Some of the leaps of faith in this article are just not right or incomplete. (I don't wanna get into a back and forth. I'm a little panicked. I'm in the highest risk group and woke up symptomatic. Feeling better with hydration including bone broth with cayenne pepper, so that might bias some of my thinking, but my symptoms tend to fluctuate before I succumb so we'll see how I'm doing later today and into tomorrow)
Well, first let me say, since you are in one of the higher risk groups, stay safe, stay isolated as much as possible and take care of yourself. Hope you come out of this ok.
That being said, the article in question is based on data and reasonable extrapolation thereof, along with a healthy dose of logic. It's very telling, as the article states, that only 17% of the passengers from the cruise ship Diamond Princess - a demographic that trends toward the elderly - test positive for the corona virus, and over HALF of those passengers were asymptomatic. If that's the best the virus can do in an entire month in the close-quartered environment of a cruise ship with one of the more vulnerable demographics, then perhaps it isn't as deadly as many fear.
Iran doesn't have the supplies, has an ideal population mix in relatively densely populated areas and they got CLOBBERED.
There is a lot you are leaving out. For one, Iran (like Italy) is partner with China in the OBOR (One Belt, One Road) initiative, and thus has much closer ties with them than Beijing than we do in the U.S. That means they've had a significant amount of inbound traffic from China and were thus at the end of a huge vector of spreading the virus. Furthermore, they don't have near the health care system we do, as their government prioritizes funding terrorism over funding things that can help their citizens.
To make matters worse, in the epicenter of the pandemic within Iran, Qom, there were reports about people going around tempting fate by licking things (literally) to show the world that Allah would protect them. Allah apparently didn't get the memo.
View: https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1233783635007954949?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1233783635007954949&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.teaparty247.org%2Firanians-engage-in-disgusting-unsanitary-measures-to-ward-off-coronavirus-even-as-death-toll-climbs%2F
And there's no guarantee that we've dodged anything. We're weeks behind Italy and with our population, we may not see where this is headed for another 7-10 days and by then, it's gonna be way too late.
We are way ahead of Italy. We shut down all traffic from China on January 31st, while Italy allowed traffic from China to continue until things got out of hand (as mentioned above, they are also part of the OBOR initiative, same as Iran). The epicenter in that country is the fashion area where there is (or at least was) a significant amount of incoming traffic from China and a lot of Chinese immigrants. Add to the fact that it's customary for Italians to greet each other with kisses on each cheek and the virtue signaling of the mayor of Florence initiating a "Hug a Chinese" day on February 1st, and you have a recipe for fast spread of the virus. No such thing happened here. They are also a nation where smoking occurs on a much higher per capita basis than the US.
However, the way the US is handling it, we're doing next to nothing to legit stop it from being as virulent and as deadly as it might be.
No offense, but this is so gobsmackingly wrong, it's hard to know where to start. But I'll give it a go anyway. Travel from China was cut off on January 31st. Travel from Europe was cut off earlier this month. Travel from Canada was shut off yesterday. Generally speaking, we have significantly reduced the vectors by which new cases can be imported into the country from outside sources. Cutting off travel from China early very likely blunted the impact of the virus over here, as we were receiving 10,000 travelers per day from that part of the world, and then it dropped to zero literally overnight.
Meanwhile, school systems are shut down across the country. Most people who can work at home are doing so. Bars and restaurants are shut down for indoor dining through much of the country. Movie theaters are completely shut down for much of the country. People are generally isolating themselves more, even if they don't have any symptoms and have no other reason to believe they've come in contact with the virus. Meanwhile testing is increasing for those that do have symptoms.
With all that, our caseload is relatively small given our population, and in absolute numbers, still quite a bit smaller in absolute terms than either Iran or Italy, who you mentioned above, and that's despite the fact that our population is several times greater. While the number of positively diagnosed cases is increasing (largely due to increased testing), but the number of deaths is not rising at the same rate. It took over 70 days for the U.S. to reach 100 deaths, and the rate of deaths has remained relatively steady, and nothing close to exponential as many warned us it would be. And around 1/3 of those deaths were from one particular nursing home in Washington. As of this morning, Washington had over half of the COVD-19 deaths in the country, while no other state had even reached 15 deaths yet.
To summarize the previous three paragraphs, through both the actions that have been taken (both government and private sector), as well as the results we are seeing, this country is doing quite a bit to stop this virus. We are certainly doing much more than we did for the H1N1 swine flu in 2009, which infected millions and killed around 12,000. At the rate this virus is going, we will fall short of those numbers by orders by at least an order of magnitude, if not more.
Again, I get that you are scared, and you have my sympathy. I understand that at a personal level, all the numbers and statistics don't mean shit when you are in one of the higher-risk groups. But you know what you need to do to prevent it, so take care of yourself and focus on what you can control. When looking at the larger picture, don't let the personal fear cloud your judgement of what is going on, because this country is doing more than enough (maybe too much) to get this under control.
This is not the swine flu, it's not the bubonic plague, it's not Stephen King's
The Stand come to life. It's something to take serious enough, but not something where fear should be the main driver of our actions.