The Pandemic Could Get Much Worse

139,142 deaths.

3,542,888 cases.

63,405 new cases today.

Why have I stopped writing about COVID-19?

New York Times:

“When you mix science and politics, you get politics. With the coronavirus, the United States has proved politics hasn’t worked. If we are to fully reopen both the economy and schools safely — which can be done — we have to return to science.

To understand just how bad things are in the United States and, more important, what can be done about it requires comparison. At this writing, Italy, once the poster child of coronavirus devastation and with a population twice that of Texas, has recently averaged about 200 new cases a day when Texas has had over 9,000. Germany, with a population four times that of Florida, has had fewer than 400 new cases a day. On Sunday, Florida reported over 15,300, the highest single-day total of any state. …

This is our second chance. We won’t get a third. If we don’t get the growth of this pandemic under control now, in a few months, when the weather turns cold and forces people to spend more time indoors, we could face a disaster that dwarfs the situation today. “

I spent five months writing about it.

Everything that I said would happen came true.

Back in April, I wrote at length about how we were entering the dip and that the virus was going to rebound and move inland this summer. I said it wasn’t “just the flu.” It is now officially the second deadliest pandemic in American history and is growing worse in the middle of summer. The deaths are down because the median age of new infections is way down, but it is steadily working its way through the population. Something like 7.3% of the American population has been infected by it now.

In an article called “My Political Journey,” which I wrote on May 25th, I said:“By the time this is over, this country will be in a very different place. That much is for sure. It is too early to say what the long term consequences will be. The experts think we are in the “second inning of a nine inning game.” If we end up losing 1 million or 2 million people to this virus, it will be the greatest loss of life in American history. I would like to think we would be capable of looking back on the last 50 years after such an unprecedented loss of life and reflecting on whether most of the things we argued about in Clown World before this happened ever really mattered. Maybe this will set us down the path to becoming a serious country again. If not though, we will all know once and for all where we stand.”

I wrote that on the morning George Floyd was killed.

Everyone knows what happened next. We found out where we stand as a country. We found out that we were not going to take the path to becoming a serious country again. On the contrary, every sacrifice that had been made to combat the virus up until that point was thrown to the winds. We came full circle back to the days in late January when the media was certain that “racism is the real virus.”

No one ought to believe or trust anyone in power after what was allowed to transpire in June. We were all called to make great sacrifices for the common good of fighting the virus. Then it was to hell with all that science is a code word for systemic racism and public health should bow to political ideology. Why would anyone now have any confidence in the media, our politicians and public health experts?

Nature is going to take its course now. We had one shot at stopping the virus. Instead, we took the first exit to Clown World. Why should we make enormous sacrifices again? Why should anyone believe that this country is capable of coming up with a coherent national strategy and sticking to it? This is currently the same sick country which is dismantling police departments and is incapable of upholding the law. We have mobs of violent people toppling monuments of the Founding Fathers!

The virus has exposed the fact that the United States is an ungovernable failed state. We shouldn’t expect competence from a failed state. We shouldn’t make sacrifices for a Third World failed state.