{"id":54072,"date":"2020-07-10T12:46:37","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T17:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54072"},"modified":"2020-07-10T12:46:41","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T17:46:41","slug":"avalanche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54072","title":{"rendered":"Avalanche"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2020-07-10\/avalanche\/\">Avalanche<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/799px-Avalanche_Zinal.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How bad could it get? For the United States, it seems there is no bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Back in March, I&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2020-03-24\/like-previous-pandemics-covid-19-will-shape-the-fates-of-nations\/\">wrote<\/a>&nbsp;that the nation\u2019s response to the coronavirus pandemic would likely shape its economic, political, and geopolitical fortunes for years or decades to come. Four months later, it\u2019s time for a check-in. How\u2019s that pandemic response going?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not so well, it seems. The US has the world\u2019s highest number of cases and deaths overall. And of the world\u2019s 25 worst hotspots for transmission, in terms of new cases per day per million of population, 15 are US states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early success at \u201cflattening the curve\u201d of the graph of new cases reported daily was followed by a re-opening of the economy that was premature (i.e., before sufficient capacity for testing and contact tracing had been put in place), resulting in a surge of new cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/cases.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3482169\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/deaths.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3482170\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Source: https:\/\/www.worldometers.info\/coronavirus\/country\/us\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The only good news the Trump administration can point to is a fairly stable and low death rate as compared to the number of new cases. This \u201clow\u201d death rate (hundreds are still dying each day) is attributable to improving treatment methods for patients who have been infected, a lower average age of those infected, and an understandable lag between the infection trend and the deaths trend. If the last of these factors is significant, then the number of daily deaths will start climbing soon\u2014as the last few days\u2019 numbers already seem to indicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition, the United States is one of the countries hardest hit economically by the pandemic. Its latest unemployment rate stands at 11.1 percent (which doesn\u2019t include discouraged workers), as compared to Germany\u2019s 5.5 percent, Japan\u2019s 2.6 percent, and the UK\u2019s 4 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As bad as they are, these statistics don\u2019t fully capture the situation. If the US federal government had a long-range plan for weathering the pandemic, perhaps the death and suffering would be justifiable. But evidently there is no realistic plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Avalanche How bad could it get? For the United States, it seems there is no bottom. Back in March, I&nbsp;wrote&nbsp;that the nation\u2019s response to the coronavirus pandemic would likely shape its economic, political, and geopolitical fortunes for years or decades to come. Four months later, it\u2019s time for a check-in. How\u2019s that pandemic response going? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28817,29011,13834,29993,6665,1081,827],"class_list":["post-54072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-death-rate","tag-flattening-the-curve","tag-resilience-org","tag-richard-heinberg","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54073,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54072\/revisions\/54073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}