disruption and paralysis

"But, Lord! how everybody looks; and discourse in the street is of death, and nothing else, and few people going up and down, and the town is like a place distressed and forsaken." diary of samule pepys. 30 august 1665

i believe that from the start i have maintained that this is nothing to treat cavalierly or to slip into denial about...that everyone need be careful and remain aware of what is going on around them...still...

i am yet having some difficulty squaring the hysteria in the media...( this is the front page of the n y times that landed on my front deck this morning )...

and the empty shelves ( there may be "few people going up and down" in places like malls and theaters...the supermarket is another animal...these were shelves of pasta, flour/yeast, and canned goods i saw while on an excursion this morning ) with the numbers...the WHO and the CDC both have the stale numbers from yesterday as the total cases in the u s...the times ( in their particular attention to "detail") says "more than 21000 cases have been reported in the u s" which is "around" 5788 more than yesterday per the CDC, and my state reports 43 more cases ( one of which is in my county ) and a third death...so far this is arithmetic growth, not exponential...that this could grow into exponential growth is entirely possible...however it hasn't yet...judicious behavior is always advisable but the panic is probably almost as bad as the disease..all the contradictory information out there is not helping and , like everything else in the media, you can read anything you want to believe...finding some fact is not an easy task...

this particular blurb from the times does seem to nail it...my question continues to be "what exactly, is causing the disruption and paralysis?" answers are slow in forthcoming beyond, i suppose, human nature is in dread of the unknown...it needs answers...

this input from a california correspondent to this blog shows the disruption clearly as sheer lack of resources ( my correspondent maintains [ off the record ] that a lack of test kits is the reason l a county has thrown in the towel on this ) and the number of residents would seem to be a source of paralysis on the part of administrators...that this virus seems more at home in dense, urban populations is clear...new york, los angeles, and chicago are the "stay at home" areas ( one of which is impacting my son who says he is "bored" ) and, in addition to everything else, pokes a hole in the "new urabnist" theory that cities are the wave of the future...not if "novel viruses" persist...rethinking of elitist academic theorizing may be in order...fear induces odd, weird, and threatening behaviors in people so we should all try to get a grip on it...be cautious and mind the situations you find yourself in...panic and in ten minutes, when it subsides, you will still be in the same place...it is an ineffective response.