So far, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cattitude, adrian_turtle and I are fine. This is more general.
We have no idea how bad this actually is. The numbers the US is reporting to the World Health Organization are worthless (the March 16 report said zero new cases in the US). The numbers the CDC is publishing elsewhere and what we're getting from state governments are, I think, a floor--there are at least that many cases.
The thing is, given that the numbers the US is sending to WHO are useless, can we assume that they're getting useful data from elsewhere? (I'm assuming Russia is under-reporting, and the Syrian government almost certainly doesn't have good data--but is Boris Johnson's government going to do better here than Trump's? Ditto for anywhere that is still hoping to reassure either its own citizens or hypothetical tourists.
Being the age I am, I'm thinking about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the willful denial from the White House, and so many people not quite believing what had changed and what they would need to change. We're a social species--closing the bathhouses was hard enough, can we cope with long periods of no restaurants, no theater, no dance parties...?
badger2305 said on Twitter a few days ago something like "I lost friends to AIDS. I'm going to lose friends to this." I fear he's right.
cattitude, adrian_turtle and I are fine. This is more general. We have no idea how bad this actually is. The numbers the US is reporting to the World Health Organization are worthless (the March 16 report said zero new cases in the US). The numbers the CDC is publishing elsewhere and what we're getting from state governments are, I think, a floor--there are at least that many cases.
The thing is, given that the numbers the US is sending to WHO are useless, can we assume that they're getting useful data from elsewhere? (I'm assuming Russia is under-reporting, and the Syrian government almost certainly doesn't have good data--but is Boris Johnson's government going to do better here than Trump's? Ditto for anywhere that is still hoping to reassure either its own citizens or hypothetical tourists.
Being the age I am, I'm thinking about the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the willful denial from the White House, and so many people not quite believing what had changed and what they would need to change. We're a social species--closing the bathhouses was hard enough, can we cope with long periods of no restaurants, no theater, no dance parties...?
badger2305 said on Twitter a few days ago something like "I lost friends to AIDS. I'm going to lose friends to this." I fear he's right.