“The sky is falling! The sky is falling! – Chicken Little

The original intent of pandispatch.com was to inform and alert the reader that the pandemic is real, something different, as the data began more and more to resemble the 1918 flu. By now, though, we are all very familiar with the data. There is no longer much need to scrutinize and foresee dire outcomes in the posts; pandemic information seeps into our pores from every media outlet 24/7.

So while we will continue to summarize a snapshot of data and trends in each post, we will focus more on interpretations and implications going forward. And I will endeavor to shorten the posts – so we can all return more quickly to CNN or MSNBC or the Hallmark Channel.

Today the number of confirmed U.S. cases exceeds 124,000. Trends appear to be on track to reach ~ 200,000 cases by the end of March, with ~ 650,000 by Easter. Estimated fatality rate is about 1.76%, corresponding to over 11,000 deaths by Easter.

Bad news, I know. We continue to climb up the curve. If Chicken Little is right for a change, we are in a heap of trouble. Like you don’t already know. It’s all getting really weird. The data accumulating over the past month or so has had a sort of phantasmagorical feel to it. Real but unreal at the same time.

Unfortunately it’s becoming ever more real. And very, very hard to believe. To comprehend. To accept. All the strange equations and exponential curves and everything may mean something, but when will this movie be over? Regrettably, right now gloom and doom continue to peer through the clouds. And it’s not a movie. Sorry.

As any number of candidates might say, here’s the deal:

We can go on with our daily lives, glancing at masked figures and tumbleweedy (is that a word?) streets and desolate parking lots (except for Walmart and Costco). Kids and spouses underfoot. Locust-ravaged stores. No worries. I’m not worried. Things will get back to normal real soon now. Real soon…

Or — we can try to step back and grasp what’s actually going on. Yeah. No. That just makes everything bleaker. Too hard. Not really real. Just the idea of stepping into such foreign territory is almost unthinkable. Literally. It’s simply too unfamiliar. Super-depressing. Let’s just forget it for now.

Fine.

But as Chicken Little might say were he a rapper (or equivalent), “We in deep sh*t man!  F*ing sky really IS falling!” Except he would make it rhyme. After careful scientific analysis we must conclude that Mr. Little’s interpretation of the data is in fact quite accurate. The growth of confirmed cases shows no sign of bending downward any time soon. Everything continues to point to 1918 or worse. Again, my apologies — I could lie about the data, but will leave that to others.

The only crumb of optimism we might scrape up right now lies in the hope that containment may begin to work. We will probably see this in New York first. The apex of cases in NYC according to Governor Cuomo is anticipated to be about 2 weeks from the date of this posting, which should provide a sense of the effectiveness of their mitigation measures. Chicago, New Orleans, LA, Florida and others are currently on track to follow NYC, all trending rapidly upward – maybe all at once; maybe in overlapping sequence. Hopefully timely implementation of quarantine, containment, mitigation, testing, and other measures will flatten the slope of the trend curve and bend its steep upward slope downward sooner than anticipated.

See? There’s hope.

I hope.

This is all I can offer right now. I would very much like to paint a sunnier picture but the data just won’t let me. Yet. Damn virus. It’s not even alive: ”First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving: they cannot replicate on their own but can do so in truly living cells and can also affect the behavior of their hosts profoundly.” [Scientifc American, 2008].

Profoundly indeed.

The “doom clock” is inching forward. Now 8 seconds to midnight. Sorry.