This is Going to be Bad Ep. 08

We have reached the end of the Beginning

A Review of what we know

We are now six months into the Covid-19 pandemic. I first noticed it last December as a small story about a new virus showing up in a market in Wuhan in http://outbreaknewstoday.com/. My wife and I started paying attention to what was happening in China in January, although we didn’t get seriously worried until they started taking temperature readings of travelers from China at SFO airport in late January. For us, that was the tripwire indicating Covid-19 was SERIOUS and we started preparing. Because we were in Mexico in 2009 for H1N1, we thought we had a fairly good idea of what was probably coming. So, we stocked up and got ready for a siege. Little did we know.

I think we expected a reprise of 2009. That there would be some hysteria, a few months of clampdowns on travel, an outbreak or two in the US that would be quickly dealt with, news of outbreaks and deaths from countries with poor healthcare systems, and a return to normalcy in five or six months. The usual pattern of events for disease outbreaks in the early 21st century. After all, we had seen this before. SARS, MERS, H1N1, H5N1 none of them really touched the US significantly. This would probably be the same, a scary “near miss” with minimal impact. Still, my wife had a “bad feeling” about this one and she ordered stocks of PPE, disinfectants, and canned goods through the month of February, “just in case”.

I thought she was overreacting because she is in poor health now. Since she had ARDS, triggered by septic shock three years ago, she has been paranoid about respiratory illnesses. Even a “regular” flu could kill her, so we are very vigilant about managing our exposure and risk to infections. Once again, her synthesis and gestalt of the situation proved to be right (that’s, why she’s a genius and I’m just “really smart”). Still, we watched in disbelief as the situation deteriorated through the month of March, endured the “half assed” April shutdown, and watched the Republican May “Great Reopening” with horror. Now, June is over, July is here, and C-19 is still raging through the US population worse than ever. We have learned a lot about C-19, and while there are many unanswered questions, this seems like a good point to take stock of what we know and think about what…