In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, I went there, to see what a post-apocalyptic American experience was like. I knew the city well because I had gone to college there. What I saw was a city that would never recover from what happened. It would continue, that was obvious, but it would never again be the city I knew. #
  • There are smart things we can do, and unfortunately in the United States, we aren't doing them. Of course. We're too stupid to think these things through. Our government sees this as an opportunity to shovel more money to themselves and their cronies. No thought is put into easing the strain on the health care system. On making it easy for every sick person to get the care they need, hospitalization, or the ability to stay home when sick so they don't infect others. To increase the survival rate, and slow the spread. We still haven't gotten the message that we all lose when people among us who are sick go untreated, especially when with a viral infectious disease for which no one is immune. #
  • The smart thing to do right now would be to quickly replace our government with one that is immersed in the math and logic of virality. To get Sanders off the campaign trail and in Washington to plead the case for single payer health care now, for everyone. He, unlike most Congress people, has the attention of the press. We need to close down every opportunity for the virus to infect masses of people, and treat and isolate those who do get infected. #
  • The mayor of New York, supposedly a smart person, has yet to cancel the St Patrick's Day parade. No doubt it will be canceled, but the idea that at this late date it hasn't, tells you someone in authority who is not insane (unlike our president) hasn't figured out how this works. #
  • We're now paying the price for the dumbing-down of our country. As one of the more vulnerable people (not the most, but close) I am sad that my fate is in the hands of such incompetence. I'm doing what I can to spread the information that we're wasting the gift of time we were given, we can learn from the experience of Italy, Iran and China. But of course, we aren't. #

© 1994-2020 Dave Winer.

Last update: Wednesday March 11, 2020; 1:12 PM EDT.

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