Stuck at home with a wife, 3 teenage boys and 2 pets so about how you’d expect.. could be worse though and count my blessings everyday.
On a side note, one of my biggest questions is and I don’t see it being asked out there when reading articles, but how was China supposedly able to get a hold of this virus where they’ve been in the range of only 81k cases total for the last week with minimal new cases daily when they have like 1.6 billion people in their country with a health system that is no where near what we have?
Whereas we are coming close to 200k total cases in less than 2 months and climbing fast.
Something doesn’t seem right, either China is fudging their numbers completely or what do they know that we don’t to beat this thing?
First, let me say I do not trust the numbers from China. We know for a fact they didn't report asymptomatic cases in their numbers at all, and from my experience never tested those without symptoms so would never know (then again, neither are we). Also, especially early on, cases were vastly under reported or reportedly incorrectly (pneumonia), especially in Wuhan. So let's say the numbers are 200-300,000 in reality. I would consider that a more realistic number.
With that said, let me tell you that you are seriously underestimating the quality of the health system in China. Most hospitals in major cities are new and modern, and most importantly, accessible. Testing was, from the beginning, completely FREE in China. No one avoided testing for fear of going bankrupt. That helped.
China also had one advantage that we did not -- it started there in one specific place. Now, they could have stopped it much earlier and didn't, but once they decided to get to work they KNEW the hotspot and they contained it. The city of Wuhan is still on lock down, as it has been for some 2 months, with people only now being allowed to return (and still not allowed to leave). By comparison, by the time we tried to do something there wasn't a single source. There could have been hundreds or thousands of individuals spreading the disease in countless places all around the country. That makes it much more difficult to contain.It is like skipping the first 20 generations of spread, AND having them jump around the country. It is a much more difficult starting point.
China contained the disease by first locking down the source, and then locking down almost everyone else as well. Even in the city where I live, Shenzhen (a city of 11 million which only ever had about 500 cases), we were more locked down by January 20 than anywhere in the US has ever been locked down. No one could leave the city, everything but supermarkets and pharmacies were closed, each resident could only leave home once per day maximum everyone lives in large apartment buildings so this is easier to enforce), and there were temperature checks everywhere. Any time you entered your building someone checked your temperature. Each day someone went door to door checking every person's temperature. If you had a fever you were removed and quarantined. They controlled how many people could be in a supermarket at one time, and any time you entered a public space your temperature was checked and your personal information recorded. If someone else who was there when you were later was confirmed sick, everyone would have been contacted and tested. If one person in a building was confirmed sick, the entire building was placed on quarantine for 14 days, with no one allowed to leave.
So despite not believing the total number (and no one should believe it), I do believe they have it under control. They did so by having one hot spot rather than dozens of hundreds, and by implementing a lock down unlike anything any city has been willing to do in the US. I do not believe the numbers are something wildly different (such as in the millions). Why? Because I lived in Wuhan for 4 years and knew many hundred people there and am still connected via various social groups and I don't know a single person who actually got the virus, meanwhile I already personally know people in the US who have it.
The path to success for the US was different, and would have looked more like South Korea. We had a warning of several months and should have immediately been stockpiling tests. We weren't, because we decided to stick our fingers in our ears and pray for the best. We could have implemented wide-scale testing immediately (testing almost every citizen if need be) and quarantined all infected individuals. That would have quickly and effectively ended this. We didn't do that,
----End of That---
As for me? Well, when things quieted in Shenzhen in late February and new cases were down to zero, I flew home to Kentucky to visit my mom and be sure she was prepared for what was coming. I flew back through Hong Kong and am now on my 14th day of quarantine in a 10 x 10 box. After midnight I am free to leave, but unfortunately China has closed their borders to all foreigners. So, I am stranded here, unsure when I will ever see my home or my girlfriend again.
