A Journal of the Plague Year (12)

March 28th, 2020

So here we are, the online companies delivering food, booze, and other essentials of life are set to make money and supply a vital service to the public at the same time. It’s not very often that the social attributes of the good are rewarded monetarily. But, hey, they deserve it.

I spent much of the day on WhatsApp video phone calls with friends. This may well be a significant new quantum of our social relationships in the future, nay, the present, until new rules of proximity have been developed.

Placed an order for two weeks food and other groceries…pick up next weekend. Wine and liquor to be delivered in a few days.

President Trump is postulating a quarantine for New York. Apparently, the zombie Democrats may be flooding out and infecting the rest of North America will liberal absurdity—but, too late, they’ve already done that.

If the American health care system cannot cope with the case load, then nobody can. According to the Society of Critical Care Medicine [here], the US has more critical care beds per 100 000 people than any other nation. And six times as many as Britain, with their National Health Service (the envy of the world). If the Americans are in trouble, so is everybody.

Here, a new paper [here] in bioRxiv is predicting the peak of new cases around mid-April and then a tail off. Check it out. That’s the good news.

Well, we don’t really know what the bad news might be. I’m having an early night tonight. One aside, this whole affair is making me sleep 8–10 hours a night. That can’t be bad.

And a friend finally arrived back from Portugal after multiple flights and country hopping. As he says: “I’m now under house arrest! But fine.”

Rebel Yell