cinco de mayo y la vida con covid-19

I've watched Mayor Van Johnson's update for the city; he continues to ask that we have faith, but follow the science.
I watched for Governor Brian Kemp's update yesterday, but he didn't have one.
Thursday was the expiration of the "Shelter At Home" order for Georgia, though the governor did extend the Health Emergency status until June 12th.
Meanwhile, the beaches, the parks, the restaurants, the hair salons, and more, are all open for business, and have been for at least a week here in Georgia, as well as in Texas and Maine.
Only bars, nightclubs, and venues for concerts and sports remain closed.
It doesn't seem to matter that the President says there may be "more than 100,000 deaths" from COVID-19 right here in the U. S. of A.
States are following the lead of some European countries, even though they are several weeks ahead of us on this SARS-CoV-2 timeline and have definitely flattening curves in both their number of COVID-19 cases and number of deaths from the infectious disease.
I continue to follow the science... and graph the data
As before, those lines are California (yellow), Michigan (green), Florida (orange), and Georgia (blue).
I have plotted the data gathered over a 30-day span, from April 4 to May 4, so Day 1 represents April 4, that first day of the 30.
Clearly, as seen last week, these are very much lines, straight as they can be.
No evidence of gently curving anywhere in sight.
For shelter-at-home to end, the data should have shown evidence of downward turns for a minimum of two weeks.
A minimum of two weeks.
That means a decrease in number of active COVID-19 cases for a minimum of two weeks.
That means a decrease in number of deaths from COVID-19 for a minimum of two weeks.
For the four states in my graph, none of them meet that standard.
Nonetheless, Georgia and Texas are back in business, with folks free to do as they please.

I have no real evidence to back up my suspicions, but I think Georgia and Texas have been opened deliberately to serve as testing environments for the rest of the US.
If folks in those two are able to go to the malls and get their hair coiffed and have their nails buffed and stay healthy for two weeks, then the President will be able to use Georgia and Texas as shining examples that the other forty-eight states can follow.
On the other hand, if those two states suffer a spike in cases of infection and death after two weeks of rampant activity, then the President can wag his finger at Governor Brian Kemp and Governor Greg Abbott - both staunch Republican party men - and claim to have advised them to not remove the shelter-at-home orders for their states.
Whichever way the cookie crumbles, the President wins.
I'm hoping the people of my state are not being used as guinea pigs for tracking the spread of the virus, and I'm hoping no lives here are being gambled for political gain...
but eight years as a Cryptologic Technician in the US Navy have me seeing a conspiracy...
and thirty-two years as an analytical chemist have me seeing puzzle pieces clicking in place...
so, here's hoping I'm wrong on this.
There's nothing to be gained by being correct.

And now, I wait another two weeks, monitoring the data for Georgia and Texas...
trying hard to keep faith in my fellow humans...
but knowing their weaknesses as well as those of my own...
and following the science to know when the world is safe.

A month ago,
on April 4th,
the United States had 277, 161 people infected by the coronavirus.
7,392 American citizens had died from COVID-19.

Thirty days later,
as of May 4th,
the United States has 1,152,372 people infected by the coronavirus.
67,456 American citizens have died from COVID-19.





That's an increase, in one month, of 875,211 cases of infection.
That averages out to more than twenty-nine thousand people per day becoming infected by that novel coronavirus.
That's an increase, in one month, of 60,064 deaths from the infections disease.
That averages out to more than two thousand deaths per day.

People are still looking for science to whip up a vaccine, so they can carry on living as they once did.
Those people have no clue how long research actually takes.
Crime shows on television make it seem that analysis of data can be completed in an hour.
Oh, if only that were true!
But it most assuredly is not.
A vaccine, if possible, is still at least a year in the offing.
As an analytical chemist, I would consider it a miracle if the world has a vaccine for it by 2022.

People who have had it, either a mild case or a "fighting for each breath" version, now have antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 version that had infected them.
However, having had it once does NOT mean immunity from catching it again...
or catching one of the other strains of it.
Patience is needed, but that commodity is in short supply.
I know...
as a singleton, living on my own...
I know how hard it is to be patient with the human race...
and with my fellow Georgians and fellow Americans.
Patience...
please, God, continue to grant me patience.