The You&Me Blog

An exit plan is a good start, but if you are a government you may actually have to do something to make it happen. Let’s pick on North Carolina for a moment. They have a nice informative website; ( https://www.ncdhhs.gov/divisions/public-health/covid19/covid-19-nc-case-... ) where they lay out some metrics related to “re-opening” the state. One of these is having 30 days of “PPE” (another buzzword like “ventilators” that one gets the impression the few of those using the term really know what it means) on hand included “N-95” masks (ditto.) Unfortunately, as of this writing (April 30, 2020)...

It may be that you have been checking those “coronavirus trackers” on line, wondering what’s up with that virus you may have heard a little bit about. Although interesting, this raw data has some limitations. For one thing, it’s a tally of every assumed/known/reported/estimated case ever, so it’s never going to go down, unless you have access to a time machine somehow. (And you can ignore that silly “recovered” statistic, as no one is tracking that. If a person didn’t die, they recovered in 1-2 weeks, although a bad case of respiratory illness can leave you feeling pretty worn out for a few...

The response of the United States’ plethora of governments and bureaucracies has been severely lacking. Instead of a prepared disaster plan, or even any kind of actual scientifically based, risk assessed guidance, US residents have been subjected to mostly panicked reactive restrictions, based more on fears of losing elections rather than fears of overwhelming the US health care system. The latter issue, you might recall, was the main reason that restrictions were felt necessary for a virus that for 90 percent or more of people infected, causes no symptoms or only mild symptoms. Because if...

We’ve noticed that in the media at least (and we have said plenty about how unhelpful they can be) that some people seem to react negatively to attempts to put the current virus concern in context—in other words to provide background information that could be helpful in terms of deciding how we should react to this, or what your own personal level of concern should be. Why the resistance? For some people perhaps, this exercise comes across as trivializing their own emotions, or “shoulding on them,” that is telling them what they “should” feel, which is never, ever helpful. Or, as sadly seems...