Wow has the conversation around me changed about COVID-19 as I am recognizing the vulnerability America, in particular, is facing. Without a fully accessible health care system and the lack of savings for an economic shock, we are especially vulnerable to bad decision-making when those who can ill afford to be off work and quarantined at home will say they have a cold or allergies instead of incurring the cost of viral tests and losing income. How we’ll deal with children younger than ten years old at home alone will present another hardship that could force a parent to skip work or, possibly worse, someone will use the opportunity to earn extra money by watching neighborhood children, thus potentially exposing even more people to infection.

The stock market lost 3,583 points this week, toilet paper in Hawaii is being rationed, Costco is sold out of emergency food supplies, and I learned that this morning, hand sanitizer is mostly sold out across America. In the last 15 minutes, I read that someone in Washington died from COVID-19, which will only startle the population even more.

It was only one week ago that 28 countries were reporting infections within their borders; three days ago, it was 48 countries, and today it is 60. To think that it was just 28 days ago, on February 1st when China was reporting its 259th death, and now we are over 2,900 fatalities globally. But that’s not enough perspective: it was only back on January 11th that the first death was reported, then on the 17th, the second death occurred, followed on the 20th with the third death. It was five weeks ago, on January 23, that the World Health Organization or WHO reassured the people of our planet that Coronavirus had not spread outside of China.

So in 35 days, the COVID-19 epidemic went from about 23 deaths to 2,942 and from 1 country to 60, and yet to listen to the president of the United States, the danger is a hoax being perpetuated for political gain. Hey, you big orange dolt, it was just 18 days ago that there were only 1,000 people dead from the virus and 42,638 people infected, while today there are 86,020 who have been infected and 2,942 DEATHS! China no longer plays any role in this equation as this has become a global issue outside a country that was able to halt all activity that could have made the situation worse while our leadership is more worried about the stock market.

There’s a certain amount of futility in posting any of this as the data is changing so fast that this will feel like ancient news, but I suppose for the continuity of my blog at this pivotal moment in human health and where much of the world’s attention is focused it doesn’t hurt to note where we are.