Well, it’s starting to break down here. People are getting sick of the stay at home measures (and losing their jobs and life savings) when only 48 people in the whole country have died of the virus and the recovery rate is running better than 50:1, for every person who succumbs to pneumonia from this bug, 53 are recovering. And that, of course, is just for those people sick enough to be tested. And only 2% of those being tested are coming back with ‘rona, the other 98% having some other bug. So patience is starting to run very short. The overwhelming majority of infections, over 70%, are directly traceable to international and cruise travellers who entered the country improperly when the govt failed to enforce/follow it’s own travel and quarantine rules. The bureaucrats aren’t covering themselves in glory.
On the good news side, Denmark, Austria and Norway have announced they are starting to relax stay at home measures to various degrees including reopening schools next week or the week after, depending on the country. Even Italy announced they are looking to reopen now but haven’t given timings yet. Australian politicians are particularly stubborn, a$$-covering weaklings so they will stay locked down for two weeks longer than anyone else despite the Australian health system barely being inconvenienced by the bug, the whole purpose of the lockdown in the first place.
The straw that may have broken the camel’s back here was when the police pulled over a 16-year-old out practicing driving with her mum and gave the girl a $1600 fine for unnecessarily leaving her house. The premier soon intervened and dismissed the fine to prevent pitchfork and torch riots but then said they would continue to hand out fines to people learning to drive. Mindlessness rules the roost at Parliament House and soon must give way to better sense.
Anyways, here’s hoping the US soon eases restrictions, particularly outside of NYC so that the rest of the world feels safe to follow and do the same.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-06/denmark-joins-austria-in-easing-virus-curbs-as-europe-cases-slow
A couple of points:
NYC
may have already maxed out - the numbers seem to have plateaued or even begun to decline. But other hot spots are still sky-rocketing - e.g., New Orleans and Detroit are still climbing and may well pass NYC on a per capita basis. (In Michigan, Governor Whitmer is hopeful that we'll turn the corner in late April/early May, but predictions are still iffy.)
OMG, I sure hope the rest of the world is not looking to the US for leadership on this! Memos recently leaked from the White House that as early as January they knew how bad it could get, yet they were still down-playing the whole thing well into March - not JUST publicly (which was bad enough), but doing absolutely nothing to get equipment ready. The result has been dozens of first-responder deaths, due to no protection. Aside from China's early (and continuing?) cover-up, and Brazil's total dismissal of the whole pandemic, the U.S. has probably had the WORST response of any major country.
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