Pandemic

Today finally things start to look better for my home country, Chile. I stopped checking the news from there for a while, mainly because it was painful to watch how a big group of people don’t even care about social distancing (parties, shopping, traveling while infected). At the end of the day we all have parents or relatives that are more vulnerable, so having to watch that while my parents are far away was more than stressing

Below a chart of new daily cases, the trend looks fine, things are getting better, maybe few more months and borders may open again?

Most countries in Europe are opening their borders, things start to get back to normal, but on the other side of the ocean USA is just starting. Dr Fauci warned that things may get worse, up to maybe 100.000 new cases a day!

Below the current trends in daily new cases, for USA. One would expect a rise in cases then a slow decline, but as the country is a large set of states things have been slowly building up.

As reference, below New York. In their worst moment NY had about 10.000 daily cases early April, then after strict control things are getting a bit more back to normal, almost 3 months later.

New York has less than 6% of the US population, California almost twice that and the scary part is that even with lockdown and social distancing the trends, below, don’t look much better, in the sense that numbers are increasing even after 4 months!

Now to put the numbers in context, for a given set of cases, meaning people with symptoms that went to be tested and test positive are only up to 2% of the total population, and from that number a small number of cases is fatal. In the US, that factor is up to 0.17%, but if we run that against 309 Million (population) the red numbers may get to 490.000 deaths. Right now the total of deaths caused by the virus is 130.000 and that is where things start to fall apart

Is not just numbers

I never imagined to be living during a time similar to war or crisis like this, it is scary and painful

We live a new normality in New Zealand, eveything is open, business are running, but under the surface we all know this is just the beginning and it may take the whole next year to think about normality and/or traveling overseas, visiting family and friends, etc. Meanwhile that fear or uncertainty keeps people home: below a photo of a Saturday evening/night at a popular area, empty seats are the new normal