We are out of time

The coronavirus is here. It’s prevalent. And we have to protect the vulnerable starting today.

I was really hoping for a few more days before I posted a follow-up to my original piece on this topic.

But then a few things happened simultaneously that made me realize we are out of time.

First, three separate people from three entirely different friend circles texted me last night to say that they had themselves been in recent contact with someone who may be positive for the virus. And since they have also been in recent contact with me, they thought I should know. Just a courteous FYI.

Then, Trump went on the air and reinforced the notion that we are largely on our own in this fight. The federal government won’t shutter work, schools, or events. And god help the uninsured if they need critical care. In fact, they left all the hard choices up to the states, individual school districts, local authorities, and employers, like a perverse game of chicken:

“Hey look, Trump is not the one ruining your life, canceling your Saturday night plans and making you scramble for childcare…that’s on Cuomo.”

And finally, and perhaps most damningly — I realized that all the numbers we are currently being fed about the U.S. spread of COVID-19 are a complete fallacy. An out-and-out lie.

As of 4pm, March 12th 2020, NY has 216 cases of diagnosed positive COVID-19. 216 seems like a very manageable number, considering that this great state of mine has more than 19.5 million people living in it. 216 is nothing. Not even a tiny needle in a haystack. Except for the fact that the real number likely bears no resemblance to 216. Well, maybe, but only if you add a couple of zeroes after it.

Why would I make such a crazy assumption?

Remember my three friends who had friends who think they may be sick … not a single one of them has been able to get tested, despite being negative for the flu and presenting with high fever and sore throats (the two most prevalent symptoms of COVID-19). Apparently they do not yet meet NY State criteria for being tested. Which — as best as I can decipher — is this:

• Recently returned from one of the international hotspots: China, Italy, Iran, Japan, or South Korea
• Recently had close contact with someone who returned from one of the above hotspots
• Recently had close contact with a patient previously diagnosed positive
• Displaying signs of pneumonia as well as a fever

All in all, fewer than 2,000 people in NY have been tested. So as you can see, we are not even scratching the surface of who actually has this disease. And given that the ramp-up of testing kits is not expected for a few more weeks — we are going to be flying blind for far longer than we should.

Let’s take a minute to talk about time and how quickly this disease is spreading among the population. The best studies we have on it suggest a reproduction rate above 2. That’s exponential growth. Exponential growth is a really difficult concept for humans to understand. Everything in our lives tends to grow linearly: from our own waistlines to the height of the trees in our backyard … it’s what we are used to, what we have come to expect. The alternative is unsettling.

How unsettling? Let’s do a little mental math. (This will make my math teacher mom proud.)

If I give you this single grain of rice and tell you that every day for the next month I will give you one more grain of rice … how many grains of rice will you have in a month? It’s simple. You will have 30 grains of rice. Not even a handful.

What if I told you I would give you a grain of rice today, and then two grains tomorrow, and then four the day after, then eight, and so on … doubling the number of rice grains I give you each day. Then how many grains will you have in a month (30 days)?

If you guessed 536,870,912 grains, you are correct. Well done. You are probably reading this post in your well-stocked fallout shelter.

If the size of that number just freaked you out … welcome to the club.

You may have heard the phrase “flatten the curve” recently. And honestly, this is the best idea we have so far on how to mitigate this disease and save lives. To flatten the curve we have to create social distancing. Stay home. Close schools. Cancel any and all gatherings. Hell, cancel everything. We have to bring the transmission rate as low as possible, to a number well below two. And as of right now, the only way to do that is to NOT see each other for a while. To quarantine at home. To lock it all down. It’s what China did. It’s what Italy is doing. It’s what we are all going to have to do sooner rather than later, no matter what the politicians are saying now.

Very soon, this will all be out of our hands. There is no alternative to slowing the spread than complete and full lockdown of towns, cities, states — and then the whole country. This won’t be months from now. It will happen weeks, even days from now.

However, for now, some decisions are still in your hands. For example, you can urge your 70-year-old mom to self-quarantine starting TODAY. You can send her groceries and buy her Netflix, tell her you love her and that you will see her in approximately 6 to 8 weeks. There is no reason for anyone over 60, especially anyone with underlying conditions, to be out and about anymore. They need to be in self-quarantine.

I cannot emphasize this enough: If you are over 60, you need to be in your home, with the provisions to stay put for the next two months. If you venture out, you are not only risking your life, but also the life of the heart attack patient who may not get needed care and treatment in an overcrowded hospital. You are risking the lives of the front-line doctors, nurses, and hospital staff.

My point from my earlier post still holds true. For the most part, employers are expecting their employees to show up for work every day. So we (those in our 40s and under) need to be shouldering the brunt of this work until we too are told to go hide in our houses. The wave is coming, and if it needs to hit anyone because our federal government is too scared to make the hard calls, let it hit us first.

So in order:

• Listen to the doctors and nurses. The scientists. The mathematicians.
• Quarantine the vulnerable. Today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so.
• For as long as they (the government) expect life to continue as normal, let those of us under 50 be the ones who run errands, stock up on food for the vulnerable, keep society functioning.
• As a byproduct of not being able to hide, create herd immunity.

We tend to look outside our borders and discount foreign experiences: “Oh, it won’t be like that here. We are better prepared. Better equipped. What’s happening in Italy… Iran…China, it won’t happen here. ”

It can. And it will. We are being given a preview of our future. How we use it is up to us.

I’ll tell you what I told my 70-year-old parents last night:

When the first lifeboat left the Titanic, it had only 28 people on it, despite having a capacity for 65. It is believed that this low number was due to passengers being reluctant to leave the ship, as initially they did not consider themselves to be in imminent danger.

We are on the Titanic. We hit the iceberg well over 2 hours ago.

Now, get on the damn life boat.