DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama
American college kids' spring break is punctuated by some mass migrations to sunny locales where endless partying, sex, drinking and rowdy behaviour are the norm. The comedy Where the Boys Are (1960) cast a jaundiced eye on this peculiar custom, following a bunch of kids from the wintry north descending on Florida's Ft. Lauderdale for their annual bacchanalia. Many youths are still attached to such habits.
Why The U.S. Will Drown In Covid-19 Cases
Here are examples for some of the reasons why the U.S. will now experience a gigantic epidemic wave.
The reasons include ill discipline, ignorance and incompetence, nutty religiousness and racism.
March 20 2020 - BBC
US students party on spring break despite coronavirus
Crowds of US university students flocked to Florida for their spring break, defying recommendations from the federal government and Center for Disease Control (CDC) over the coronavirus outbreak.
National health officials are advising against gatherings of 10 or more people.
April 1 2020 - NYT
44 Texas Students Have Coronavirus After Spring Break Trip
Two weeks ago, amid the coronavirus pandemic, about 70 students from the University of Texas at Austin partied in Mexico on spring break. The students, all in their 20s, flew on a chartered plane to Cabo San Lucas, and some returned on separate commercial flights to Texas.
Now, 44 of them have tested positive for the virus and are self-isolating. More students were monitored and tested on Wednesday, university officials said, after 28 initial positive tests.
...
Students at the University of Tampa, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other colleges have tested positive after returning from spring break trips to Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and elsewhere.
January 30 2020 - New England Journal of Medicine
Transmission of 2019-nCoV Infection from an Asymptomatic Contact in Germany
We are reporting a case of 2019-nCoV infection acquired outside Asia in which transmission appears to have occurred during the incubation period in the index patient.
...
[I]t is notable that the infection appears to have been transmitted during the incubation period of the index patient, in whom the illness was brief and nonspecific.The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-nCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak.
April 2 2020
Andisheh Nouraee @andishehnouraee - 0:49 UTC · Apr 2, 2020
A stunning admission of deadly ignorance from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who says he only just learned that asymptomatic people can transmit #Covid19. “[I]ndividuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours.” - vid
March 4 2020 - NYT
Shadowy Church Is at Center of Coronavirus Outbreak in South Korea
At meetings of the secretive Shincheonji Church of Jesus, worshipers sit packed together on the floor, forbidden to wear glasses — or face masks. They come to church even when sick, former members say. After services, they split up into groups for Bible study, or to go out into the streets and proselytize.
...
Now, health officials are zeroing in on the church’s practices as they seek to contain South Korea’s alarming coronavirus outbreak, in which members of Shincheonji, along with their relatives and others who got the virus from them, account for more than half of the confirmed infections.
April 2 2020 - Bloomberg
Florida Follows Others in Allowing Church Amid Stay-Home Order
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a stay-at-home order after weeks of rejecting calls for such a measure. But like other mandates ranging from New York to New Mexico, it ensures that Floridians can still attend religious services.
...
The order comes after similar steps Tuesday in Texas, another late mover that made an exception for religious worship. Michigan imposed a stay-at-home order with a religious carve-out effective March 24.Gov. DeSantis: An ambitious Italian-American conservative, his policies are criminal down the line, but par for the course in American politics. And all the Yale and Harvard degrees cannot erase that simple fact.
Religious gatherings were also exempted from Ohio’s stay-at-home order, issued Sunday by Republican Governor Mike DeWine. Solid Rock, an Ohio megachurch whose Cincinnati location hosted an event for evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump last month, held an in-person service Sunday and said on its website that it would exert a constitutional right to continue meeting.
Other states that allow some exemption for religious services include Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, according to the Center for American Progress.
Charles M. Blow @CharlesMBlow - 11:51 UTC · Apr 2, 2020
My god, I see a disaster brewing…
#COVID19Pandemic #RacialTimeBomb
Previous Moon of Alabama posts on the issue:
- The Coronavirus - No Need To Panic - Jan 25 2020
- Novel Coronavirus Defies Conspiracy Theories As Data Shows Its Coming Decline - Feb 1 2020
- The Epidemic Recedes - Number Of New Coronavirus Cases In Decline - Feb 8 2020
- Coronavirus - Statistical Change Causes Confusion - New Case Count Continues To Decline- Feb 13 2020
- Coronavirus - The Decline Of New Cases Continues - Economic Ripples Begin To Emerge - Feb 21 2020
- As Virus Spreads Over The Planet Governments Are Slow To React - Feb 27 2020
- Coronavirus - Its Time To Press Your Government To React Faster - Feb 29 2020
- Coronavirus - Bad Preparation And Propaganda Increase The Onsetting Panic - Mar 6 2020
- Why Is The Coronavirus More Dangerous Than The Flu? - Mar 9 2020
- Coronavirus - The Hidden Cases - Why We Must Shut Everything Down And Do It Now - Mar 11 2020
- News-Nugget About The Coronavirus Pandemic - Mar 13 2020
- The Pandemic Will Cause A Global Depression - We Need Demand Side Measures To Counter It - Mar 16 2020
- Coronavirus - A Lockdown Is Not Enough - Mar 17 2020
- False Claims About The Novel Coronavirus And How To Debunk Them - Mar 19 2020
- Congress Grifters Profit From Crisis - Mar 20 2020
- Coronavirus - On Western Government Failures And Possible Therapies - Mar 21 2020
- Coronavirus - How To Lift Lockdowns And Why We Should All Wear Masks - Mar 23 2020
- More Bits On The Corona Crisis - Mar 26 2020
- U.S. Virus Cases Are Off The Scale - But Its People Can Build A Movement From This - Mar 31 2020
- China Did Not Deceive Us - Counting Death During An Epidemic Is Really Difficult- Apr 1 2020
- Why The U.S. Will Drown In Covid-19 Cases - Apr 2 2020
Posted by b on April 2, 2020 at 15:49 UTC | Permalink
Now overlay those maps with maps of gun ownership.
Unemployment, government fecklessness, collapse of health care is going to lead to riots, with xenophobic hate-mongering added to the fire. And guns.
Posted by: occupatio | Apr 2 2020 16:19 utc | 2
I heard an anecdote that ISIS is urging its adherents to practice social distancing. In the favelas of Rio, the drug gangs are enforcing social distancing. The world has turned upside down when drug gangs and ISIS are more solicitous of the health of the people than the elected officials in the US.
Posted by: Peter VE | Apr 2 2020 16:20 utc | 3
The good news is that the days when the Empire's default reaction was to bomb anything that annoyed it is over.
The bad news is that the new strategy is to mount massive propaganda campaigns in the hope that the public will accept that the ruling class doesn't make mistakes-but foreign devils will do anything to hurt us. Thus placing their trust in the longevity of the anti Chinese Anti-Russian and anti-communist themes that dominated western conventional wisdom for the past century.
The bottom line is that, if you want to prepare for the future, plan against eventualities and provide security for society you don't employ an "invisible hand" to take the big decisions and trust in Providence that market forces, driven by greed, will do the right thing. They never have.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 2 2020 16:20 utc | 4
Verity et al. (March 30, 2020) have estimated the (adjusted) case fatality ratio, infection fatality ratio, and proportion of infections requiring hospitalization:
Crude Adjusted Hospitalization
CFR (%) CFR (%) IFR (%) Rate (%)
0-9 0.000 0.00260 0.00161 0.00
10-19 0.182 0.0148 0.00695 0.0408
20-29 0.193 0.0600 0.0309 1.04
30-39 0.237 0.146 0.0844 3.43
40-49 0.443 0.295 0.161 4.25
50-59 1.30 1.25 0.595 8.16
60-69 3.60 3.99 1.93 11.8
70-79 7.96 8.61 4.28 16.6
80+ 14.8 13.4 7.80 18.4
Total 2.29 1.38 0.657 Posted by: S | Apr 2 2020 16:23 utc | 5
The distance traveled map is inverse to the number of actual nCOV cases though.
New York, New Jersey and Michigan are the 3 worst hit states by far...
Posted by: c1ue | Apr 2 2020 16:24 utc | 6
Homo sapiens is certainly the second most stupid creation, after the Ebola virus. The Ebola virus is killing everybody and thus removes its basis for reproduction. Imagine how smart rhinoviruses are! They do not kill but have managed, during evolution, to make their hosts sneeze and get running noses, so can spread and flourish. They can also mutate to ever increasing variants, so no vaccine made by homo stupidus could ever limit their reproduction, season after season. Sars-CoV-2 is a different story. It doesn't kill like Ebola but is much more contagious. It leads to overwhelmed health care systems, so people indirectly die of lack of care.
Seems so as if Corona is quite smart. It will stop unhinged capitalism. Global warming will come to an end, at least for some time. Homo stupidus may become part of the evolution again. The old and unfit, wealthy and spoiled, will die and die quickly.
Posted by: HPM | Apr 2 2020 16:32 utc | 7
Philip Giraldi knows who to blame:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/02/another-expensive-war-another-intelligence-failure/
"...the intelligence agencies were warning about information derived from medical sources in China that suggested viruses were developing that might become a pandemic, but the politicians, most particularly those in the White House, chose to take no action. He writes that “…the Trump administration has cumulatively failed, both in taking seriously the specific, repeated intelligence community warnings about a coronavirus outbreak and in vigorously pursuing the nationwide response initiatives commensurate with the predicted threat. The federal government alone has the resources and authorities to lead the relevant public and private stakeholders to confront the foreseeable harms posed by the virus. Unfortunately, Trump officials made a series of judgments (minimizing the hazards of COVID-19) and decisions (refusing to act with the urgency required) that have needlessly made Americans far less safe.”
"The article cites evidence that the intelligence community was collecting disturbing information on possibly developing pathogens in China and was, as early as January, preparing analytical reports that detailed just what was happening while also providing insights into how devastating the global proliferation of a highly contagious and potential lethal virus might be. One might say that the intel guys called it right, but were ignored by the White House, which, per Zenko, acted with “unprecedented indifference, even willful negligence....”
Posted by: bevin | Apr 2 2020 16:32 utc | 8
Here's an insightful scary piece on the prognosis (very bad) for the U.S. economy:
"This Looks Like a Depression, Not a Recession:
Until we have a vaccine, we are barreling towards economic catastrophe"
https://marker.medium.com/this-looks-like-a-depression-not-a-recession-16a123f966d8
Posted by: JPM | Apr 2 2020 16:33 utc | 9
- I see another reason why the Corona virus could spead more than is necessesary. More and more lock downs will drive up the cost for state government and those state governments will be "reluctant" to impose a lock down. And when a lot of minorities die then that would be a solution to their financial problems. Then they can save on social benefits etc.
- Brian Kemp is one those "racially motivated" to not impose regulations to combat the spreading of the virus. Kemp made efforts to keep the black and latino population in his state from voting in the elections in which he became the governor of Georgia.
Posted by: Willy2 | Apr 2 2020 16:33 utc | 10
"The world has turned upside down when drug gangs and ISIS are more solicitous of the health of the people than the elected officials in the US."
Peter VE@3
Has it though? Few institutions on earth have been less solicitous of popular health than the elected officials of the United States- sponsored as most of them are by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse- Big Pharma; the MIC; chemicalised agriculture/ food processing; Silicon Valley and the mainstream media.
Posted by: bevin | Apr 2 2020 16:38 utc | 12
Stanford U. Prof. of Medicine & Epidemiology:
Covid-19 is ‘evidence fiasco’ –
‘Official 3.4% [fatality] rate from WHO’ is ‘meaningless’ –
‘We are making decisions without reliable data’
Posted by: Hannibal | Apr 2 2020 16:39 utc | 13
Why The U.S. Will Drown In Covid-19 Cases
Western Mitigation Strategy vs. Eastern Suppression Strategy
Mitigation = high Big Pharma profits
Suppression = low Big Pharma profits
<> <> <> <> <>
Flatten the Curve: A Prescription for Failure
Covid-19 Trumped-up CRISIS! Allows Government-assisted Profiteering: Chloroquine vs. Remdesivir
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Apr 2 2020 16:42 utc | 14
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"b" is Moon of Alabama's founding (and chief) editor. This site's purpose is to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon's Whiskey Bar writings. Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community. Bernhard )"b") started and still runs the site. Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators. You can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA@aol.com. 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Saudi Arabia suspends Umra and has asked Muslims planning to take part in the Hajj pilgrimage to delay booking amid uncertainty over the coronavirus pandemic.
USA state governments condone church services and crazed ministers encourage them!
Saudi may have one of the nastier and most fanatical government in the world but they are not delusional overall. The USA?
Posted by: jrkrideau | Apr 2 2020 16:15 utc | 1