Ron Ross says “The pandemic is history“, and shows this graphically (daily deaths data). See also this graph.
We are not down to 0 daily deaths, but yesterday the number was 358 nationwide. That’s about 1 per million people.
There are still people getting sick and some dying, but the worst appears to be over.
Here in Erie County, New York, peak weekly deaths were 92 in the week ending May 7, four months ago. Since early July, the record pf deaths attributed to COVID-19 shows
7/4 639 Three
7/11 646 Seven
7/18 657 Eleven
7/25 663 Six
8/3 669 Six
8/10 671 Two
8/20 676 Five
8/26 678 Two
9/2 681 Three
9/8 681 Zero
We may as well begin telling ourselves “It’s over, it’s over”. We need to get back to our normal routines and practices. Government officials everywhere especially need to tell themselves, “It’s over”. Airlines need to wake up. Pelosi needs to wake up. De Blasio needs to wake up. Restaurants should be opening. “It’s over.” Schools of all kinds should be open for students. Businesses of all kinds should be showing signs saying “We’re open”. States should be removing any barriers and checkpoints to inter-state travel. At most, people entering airports from foreign lands can be checked if those lands have not peaked out in infections.
Worldwide, the decline is occurring too.
If I were dispensing advice or suggesting health practices, I’d focus on the elderly vulnerable and on those entering the country from foreign places where the falloff in COVID deaths may not be as steep as here. Otherwise, I think it’s important to restore normality to a much higher degree. There should be no general lockdowns. Social distancing can be ended. We can revert to the usual precautions of not exposing ourselves to intimate contact with people who have bad colds, the flu, coughing and sneezing, etc. Masking should be ended right away. Psychologically, we need to tell ourselves, “It’s over.” We need the relief to our nervous systems of believing this. We should not be making our behavior contingent on any vaccine. Any use of quarantine should be strictly voluntary. The centralized commands to doctors about what routines, regimens, vitamins, and medicines are allowable or approved or disapproved should be ended.
What we should now do is evaluate the ways in which the governing systems screwed up during this episode, and they did, and they still are. The goal should be to change them for the better. This includes the systems governing biological labs in which novel viruses and killer molecules can be created. And that’s not all. Every part of our society, from media down to us personally, reacted to this experience in ways from which we can learn.
9:07 am on September 9, 2020
