by Kara Machowski
Spring breakers still refuse to stop partying in Florida even though the governor stated that “spring break is over”. However, the governor continues to refuse to implement statewide closures of restaurants and most importantly, beaches. While most Floridians would most likely still go to the beach, they would respect social distancing, an act that not a single twenty-something that is still celebrating spring break would do. On the flip, billionaire and technological nfluencer, Elon Musk, is telling his 32.4 million Twitter followers that coronavirus is ‘just like the flu’ and that the fear being spread about the virus far exceeds the danger of it. At the same time the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, predicted on Thursday that 56% of California’s residents will contract Covid-19, which is more than 20 million people.
In Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus, citizens had to comply to a city wide governmental lockdown, which is the main reason that Wuhan was able to spin the climbing curve to 0% of new infects and 0 deaths in 24 hours. Italy admits that it didn’t take serious lockdown procedures as soon as they should have. Thursday, Italy’s deaths from Covid-19 reached 3,400 (4 weeks after the first infected), which topped China’s 3,250 (10 weeks after first infected). Wuhan not only contained the virus mostly in their city in comparison to the rest of the nation of China, but slowed the spread much faster than Italy. Italy remains the most infected country in the world from coronavirus. They implemented a lockdown system where currently its citizens are only allowed to leave their homes if they have an authorized official document, where they have to state where they are going and is signed off by an officer to continue on. In one day they cited 8,500 citizens for illegally traveling.
Citizens who are under lockdown in Italy are speaking out about how being quarantined has affected them, from parents who are taking care of their kids full time again to those who are severely infected by coronavirus but still aren’t bad enough to be admitted into emergency help. Italy admits that now it has to choose between the savable cases and the elderly who they have to let die because of a lack of medical ventilators, even though they are better stocked than America. What’s to note about Italy’s measures versus the U.S. is that we still haven’t implemented any sort of nationwide governmental lockdown. While some fear “Martial Law”; the implementation of military control over civilian functions, it may be the only one way to completely stop the virus.
Italy’s numbers are still climbing while most of their citizens remain on lockdown, which means in the next few weeks we should be able to see the true effects of their lockdown procedures. Match those with America’s spread by that time would show us if we indeed need to take the same governmental measures as the Italians. The trouble is that Italy saw its first death on February 21st and entered complete lockdown on March 12th, 20 days after the first confirmed death and only 20 confirmed cases. America saw it’s first death around February 26th (the first reported was the 29th but physicians found out a man who previously passed for the same nursing home in Washington), we are currently on day 22 after the first confirmed death and we are no where near a nation wide lockdown.
Other countries have implemented a nationwide lockdown, including Argentina on Thursday. What worries me the most is American’s everlasting work demand and focus along with our attitude that ‘we’ll get over this’. While most of us will, a very large amount of people won’t. Even if the death rate stays at 2-4% of those infected, imagine everyone you know, now imagine that about 1/3 of those people got infected with coronavirus. Say that’s 100 people or so you know very personally, then 2-4 people out of that 100 would die. Some of us personally know a thousand people, even if it’s slight interactions on the internet, those are still connections. That’s 20-40 people, not including celebrities and influencers. Even though most would assume celebrities would get the “star treatment” that’s simply not the case. In Iran, they’ve lost about a half a dozen top governmental officials and those who are being treated have doctors who tell them it’s up to their body to fight the virus, not even Tamaflu works.
What’s to come for Americans continues into unchartered waters because the U. S. is still the only nation who has not implemented a lockdown as early as any other First and Second world countries in the world. As much as Andrew Cuomo of New York has been a pioneer amongst every other governor in the fight against coronavirus he still refuses to implement government reign to the state of N.Y., even though it remains the most infected state in America. We have so little time to truly curve the scale of growth in the United States and even more so, to be an influence to other nations, including Third World countries who have yet to see the belly of the beast that we are just beginning to witness. Thursday night Chinese officials addressed Italians while visiting the sick in Italy, that they were still not taking enough preventative measures. Italy was still allowing public transit throughout cities, many were still walking around without medical masks, which compared to the Chinese measures, was unacceptable. We’re still no where near Italy’s level of lockdown, which means that America is way behind even grasping how to control the epidemic and thus, we have a long road ahead of us.
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