Daily Local Projections On This Pandemic

A classmate of mine from my hometown and so, also from my high school, became a medical doctor. He's been posting his daily observations and predictions on this coronavirus pandemic for at least the last week.

His latest one, today, offers both what seems like sound advice but also dire predictions if we don't take proper precautions and actions.  Herewith:

Rob Schaaf
8 mins ·

(click on picture for easy viewing)

Hospital system overload in MO is now just 24 days away. Today's 354 Missouri cases outpaced the projection and moved that day closer to April 18th. One month from today, we can expect 76,000 cases in Missouri, and over 13 million in the US.

Our leaders are fighting over whether to lock down the country, the only way to prevent hospital system overload, or to send people back to work early, to prevent the economy from failing, another horrible outcome. Here is the solution based upon what was found in Vo Italy. (In Vo they tested EVERYBODY, and found several asymptomatic people who were COVID positive, and after quarantining everyone positive, new cases stopped occurring.)

• First, the entire country needs to be locked down tight. Only necessary workers should be allowed to move about.
• Second, every possible effort should be made to manufacture test kits, masks and protective equipment. The entire focus of the federal government should be ON THIS EFFORT.
• Third, every necessary worker should be tested, and all positives quarantined.
• Fourth, everyone else should be released from lockdown only after they are tested and cleared of the virus in a systematic and thoughtful manner.
• Fifth, as rapidly as possible, the economy should be brought back online as everyone not locked down is cleared of the virus. Re-testing should be done routinely.
• Sixth, everyone in public should wear a mask. Masks are what has separated successful countries from non-successful ones.

This way we can both save lives by locking down the country, and then save the economy as rapidly as possible by putting people back to work without risking reinfection.

This all depends on eliminating all roadblocks to developing, manufacturing and distributing test kits. If we can put people on the moon and send spacecraft all over the solar system, we ought to be able to ramp up the production of these test kits within just a few days.

This no way sounds or reads like any advice our Republican Party President, or what some Republican Party governors and other leaders across the nation are giving in any way, unfortunately.

It's as I wrote on social media yesterday---may logic, common sense, intelligence, good judgment, empathy and science prevail.

Presently, it doesn't seem like enough of all that is.