Of course I have an agenda. I want people to wake the fu** up and start taking this more seriously and practice social distancing and mask-wearing in public, so we can have far, far fewer deaths than we've had or are likely to have - no politics in that, it's just smart behavior based on good science. I've been screaming, figuratively, about the potentially catastrophic risks of hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious illnesses since late February (and warning about the risks more quietly in early/mid Feb, as I wasn't as convinced yet) and pointing out that the US wasn't well-prepared for the coming pandemic, especially with regard to testing and medical supplies/PPE. Started screaming about the testing debacle as early as mid-February.
Went into quarantine on 3/3 and started this thread on 3/4 because of my grave concerns for this becoming the worst pandemic since 1918, when there was one whole case and zero deaths in NY/NJ. Even then some laughed/snarled at me and there were predictions of <100 total deaths when I was warning about hundreds of thousands. And then we watched it all unfold, in horror, not far off from what I thought would happen (especially in the DC-Boston high density corridor). I called for everyone to start wearing masks on 3/14, when we had one death, each, in NY and NJ. Many laughed at that too.
Since then, for weeks I've been warning that the states that weren't hit hard in the first wave, like we were, were in serious danger of having major outbreaks of their own (not as bad as NY/NJ though, since testing would prevent total surprise) if they opened up too early/fast without the appropriate testing, tracing and isolating in place and if distancing/masking wasn't a major part of the interventions. Seems like we're doing decently on testing, but not very well on the rest and we're now starting to see significant case/hospitalization increases and are likely to see deaths increase, although probably a fair amount less than what we saw here, due to the outbreaks not being as bad and having better medical procedures and treatments.
And sadly we could prevent almost all of this grief and horror, without any lockdowns if everyone would simply wear a mask when they can't ensure distancing, which has been amply demonstrated in many countries. And that kills me. So yes, I have an agenda to prevent more deaths, serious illnesses and major economic impacts by trying to share as much knowledge as I can and to convince people to try to take this more seriously and change their behaviors.
Go tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere Go tell it on the mountain that #'s predicted it all