America, we need to have a frank conversation. You’re not getting it, are you?
As of today, there are nearly 77,000 dead and 1.3 million cases, by far the highest of COVID-19 deaths and cases of any country anywhere in the world at this point in time.
You have 4% of the world’s population.
Trump’s done nothing to stop this pandemic from tearing through your country.
It’s not a Republican conspiracy. It’s not a Democrat conspiracy. The virus doesn’t give an absolute shit what your political allegiance is, what God you worship, who you sleep with, what color your skin is… it’s an opportunistic little bastard, and it will infect anyone and everyone it can, given the opportunity.
It does not give one iota if you live or die, as long as it can reproduce and infect others to survive. It has no brain, it has no emotion, it only has the absolute will to survive and procreate.
None of us has immunity. Seriously! Even those who have been infected mostly show very few antibiodies to this virus.
There is no cure. There are no antivirals or immunizations to protect us. There are no medications that can erradicte or seriously curtail this virus. There is no protection for any of us.
But it didn’t need to be this way, America. You didn’t need to face so many infected and dead.
Had the Trump administration locked down like New Zealand, and had the same stats?
Roughly translated, this would be 1,400-ish dead, 99,000-ish infected, 89,000-ish recovered.
(And no, having land borders has nothing to do with it, or the size of population of New Zealand has nothing to do with it, because other countries with land borders are showing similar figures as New Zealand’s, and island and isolated countries with similar size populations as New Zealand’s population are showing far higher statistics. Cough, Ireland, cough.)
And guess what? New Zealand’s stats aren’t even the best! You could have done even better than that, America.
Science is fact. Propaganda is not fact.
Stay home. You can survive without your nails done or a Big Mac for several weeks. God doesn’t need to you to go to church. Imagine killing yourself and your entire family because you had some regrowth on your hair you felt needed to be touched up urgently; that’s tragic and pathetic.
Stay. At. Home.
Stay safe. You don’t need to head down to Home Depot to get some timber to make a shed. Each decision you make to go out increases your infection risk by a significant margin. If you don’t need to go out, don’t!
Stay in your bubble. Don’t go out unless you absolutely need to.
Think about others. Think about your family. Think about your friends. Be selfless, not selfish, and stay at home. You could get the virus, be asymptomatic, but kill 3 or more people. One of the strains in the USA is thought to be more virulent than the common COVID-19 strain (which infects 2 to 3 people per person as is). Isolation stops the virus’s spread and reduces the transmission rate to kill the virus. Think about the good of the country.
Wear a mask if you have to go out. The sturdier and safer, the better. And don’t ever touch your face!
Wash your clothes, your hands, wash religiously with soap and water every time you get back into your house. Clean the door handles, buttons, anything you touched before your washed your hands. Do this often, do this well, do this even if you think you might not need to do it. Wash for 20 seconds or more. It doesn’t matter what song you sing — Happy Birthday, I Will Survive, whatever — as long as you wash with soap for 20 seconds or more, and dry those hands well.
Get that R0 rate below 0.5 before starting to reopen stuff.
Be kind.
Seriously. The rest of the world is repeating this like broken record.
We in New Zealand have the high ground to dictate this to you. What we did has worked so far. It can work with everyone doing their bit and chipping in and doing the hard yards to help drop that infection rate (R0) below 0.5. If little old New Zealand can do it, America, you, supposedly the “greatest nation in the world” can do it too with a little bit of commitment and follow-through.
If you don’t follow this? If you don’t follow this, many, many, many more people will die or be seriously injured. This isn’t a joke; projections allegedly originally showed 60,000-ish dead by August 2020 with strong curtailing measures which haven’t shown up in the USA, and we’re at around 77,000 dead now with a revised estimate of 135,000 dead by August with 3,000 people a day dying of COVID-19 by 1 June 2020.
Listen to that. Let it sink in. More people will die in America every day from COVID-19 than died in one day of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in 2001.
This is a 9/11 every single day for weeks, a month, even months.
One month of 3,000 people dying a day? That’s 90,000 people.
That’s nearly the entire city of Kenosha, Wisconsin wiped out in a month.
That’s Albany, New York, gone within a month.
That’s Dearborn, or Flint, Michigan, dead within 30 days.
Gary, Indiana, or Hammond, Indiana, plus tens of thousands more: dead within a month.
Reading, Pennsylvania or Roanoke, Virginia or Trenton, New Jersey. Gone, within four weeks.
West Palm Beach, or Lakeland, or Boca Raton, or Miami Beach, or Melbourne, or Kissimmee, or Daytona Beach, or Wellington, or Jupiter in Florida? One of those places, completely wiped out, some of them with tens of thousands left over to kill in other areas.
If you have an ounce of sense or compassion, you should be horrified and doing everything in your power to stop that from happening. Don’t argue, don’t “but, but, but” the subject, because the facts are overwhelming at this point, and you can’t have opinions about facts; act. Stop this horrible slaughter from carrying on even further.
Pay attention, and follow through.
Each and every one of us have the power to make choices to help slow, and stop, this virus in its tracks.
Think about your family, your friends, your community, your state, and your country. Be a part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Stay strong, stay safe, and stay the hell at home.
Beam Me Up, Scotty 