Energy Prospectus

"... fear of the disease, and not the disease itself, has already spoiled that for us. Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic." This article is dated 3/13/2020, but it makes some valid points: https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch ... --KSAZGkVA

Before you read the article, let this FACT sink in: As of Friday, March 20: 98,683 cases of COVID-19 have been resolved. 87,403 fully recovered and 11,280 died. The patients that recovered did so on their own with just rest and over-the-counter meds. Most of those who died had serious medical problems before they got the virus.

As of 10AM CT on March 21, 2020
286,816 Confirmed Cases
-89,899 Fully Recovered and Released
-11,904 Deaths
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185,013 Active Cases < 96% are listed as "mild" and expected to recover.
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Observations
> Number of "Confirmed Cases" going up fast in Europe and USA because people being tested has accelerated, so not necessarily representative of spread of the disease.
> Spain and Germany have jumped over Iran into the 3rd and 4th highest number of confirmed cases. Italy, Spain & Germany have 44.2% of all Active Cases.
> USA still #6, but likely to move ahead of Iran soon as we are testing a lot more people now (FYI over 90% of those tested are negative for COVID-19)
> Europe is now the "Hot Spot". 6 of top 10 and 13 of top 17 countries are in Europe
> China, South Korea and Japan seem to have the virus under control because number of confirmed cases is going up slower than the number of recovered people.
73,588 of the 89,899 who have fully recovered are in these three countries. They are using chloroquine to treat patients and it seems to be working. Google "Chloroquine.

In my opinion, it is very encouraging that three Asian nations with HIGH POPULATION DENSITY have the virus under control.

"USA still #6"

USA is now #3 in total cases (behind only China and Italy), with 26,900 cases; USA deaths = 348; total recovered = 178; total cases per 1 mil. pop. = 81. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ And we're just getting started.

More important than those numbers are the new case and death curves. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ Still heading upward.

"I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic."

Before you accept the view that we should not be taking all the measures currently recommended/mandated to try to flatten the curve because of the cost to our economy, read this: https://www.propublica.org/article/a-me ... g-patients

My best friend is a triple board certified intensivist/pulmonologist and leading attending staff at a major medical center hospital ICU in one of America's largest cities (in the south). I had an hour long conversation with him Saturday (his day off). He and many like him are in "the eye of the hurricane," treating COVID-19 patients daily, trying to save their lives. They don't have enough personal protective equipment, so that they are being exposed and risking becoming infected themselves. Their families are understandably fearful. Some will become infected, depleting personnel resources, further straining an already strained healthcare system (never mind the consequences to them).

His straightforward description of what is happening is sobering, and that is putting it nicely. Read the above article.

Our healthcare system was not designed to handle this type of pandemic on this scale. It's no one's fault. Just a fact.

We are in a race to try to slow the spread while production of ventilators and PPE is ramped and while experimental therapies are tested. Everything each of us can do to reduce the risk, and speed, of transmission is morally imperative. If we lose that race because people are too selfish, too worried about their portfolios, our best and bravest health care providers are going to become depleted/overwhelmed (more so than they already are in NYC and Seattle), and disasters like what is discussed in the above article will become commonplace. In "the richest country in the world." It would make what already is an unfolding disaster also a monumental, shameful disgrace.

The suggestion that the shutdowns and protocols for social distancing and isolation are an overreaction, and that they evidence "unbridled panic," is infuriating. When one has difficulty breathing because his lungs are filling with fluid, especially if it happens after we've lost the race (if we do) and there's no available ventilator, or even if we do have a ventilator and one is like the patients described in the article, that's when "unbridled panic" occurs. I hope that doesn't happen to you or anyone else. But doing everything we can to try to prevent it from happening is our ethical obligation to each other and especially to the brave people trying to save us.

Fortunately, our federal and state policy makers, and government and corporate leaders, strongly disagree with that suggestion.