Public's disconnect from COVID-19 reality worries experts

[brooklynite]

The Hill

The United States is being ravaged by a deadly pandemic that is growing exponentially, overwhelming health care systems and costing thousands of lives, to say nothing of an economic recession that threatens to plague the nation for years to come.

But the American public seems to be over the pandemic, eager to get kids back in schools, ready to hit the bar scene and hungry for Major League Baseball to play its abbreviated season.

The startling divergence between the brutal reality of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the fantasyland of a forthcoming return to normalcy has public health experts depressed and anxious about what is to come. The worst is not behind us, they say, by any stretch of the imagination.

“It’s an absolute disconnect between our perceived reality and our actual reality,” said Craig Spencer, a New York City emergency room doctor who directs global health in emergency medicine at New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. “To look at the COVID case count and the surge in cases and to think that we can have these discussions as we have uncontrolled spread, to think we can have some national strategy for reopening schools when we don’t even have one for reopening the country, it’s just crazy.”

[Nature Man]

1. What do you expect

from a country that elected a sociopathic, lying, porn star fucking, casino bankrupting, reality tv star to the highest office in the land?

[jimfields33]

2. Americans can be selfish

We’re at 1 percent positive so most don’t know anybody who has it. Just wait.....

[irisblue]

3. decades long scientific illiteracy is a feature of the long-term defunding schools

By the GOP at state levels. We are an increasingly stupid and ignorant people.

[NCDem47]

4. Culturally,

we are not equiped to deal with this virus. As a whole, that independent, self-reliant and entrepeneur spirit we are taught goes against thinking about the greater good. We had that "in it together" and sacrificial duty in other crisises, but it feels lost now. Getting 350 million+ to get behind one cause feels insurmountable at times.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Americans are optimists to a fault

Even myself, as I follow the facts, find myself constantly looking for obscure reasons why the deaths aren't going to spike to match the spike in cases. I find myself hoping that we're much better at treating it, the cases being detected aren't as severe, the deaths simply won't spike to the levels the numbers suggest...

There is some anecdotal evidence that deaths won't spike to say 4,000 a day like the increase in cases suggests, but that's not really backed up by much data, and I have talked to some doctors who treat Covid-19 patients who say that they aren't much better at treating it.

So we wait for the numbers to spike, hoping there is some reason they won't. In reality, we should be preparing for horrific death counts that change the country forever.

[Squinch]

6. I'm the opposite. I look at what is actually happening and extrapolate. So far, none of this has

been a surprise for me.

I live in NY. We're doing great, but I'm not changing my behavior at all because of the idiots abounding.