Four 9/11’s
The disease has killed three times the September 11 attacks in the last week.
A week ago today, I noted that COVID-19 Has Killed More Americans than 9/11. According to WorldoMeters, a lagging indicator, we’re now at four 9/11s.
The site, automatically compiled from various trusted sources, shows 1,386,906 cases and 79,071 deaths globally. The United States is at 380,744 cases and 11,907 dead. The last is up 1,036 in the last 24 hours.
The 9/11 attacks killed 2977 Americans. COVID-19 has done that three times in just a week.
And, while there are indications that the social distancing efforts are helping flatten the curve, we’re not yet even at the projected peak of this epidemic.
Sadly, we are likely to be at a 9/11 a day level within the next few days.
We are a bit west of NYC. We are still seeing increases but at not nearly the rate we had expected. We are thinking that the lockdown and social distancing, even if not perfect, has had a big effect. We still have regular ICU beds and vents available.
Steve
A apex made unnecessarily extreme…unnecessarily deadly…by the abject failure of long-held Republican ideology, compounded by an administration made up almost exclusively of people who suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Things I suspect the pandemic will kill along with people:
Libertarianism – although stupid is hard to kill.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe – I think a cultural diving line has been drawn and the MCU is past tense. Related: boy do Disney+ and Apple TV look weak, while Netflix and Amazon march on.
Cancel culture – It was already weakening, now its triviality is in sharp relief.
Cash bail – a long-established unfairness that is now killing people.
Student loan debt – Good luck collecting, I suspect Biden will cancel debt.
Bernie Sanders’ candidacy – It was already dead man walking.
Hating on Amazon – Who keeps going? Amazon, bless ’em.
Trump’s re-election – the bump was tiny and now even that is gone.
@Michael Reynolds: As long as there are young healthy white males with no clue about economics or history, there will be Libertarians. 😀
@Michael Reynolds:
That’s what Stormy said…
I was talking to my brother yesterday and he was relating the latest Trump presser he saw. My brother is in tech sales, he basically has one customer and so long as that customer is happy he does great. It’s fantastic gig because it pays almost seven figures and is perfect for him, since he’s detail-oriented and really has the perfect salesperson personality without any high pressure.
Right now other than a daily hour long meeting with his customer he has lots of time on his hands, so he watches the Covid-19 pressers. His opinion is that Trump is degenerating before our very eyes. He sputters, can barely keep on track for a few sentences, and then just finds someone or something to attack. He also said that on one of his daily calls last week people actually discussed seeing the presser and one said that the WH staff should lock him away. Several people agreed with this person, and this is a very Republican area (although it is in a wealthy part of NJ, so it is more of the Rockefeller Republican types).
I just have to think that Trump is losing more independents every day, especially since unless you get all your news from Fox there is pretty much universal agreement that he screwed up royally on the response. That has to be the main theme for Biden – this guy had one crisis, failed miserably, and cost thousand of people their lives. Do you want to trust him to handle another crisis?
@senyordave:
I was acquainted with a guy who had a similar gig. He’d spent about 3 years chasing a major company FoMoCo, IIRC and was successful. It was IT services so it took about 18 months to implement the contract and get the new support arrangements stable, once everything was running smoothly they fired him and brought in a kid at about $150K to manage the account. When I was in IT sales, I much preferred having a number of customers and time to fill the funnel.
Tiny is toast, though the rethugs will do what they can to steal the election.
@senyordave: His opinion is that Trump is degenerating before our very eyes.
He’s always been a degenerate; do you mean deteriorating? 🙂
@Michael Reynolds: your second to last one: if they don’t start treating employees better, it could have some blow-back.
Your last one: God, I hope so. But as you mentioned, stupid is hard to kill.
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: You win the Internets today! 😀
@senyordave:
The Democratic message doesn’t need to be complicated. “I don’t take responsibility at all” on a constant loop from now until November.
But the end of Trump is only a small part of this project. The GOP must be made to pay for covering for him.
@Lynn: He’s always been a degenerate; do you mean deteriorating?
You are correct, I meant deteriorating. Not exactly a Freudian slip though, since as you point out, degenerate is a word that aptly describes him.
@Michael Reynolds: “The Marvel Cinematic Universe – I think a cultural diving line has been drawn and the MCU is past tense. Related: boy do Disney+ and Apple TV look weak, while Netflix and Amazon march on.”
Got to say I don’t understand this one at all. (And I hope you’re wrong as well…) And I wish you were right about libertarians, but as long as their are teenage boys with mommy issues they’re never going away.
James, it’s also pretty clear that even the death count (let alone the case count) is a massive undercount.
There was a newspaper article stating that the number of people dead at home has risen by a factor of 8, and none of them are tested.
There was a study from a hard-hit town in Italy. They’d average 36 deaths over the Jan-Mar period. They’ve had 36 deaths officially due to Covid, and 130 extra deaths. Assuming that the people who died from Covid were 100% ‘extra’ deaths, that still meant that a period which should have seen 36 ordinary deaths saw ~100 unaccounted for deaths.
@Sleeping Dog: “It was IT services so it took about 18 months to implement the contract and get the new support arrangements stable, once everything was running smoothly they fired him and brought in a kid at about $150K to manage the account. ”
Always poison-pill.
Innumeracy can kill. From not understanding exponential or logarithmic growth to thinking there will be distinct “peak” on a single day with everything back to normal within days or weeks, so many people don’t get it. That could be mitigated with solid, competent, and effective leadership at the top, but instead we get The Donald. Locally, its our Lt. Governor who seems the most capable.
@SKI:
The good news is that the US death rate has been roughly constant at ~1100 per day for the last week. Not growing any more, much less exponentially.
The bad news is that we haven’t yet seen the secondary surge of growth that will almost certainly happen outside the original infection loci. Let’s hope that social distancing and self-quarantine and a general increase in cluefulness make that work out better than NY and NOLA.
WWI killed off European civilization and Corona is going to do the same to reactionary American bullshit. The crap these people believe in–free markets, corporate management, Christianity–are as applicable to human existence in 2020 as the Hapsburgs were in 1920. All that’s going to be left is racism.
@wr: ….and (based on my own experience) they’re lousy in bed…..
@Michael Reynolds: I’m guessing that you think the MCU is dead because nobody is going to movies right now, and won’t be for a while. Which is true.
And, I think the MCU was in a phase right now where they were just about to start a new story cycle, and they can probably delay that a year. They may have to alter their approach some, but c’mon, who doesn’t want to see the third Spiderman installment?
Although, yes, I agree that Netflix and Prime look very strong.
@Jay L Gischer:
Tastes shift, often quickly. Things that work in one era might not in the next, and this is a change of era, just like there was before 911 and after 911. The storytelling was already played out, but I think it won’t just be the MCU, I think Hollywood will no longer be rewarded as well for remakes and sequels. Just a guess, an instinct. I wish I knew what was coming next, I’d capitalize on it. I think it’s 1968 again. That’s how it feels. We’re afraid of the unseen death, no longer nukes, now it’s a virus. Division, a generational change of power, a sort of simmering quality.
@wr:
I think we’re at a pivot, like the Kennedy assassination or 911. People in the after aren’t going to want the before. MCU was already played out, much as I enjoyed it. I just don’t think comic book violence is going to work. I think it’s had an amazing run, but I don’t think millennials are going to go for it. They’re going to want something deeper. Obviously this is speculation.
@wr:
As for Disney+ and Apple TV, they’re reruns. Everything Disney+ has is a rerun, a movie you’ve seen, a TV show you’ve seen. Worse still for Apple which is the last go-to if Amazon prime or Netflix doesn’t have it. What’s original at Apple? The Jennifer Aniston show last year. They’re both libraries of things I doubt are going to be nearly as popular a year from now. Live action Aladdin? The Avengers we’ve all seen? Meh. They’ve both spent unholy amounts of money on creators who aren’t going to be able to produce anything, at least until mid-2021, so for now they’re just the third and fourth ranked libraries after Netflix and Amazon. Netflix and Amazon Prime basically have everything, why am I going to bother with Disney+ which is basically a small, boutique library, or Apple which charges per show?
@Michael Reynolds:
People like things where simple solutions can win.
I think there will be a few changes to the format of bad-guy-gets-punched, and a few storylines will be off limits for a bit (a significant percentage of the world vanishing… um… maybe not), but people want to see someone punch their problems away.
We’ve always had stories about people punching problems away. From the Illiad to the Bible to Avengers.
Ok, in the Bible, God used rain and eternal damnation and we are the problem…
@DrDaveT: I wish you were right, but…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/07/coronavirus-latest-news/