What About National Security?

The politicians' single mindedness to equate national security with the military effort, the mindset that nothing matters than war preparation, got the world into the trouble it finds itself today.  Emphasizing war machinery production alone, at the expense of everything else, was sold to the citizenry for far too long.  An element of fear mongering helped the politicians to pour great sums of money into military equipment production, resulting in enormous profits for those who bought the members of their respective Governments.  To add insult to injury, many of the necessities of life, medical equipment, among others were produced by a selection of low labor cost countries, like China and others.  Major manufacturing enterprises were removed from their countries, and established in these low cost offshore lands.  None to little consideration was given to the preparedness in case of a pandemic health issue; all eggs ended up in one basket, so to speak.

Along comes the Corona Virus, and as chance would have it, the problem started, apparently, in the very country, where all the eggs of the world were deposited.  Needless to say in the event of a tragedy, every country serves itself first, and so it was.  The rest of the world was no longer able to take care of its most urgent medical needs.  The fact that the truth of the problem was withheld by the offshore manufacturing center for far too long exacerbated the situation even more.  Naturally, the country with the outbreak of the virus needed the very medical supplies, made for others, first for its own people.

A while back, some genius came up with a new idea and a corresponding buzzword "JIT" (Just In Time [fabrication]), which meant, don't spend money, and pay taxes for items in stock.  Items were fabricated only when an order was received that is to say, the customer no longer carried items in stock, and neither did the manufacturer.  This works great when nobody is in urgent need of the items, however, as the present virus story tells us, it is absolute hell, in the case of an Emergency.  In the case of the US, different agencies had stockpiles of certain items needed by the medical staff but did not see fit to share them without a long delay.  Shame on all involved in the withholding of vital supplies.

So where is our 'national security'?  We hear this national security phrase used over and over; it is even used when politicians want to hide their illegal conduct and/or spying on its own citizens.  As recent history shows we really don't have national security, we are at the mercy of a virus bug, for which we have up to this point in time no real solution, and this after spending 'Trillions' of dollars on national security.

The sad statistic is that the US is still on the upswing of the daily new infection additions, while other countries are daily reducing their additions.  Apparently, the White House is forecasting the death of about 250,000 people.  This must never happen; do we really want to show the world that we are less capable than far lesser countries?

COVID-19 ACTIVITY - SMALL SAMPLE OBSERVATION - 3/30/2020

My research of current (3/30/2020) data posted on the internet by John Hopkins University & Medicine, plus others, reveals that some major countries, like Italy and Spain, who were really hard hit by the outbreak, are showing favorable trends, whereby the daily increases of cases, are at present on a downward slope.  For example, Spain shows four consecutive decreases in the daily numbers of infections added.  Other counties, like Italy, Germany, France, UK, Turkey, Canada, and India, all showing the early signs of reductions in the daily additions of infections.

Judging from the foregoing, it may be too early to celebrate, however, it does provide a glimmer of hope for all of us.  Due to the fact that most statistics out there is not normalized, the chart and table, shown below will provide better information of some categories.

Also, we must find some comfort that some counties, like the US for example, show data which demonstrate that the exponential growth rate, appears to have changed to an Arithmetic one, which is much slower growth.  For example, the US appears to be adding at present about 18,000 to 20,000 new infections per day for the last four days, while this is still bad, it nevertheless must be seen as an improvement (think Arithmetic Progression and not exponential).

Click on image to enlarge it.

If all present measures are strictly adhered to by the public, and maintained by the Governments, and the conditions of the medical systems are further improved, then by the summer we will be over the pandemic, I would think.

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Another Way To Look At Numbers...COVID-19

 

 By Frank J.

Note: To make the chart easy to read hold ctrl key down while pressing the plus key, as often as needed.  Don't forget to reverse after by ctrl key and minus key.

We see and read about statistics associated with the COVID-19 virus but many of these are not normalized, by reporting them in relation to something, like the size of the population, or number affected per million, etc.  Just flashing the numbers of verified infections and the death toll, does not provide the full picture.

Accordingly, the chart, shown above, shows how it all shakes out, when we normalize the statistics.

For example, the chart shows that the density for the US is only 36 people per square km, accordingly, if proper prevention is indeed practiced as requested, it is hard to understand why the US is in so much trouble, as a whole.  We can understand the numbers for the very large cities, with high density occupation but in general, we should look much better than four (4.5) deaths per million.

For example, Turkey with a density of 110 people per square km had only one (1.1) death per million to this point in time.  Turkey's Istanbul certainly qualifies as a very large city with high density occupation.

The virus attached to surfaces, and/or released into the air by infected people has a relative short life, therefore, social distancing and isolation in home should do the trick, in theory.

We are isolating ourselves in our home because we understand the importance of it.  How about you?

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