The coronavirus saga - chapter 2

Two years later, a second visitor named C/2019 Q4 arrived from outside of our solar system. Perhaps from some other place in our galaxy. Or beyond.

And it's fascinating because no one had bothered to visit in at least hundreds of years. Maybe never. And now exactly 2 years later after our first strange visitor, a second one arrived.

My Plague Year, a57

So, how well have we done? Well, abysmally. Prepare for a wild ride.  In my plague year.

A leaked report from the CDC suggested that, rather than moving in the right direction, the death totals were likely to get considerably worse very fast — with an average of about 3,000 deaths (and 200,000 new cases) a day as soon as June 1.

The median projection — 3,000 deaths a day, as soon as the end of this month — is quite horrific, a 50 percent increase above our current peak. But for the lifetime of the model’s projections, no single day of data came anywhere close to as low as the median prediction. For the last two weeks, with the country’s infection and death rates shaped profoundly by social distancing and shelter-at-home orders, the results have fallen at or above the model’s 75th-percentile projection. That percentile, on June 1, yields a projection of more than 7,500 deaths every day.

For most of the lifetime of the model, when the data reflected fewer lockdowns and less social distancing — that is, when it reflected conditions more like the ones we are going to see more of going forward — daily deaths fell at or above the 97th-percentile projection. For June 1, that projection is for 15,000 deaths every day. If that rate held for a month, it would produce 750,000 deaths just in June.

The coronavirus saga - chapter 1

This series of posts are screen captures of a telling of our current era written in the future.  If you don't understand how that could possibly work you really need to rush out and read a copy of William Gibson's novel 'The Peripheral'

Let the story begin.

My Plague Year, a56

Loving quick editing dynamic brush effects.  Fixing the embedded bezier interpolation for these kinds of dynamic paint effects has also lead to a whole new set of Studio Artist features. In my plague year.

a Portrait of Devastation

The last time the economy was in free fall, I wrote this: “The economy is unraveling so fast as to defy analysis through the usual statistical models. Among the phrases found in normally sober reports from the nation’s top economic forecasters yesterday: ‘god-awful,’ ‘wholesale capitulation,’ ‘shockingly weak’ and ‘indescribably terrible.’”

That jobs report, from November 2008, indicated that employers had cut 533,000 jobs. Analysts expect the April 2020 job losses to be 41 times worse.

The age of misinformation

Great quote from the Guardian today. Praising social media companies, “is like praising Philip Morris for putting filters on cigarettes.”  And of course let's not forget the great misinformer himself.

My Plague Year, a55

Crazy rants. In my plague year.