CoVid∙19

my first CoVid-19 post.
Definitely not my last..

At left is what amounts to a 2020 snapshot of the stock market and worldwide CoVid-19 virus cases. They are not in perfect alignment, but the point is made. Stock prices wavered a bit in late January as China fought the disease on its own; it has now taken hold firmly in Korea and Italy, and about half the countries of the world now do battle with it. The US government has been making many announcements & pronouncements to keep stocks from crashing all at once, but then investors see the true content of those messages - and the drop resumes.

The USA infection chart is below. Ground Zero was an assisted-living home near Seattle, a two-hour drive from home. New hot spots appeared in New York, where one contagious person seems to have caught about forty others before being detected. Scientists now say that most of the carriers show no symptoms when they carry it to others, so it's insidious and hard to trap.

Added to the problem is the slow time to make tests available, thereby assuring US citizens that the spread is far wider than the capture rate. I had two co-workers go home last night; who knows what they have? Our county has declared an emergency despite no positive test results, toilet paper and other staples cannot be found at many stores, and no inoculations will be available for about a year in the best of cases. Unless the chart below is flattened by reducing contact all existing medical services will be overburdened by the simultaneous need for many to receive treatment. It's a frightening time, especially for those of us with elders in assisted living.. and those of use who have read "The Stand", "The Plague" or "The White Plague".
Yes, I've read all three.

Chaos rules.

3/13: Tom Hanks and his spouse, the Canadian prime minister's wife, England's health minister. It's like Fran Goldsmith's list of things to tell her unborn child in 'the Stand'. These people are not gone however, and really about a 10% chance of it. Foretelling on the future is as dangerous here as it is on Roshar.