well here's the view from a NYC worker who lives in NJ. Both my folks are battling cancer and a list of other illnesses too long to list. They live in Florida and I fly back and forth several times a month to help with their illnesses as I have no siblings to chip in. Last year I had to take two months off as both of my folks had to be hospitalized (thank you New York State Family Leave that protected me from losing my corporate job). A stroke left my father bedridden with cancer. My mother had a severe complication with an experimental heart implant device and she's not been well ever since. I have been back and forth to the hospital in an ambulance too many times to count. The local paramedics know us well. The emergency room staff and nurses are all familiar faces. A good friend in Florida going through a near identical situation with his bedridden father ended up with a MRSA infection himself was laid off after exhausting time off as he'd just switched job. A year earlier both my father and mother ended up with severe flu and bilateral pneumonia. Both were on the same hospital floor just two rooms apart. That was the first time I got the call of "you better come back to the hospital right now your father's fever is not coming down". But he willed himself back by not refusing a single meal, sip of water, a single dose of medication and summoning all the strength of a man over 80.
So long way to say I'm very familiar with "it's just the flu" sentiments and how NOT well staffed and equipped hospitals are. One thing I see time and time again is that in a for profit hospital system they simply do not build in the staff, supplies and equipment for a pandemic. Many times we are told there arent any rooms available we'll have to keep you guys in the ER treatment area for the night. Also, I have recently developed my own health issues that would not mix well with a corona class virus. Also, my folks were severely affected by the 2009 financial catastrophe so I'm pretty much all that's keeping their retirement from becoming a burden to the state. The cost of healthcare in this country is such that you better be either very much destitute or very wealthy if you end up with a catastrophic illness like cancer. Even with Medicare the out of pocket costs are crushing on a fixed income. Aside from the financial responsiblity, If I go down in an ICU to this "flu" my folks won't see me again. And vice versa.
So a few weeks ago someone in our new Hudson Yards NYC office tested positive. It was one of the first confirmed cases in NYC. They didn't bother to tell us until the day it broke on Page Six. Thanks for that Mr. Ross. They basically evacuated the whole multi billion dollar complex the next day. We've been working remotely for a week now but as far as livelihoods this has basically wrecked everything. Every deal has been put on ice. All valuations done before this are garbage. Firms are trying to get out of deals they've already made. Some clients are openly discussing bankruptcy to get out of deals or just pay out the painful break up fees that kick in for walking away. Oh and the stock market crashed 25-30% depending on the day of the week. You know a minor side distraction. I'm getting worrisome emails that are giving me the impression that we're in imminent danger of a trigger event in the financial markets if some other shoe drops this quarter. Prior to all this for 2019, about 33% of all S&P 500 companies had posted *declining* earnings over the previous 12 months. GDP was *stalled* at or below 2% for the previous 9 months. GDP growth for 2020 was expected to go lower still. Stocks trading 25x earnings? Yeah that's totally great before a steep correction. So things in the real economy were shaky to begin with and now the equivalent of a Hurricane Sandy federal disaster but instead of a one night "act of God" event it's every single day for weeks. Then we get the email that an additional two people at our office are positive or in isolation for COVID-19. This complicates things because I may be asymptomatic and can't go near my folks who are now both coughing for the last few days. I was hoping to go down to Florida and help them out which I do practically every two weeks for at least a long weekend. And ironically for once a last minute flight on United isn't $500+.
And most troubling is that Florida's genius governor allowed all the spring breakers to come in during a national pandemic in a state with one of the highest elderly populations. Great thinking Ron. especially as one of the states without the Medicaid expansion..$35k treatment per COVID-19 case.. awesome. Checking Kinsa's network of smart thermometer tracking the entire state is lit up red with an "atypical" fever pattern. Atypical in that Kinsa's modeling takes into account allergy season and Florida, Lousiana and the Michigan area are all showing a fever pattern that may be consistent with early COVID-19 symptoms. The next two weeks will determine if Florida's late shelter in place orders will have a dire impact.
As far as Trump's role in this debacle. Things he's said while I've been experiencing all this really make me wonder if he's literate. His defenders say "no Trump didn't call the virus a hoax he said the Democrats were using it as a hoax". Okay. So let's recall his visit to the CDC "it's all under control"... "Cases are going DOWN not up"... "the vaccine will be ready soon"...."No.. DISAGREE it's not inevitable that cases will go into the thousands. It's at 200 now.. it could go to zero". He said that last one a mere two weeks ago when Italy and other countries were already into the thousands of infections. And he voiced skepticism of thousands of new infections contrary to the belief of every single physician and scientist of note. And my favorite of all "Yes I've been around people who were confirmed positive but NO... I don't need to be tested I have no symptoms"... as he stood less than an arm's length from individuals over age 70. And they inexplicably continued holding the press conferences in the smallest room of a 30 room White House mansion...despite the fact that press conferences have been held in the largest rooms for decades. No let's pack all the asymptomatic into a small room with the nation's most important leaders charged with a national security emergency.
My guess is that Dr. Trump had baseless confidence that cases would go to zero because he gave himself credit for closing travel to and from China. Either he didn't bother to read the "code red" memos or just willfully disregarded the fact that Italy also closed its airports to travel from China more or less the same time we did. Yet they still ended up with a massive spread of the virus by not testing everyone... and numerous other mistakes we have been making, even now. Trump thought if he delayed the mass testing it wouldn't disturb the stock market and the onset of the warmer months would resolve the virus on it's own. But this had no basis in fact because the Corona viruses increased exponentially in both Australia where its summer now and in Singapore where the climate is tropical.
Even now at this moment, with 80k confirmed cases and no federal mandate by HHS or the CDC to test flu and pneumonia deaths post mortem in order to determine if it was a COVID-19 case, we have no plan to test every person in the country with at least priority to close quarter zip codes. Meanwhile Amazon have 220 milion customers in a country of 330 million. Did anyone in this administration sit down with Jeff Bezos and the others at Amazon and Walmart to authorize by Presidential emergency powers during an actual state of emergency that they source test kits from all over the world (literally what they do!), shipping them out to all Amazon customers and then return shipping the tests to foreign and domestic laboratories globally to process? Did he ask Amazon or Walmart to roll out apps that would notify people to call their testing laboratory the instant their result was ready with instructions to encourage all their close contacts to get tested immediately? Did he call Google into the room to develop a feature in Maps to alert the public to block by block clusters of infections? Did he call Verizon, Tmobile and At&t into the room to use amber alert type text notifications of high infection areas? Have we even once used the emergency text system during this entire shut down? But of course as Trump says "no one could have imagined this could happen" nevemind that Bill Gates and Trump's own multi agency Crimson Contagion drill told him a year ago that we were INADEQUATE. And now without a single physician or scientist backing him up he's saying parts of America can end social distancing and huddle together the asymptomatic with the at risk groups. This is all surreal.
EDIT:
Important message
https://youtu.be/sbPQCJtnT6o