Covid-19 Update

The anniversary of 9/11 has just passed. And Donald Trump says the US is “rounding the corner” of the coronavirus pandemic. So I went to the Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 data and examined the data for cumulative Covid-19 cases in the US. Through 9/11/2020, the chart for cumulative cases looks like this:

Hmm. Trump says we’re “rounding the corner” and he can’t be wrong, because he’s the president, and the president wouldn’t lie to us. Right? But whatever he sees in the data is, in my opinion, just a whisper of rounding the corner. In late April and early May, it looked like we were rounding the corner, but then we let our guard down and the curve bent sharply upward. That can happen again, especially as flu season approaches and some people will be getting Covid-19 and influenza at the same time.

Here’s another chart:  cumulative deaths. There’s no “rounding the corner” yet when it comes to dying. When this chart begins bending downward, I might agree that we’re rounding the corner. We won’t be out of the danger zone—we’ll still be on thin ice—but we’ll be “rounding the corner” as long as we don’t let down our guard too soon.

 

Even more worrisome: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agrees with me (though he doesn’t know it).

Let’s look at this whole thing from another perspective. We’re all just dandelions standing in the fading daylight. All it will take is one gusty autumn breeze and a lot of us will be gone. One day that wind will come. My clock is ticking and so is yours. Let’s make the most of the time that’s left to us, but let’s also make sure we don’t hurt anyone else while we’re doing it.

(Wow, that’s a lot of metaphors.)