We Are Facing a Pandemic Catastrophe

Granted not on the scale of Captain Tripps, but one that Randall Flagg is sure to enjoy. With a current update (as of March 2, 2020) via CNN:

Six people have died in Washington state as the United States grapples with more than 100 cases of the disease caused by the novel Coronavirus.

Four of the people who died were residents at the Life Care Center nursing care facility in Kirkland, in suburban Seattle, King County health officer Jeffrey Duchin said Monday. Four other Coronavirus cases are also linked to the Life Care Center.

"Current residents and associates continue to be monitored closely, specifically for an elevated temperature, cough and/or shortness of breath," officials said in a statement on the Life Care website. "Any resident displaying these symptoms is placed in isolation. Associates are screened prior to beginning work and upon leaving..."

There are 102 cases reported nationwide, according to the federal and state health officials, including:
* 45 former passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the site of a recent outbreak and quarantine
* 3 Americans recently repatriated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak
* 17 people believed to have contracted the virus through travel
* 37 people who got sick from another person in the United States, including some who don't know who the source was...

This is a problem that had been building up ever since the Coronavirus popped up in China a few months back. Given the global reach our transportation can get now - by airplane, by boat, by train - the spread of this new flu variance isn't a question of "when" it will spread, it's more "how fast will it spread?" This was something our nation should have been preparing for since the news first broke back in December 2019.

This is a problem for the United States because donald trump had been using the three years of his tenure demolishing the civil service under the White House, decimating our health care system by a thousand cuts, slashing the budget for the CDC (a major agency tasked to fight infectious diseases), and firing - through then-NSA head John Bolton - a White House pandemic response team back in 2018 that could have been managing this situation from Day One if they were still in place.

Wanna know how bad a problem this is?

Friend of mine from high school is a lawyer on the West Coast, travels a bit, was overseas when this all started, and she tweeted out recently her observations about the difference in responses between Singapore and the U.S.:

Part of this is the political culture, I'm sure. Singapore for example has a government-backed universal healthcare system, something that would encourage most residents to get checked out the second they get ill. They have a lot of incentives to organize and fight these outbreaks.

The United States, meanwhile, is still struggling to get the medical industry to mass-produce the tests needed to check a majority of residents, most Americans can't afford the time away from work to get checked, and the ones who do are getting hit with bills in the thousands of dollars, a serious discouragement against getting checked at all.

It does not help one damn bit that trump's response to this entire crisis has been to make sure HIS White House controls all messaging, that most of the response team are on board to keep the Stock Markets happy (because the last thing trump wants is the Dow to drop more than 5,000 points in a week), and that the messaging itself falls under the "All Is Well Never Mind the Increasing Numbers of Sick People" category of misinformation and underselling the severity of the pandemic.

We're about to face one of the biggest flu outbreaks in the U.S. since the "Swine Flu" (H1N1) of 2009, and possibly the most lethal one since the "Spanish Flu" of 1918. At a two percent fatality rate - compared to the regular flu we get that kills at less than a percent - we are looking at about 6 million Americans facing dire ends.

And right now, there's little evidence our government - supposed to be the ones protecting us from such health threats - is organizing well enough to fight this battle.

We are so fcking screwed.