These Great Numbers
"Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close," Donald Trump declared, on Thursday. The odd punctuation was in the original.
Naturally, the president was pleased with a set of third quarter GDP data which showed the world's largest economy expanding at a record pace. He eschewed mention of the critical nuance.
Conspicuously missing, for example, was any acknowledgment that while the rebound was unequivocally good news, there's still lost ground that needs to be made up. T
Using the straight edge that is the side of my Motorola Razor flip phone, I compared the derivative of the current, emerging third hump with the derivative of the second hump. Eyeballing, the 42k now looks like 32k before. Rough expectation on current course is a peak at 78 to 80K hospitalization at peak.
Even if through a miracle, broadcasters and sites freely publish PSAs from the Surgeon General (whoever that even is nobody knows) that masks help, it’s going to be bad. Seems inevitable. Everyone take care of yourself and those around you.
I believe the perception for many in the USA is that we got it wrong and Europe got it right, at least in terms of flattening the curve (have not heard that phrase in a long time) and masks.
But now Europe, after all that, is in worse shape than USA.
Not a good launch point for flu season and trying to encourage mitigation actions, especially masks and avoiding crowding.
Hopefully the average daily death rate stays below 1000 or it truly will be a dark winter.
There is nothing stopping this virus– and no one (at the national level) is even trying. Some people thought the strain might be getting milder, but it’s just: we are testing more, having lower dose exposures due to masks/distancing, and transmission starts in the young before it gets to the old. It is an indoor respiratory virus, and with windows now shut and heaters on in much of the upper states we are getting the badness. Europe had a much better summer than we did mostly because they don’t use air conditioning and they actually did test/trace/isolate. Open windows and good air exchange is more important than masking- which many Europeans don’t do. European temperatures dropped and windows shut, so transmission risk changed. Unfortunately, they continued hanging out and eating and partying indoors despite new risks. Now it’s too late and the virus is redistributed all around Europe for everyone to continue spreading indoors to family and friends until March.
Maybe if we acted like Japan and all wore masks and avoided crowds we’d be OK, but certainly with COVID fatigue plus the covidiot anti-maskers mixing it up we are in for a world of hurt. We will surpass Europe’s numbers by December, I’d guess.There are good reasons that the Asian countries went all-out to eradicate the virus. Even Japan, who has been more lax about testing and tracing, has excelled because they have used masks universally and follow the common sense “3 C’s”. The constant masking means even those who get it don’t get very sick because their inoculum dose is low given the mask use, saving their very elderly population.
Here’s a 6-12 month trade idea: Long the East, Short the West.
This will be the saddest holiday season in forever.
And of course we should not forget the record number of our citizens members of the Federal, state and local governments have helped to kill through their actions and inaction since March. No panic, though.