3-29-20 Update

President Trump extended the social-distancing guidelines on Sunday. President Trump has shifted his tone over the past week rather significantly (from possibly opening on Easter to stressing Easter may be the “worst of it”). Today he floated June as the timeline for “getting things back to normal” but it seems as though he’s just optimistically floating dates around trying to keep the hope alive that things will get back to normal.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci continues to stress the “moving target” of predicting total cases and deaths, but today he noted that we are on pace for 100,000+ deaths and millions of cases of COVID-19.  He commented we have a serious problem in New York and New Orleans and that we will soon have a serious problem in many other places.  

Our cases have absolutely exploded over the weekend, and they show no signs of slowing down.  The death rate (calculated by dividing the known COVID-19 deaths by confirmed positive cases) has risen to 1.76% and continues to climb.  To this point, the disease has shown people tend to die around day 18, on average.  This is important to keep in mind moving forward as some of those diagnosed 10 days ago (19,000 cases at that point) will literally be fighting for their lives this week.  Over 40% of the deaths have come out of New York which still remains the “hot spot”. 

We will see the “recovered” rates climb this week and moving forward as well, because 80% of people experience mild to moderate symptoms.  I type all of this out just stress, one more time, how early in the process we are with all of this.  The reason our death rate started so low, compared to other countries, and why our recovered rate is still very low (and delayed) is because President Trump closed the borders earlier than other countries and bought us a bit more time.  We can’t accurately compare ourselves against other countries because every country is on a different timeline.  The same can be said about every State or every city. 

Testing is a problem that continues to hamper the accuracy of the numbers.  Within the next 30-60 days that problem should be resolved, but the numbers will likely be all over the place until then.  The death rate could continue to climb, or could drop as case numbers rise.  At this time, I don’t think we should put too much stock in any of the “models” or “numbers” because Dr. Fauci continues to stress that it is a “moving target” and there are so many variables at play and that things change constantly.  If this turns into a seasonal ordeal, then the numbers will find their “averages” and we will have a better understanding.  This is many moons from now, however.

We have seen this story develop at a frighteningly fast pace.  It is incredibly bizarre people are still in “denial” about this pandemic.  It is as if we are all in a different stage of “grief” relating to this crisis.  Everyone process stress in their own way, but this is something that is a problem for us all.  Despite our many differences, we do have this struggle in common.  I am shocked we have not unified more behind resolving this crisis.

In the coming weeks, I’m deeply concerned about our Carolina Beaches because the weather has been fantastic and there is no telling who “lives here” versus who has “come here from a hot spot”.  People get incredibly defensive over their “rights” and I will continue to stress the need for us all to do our part and work together to get through this crisis.  The longer we live in denial, the harder the wake up call will be.

Today I got a little more into summarizing where we are at (a bit grim) but I want to end on a positive note.  Here is a video I shot a while back at Sunset Beach!