Day 81: Crisis and Denial

The world has surpassed 2.5 million cases, with about 172,000 deaths. Only about 660,000 cases are considered recovered. The UK is close to 125,000 cases, Turkey has reached 90,000, and Russia has now exceeded 50,000. The US is fast approaching 800,000 cases, with a full quarter million of them in New York State.

Prisons are proving to be a breeding ground for cases, though they haven't yet led to a significant number of deaths. NPR reported 73% of inmates infected (with no deaths) at the Marion Correctional Institution, an Ohio state prison. Because Ohio is making an unusual effort to test prisoners and staff, "the prison system now accounts for more than 20% of the state's cases."

Etymonline explained the etymology of "crisis", originally a Greek medical term, and its relations, along with "epidemic", "virus", "corona", "quarantine", "sanitize", "variolation", "hospital", "draconian", and "hoard".

At STAT, Helen Branswell attributes the international failure to act more promptly against COVID-19 to denial, while complicating the matter by calling it "magical thinking". Real magical thinking requires some belief that your irrelevant actions or thoughts will actually affect the world. It is not merely a baseless hope that the world isn't about to go to hell in a handbasket.

Inspired by Trump's tweeted threat to temporarily suspend immigration to the US, Bloomberg promises (or perhaps bemoans) that coronavirus will end immigration as we know it.

P.S. Massachusetts' prettier numbers are out; cases are up only 5% again. They've also added a (rather weird) county rate map, but no city-level maps so far.

P.P.S. Also, school's out for the rest of the year. Presumably "fake school" (as the kids call it these days) continues.