1 Million Confirmed Cases Worldwide of Coronavirus

It is truly hard to fathom but the John Hopkins database has just hit one million cases and that that it is probably more due to underreporting and lack of tests than to the fact that we really just hit that number. Yes, we now know that at least eighty percent of confirmed cases do not need hospitalization, that about fifteen percent will need hospitalization, and five percent will need ventilators.

Individual states have raced around instituting variations of shelter at home, shelter in place, do not travel, pause programs under whatever name and description they think is most appropriate for anywhere from two weeks to eight weeks. Nonetheless, it is clear that so many lives could have been saved by having one national program in place.

The purported economic harm that some people have been making noise about makes one think that the choice is between a vibrant economy and lives, when as Mr. Afuko Addo, President of Ghana, has been quoted as saying “we know how to bring the economy back to life. What we do not know is how to bring people back to life.” The reality is that if you are dead, you don’t really care what the state of the economy is.

As someone who is based out of the US, although Europe as in Italy, Spain, Germany and France, has actually outpaced the US in infections and deaths, this isn’t in any way comforting. As already pointed out Italy, Spain, Germany and France have yet to see the outrageous spike in layoffs that the US has. Not only have applications for unemployment hit over six million but the punditry and government officials act like the current healthcare system isn’t half of the problem. For small main street businesses that must continue to pay healthcare expenses even when they aren’t open for business, the double whammy means that it is simply easier to layoff employees then to carry the healthcare expense for the unknown length of time this epidemic might run.

As noted above different states are implementing stay at home / social distancing directives of different lengths, the longest of which is Virginia’s June 10th; however the models being presented by different groups including those by the Gates Foundation only show the epidemic flattening out late summer and potentially flatlining for quite some time after. We are way too early to really now for sure. Unfortunately, small businesses need to make decisions now.

It would be nice as New York Governor Cuomo outlined in his daily press conference yesterday to emerge from this pandemic with a more resilient economy that includes intergovernmental coordination, more tele-medicine and tele-education and even more local medical suppliers, researchers and first responders. We have a choice. Transformation could be negative but it doesn’t have to be. We should be able to learn, grow and find the silver lining in this horribly dark cloud.