week 16

Not much to report or else it just hasn't come across my newsfeed.

The death rate seems to be declining due to health care professionals learning how better to treat patients but with this surge in cases we are likely to see a surge in deaths. There is still no cure and no vaccine. There are still those who have mild to no symptoms that apparently suffer no lasting effects but what isn't really being reported by the news media is that younger people are getting it and are getting sicker. There are people in the 20 – 40, 40 – 60 age groups that aren't sick enough to be hospitalized but they aren't getting well either suffering for months with the virus. What the news also isn't reporting is the long term effects of this virus even after you recover. The damage it does to our organs doesn't go away.

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All those states that were over eager to reopen are surging in new cases. Texas vies with Florida for third place in the most cases. Right now Florida is third having seen over 10,000 new cases every day for the past week. Texas is seeing 8,000+ a day of new cases to the point where Governor Abbott finally issued a statewide face mask mandate. But the cows are already out of the barn. Forty of our 50 states are seeing a rise in cases connected to reopening of businesses and beaches.

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Trump's new approach to the virus is we just have to learn to 'live with it' even though Don Jr.'s girlfriend has been diagnosed with it. Trump continues to lie about the severity and none of his minions who know better will go on record disagreeing with him.

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Apparently there has been some disagreement among health care officials about how the virus is transmitted, either by surface contact or airborne aerosols. Epidemiologists and aerosol scientists have been saying it is transmitted by aerosols for months but the WHO has stubbornly refused to accept the mounting evidence. Now 239 scientists have penned a letter to WHO, coming out next week, demanding the WHO acknowledge that the virus is spread by aerosols (respiration, coughing, sneezing droplets).

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My county is up to 230 cases total. And even closer to home I learned several days ago that one of our neighbors was diagnosed with the virus about a week and a half ago though he is one of the lucky ones with very mild symptoms which only lasted a few days. He is still in home quarantine.

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Current US statistics as of today 7/5/20, 18:33 GMT (last fourteen weeks' totals in parenthesis): cases – 2,964,797 (2,610,399, 2,332,056, 2,143,646, 1,992,453, 1,837,525, 1,685,367, 1,512,267, 1,384,681, 1,168985, 976,403, 741,230, 534,494, 312,223, 123,958, 38,757); deaths – 132,473 (128,211, 122,020, 117,542, 112,141, 106,190, 99,286, 90,206, 81,724, 67,954, 54,965, 39,103, 20,637, 8,483, 2,231, 400).