They have it COVID?

President Trump. who looked like freshly painted leathery hell, tried to say everything was totally in control and we could entirely trust the administration to do a great job with the COVID-19 outbreak, but in the meanwhile, he was putting Mike Pence (whose genius lead to an HIV outbreak in Indiana when he was governor) in charge of the response. Probably because Pence has the most politically at stake in making Trump look good. Which is not actually a valid criteria for this sort of role at all. 

We still have a bit of uncertainty regarding the nature of the spread of the disease--is the incubation period 14 days, or is it 24? Or maybe 30? Can a patient still be shedding virus after being asymptomatic?  Can one become re-infected? Let's say a small population knowing they were exposed were self-quarantining? Are they informed they should do so before a part of that group has already moved on to possibly infect others? Despite the relatively small number of people known to be sick, there may have been thousands of people exposed already. 

How long does the virus live on surfaces? What is the likelihood that a person infected who is part of a much larger, but somewhat contained group, will spread it to other members of that group? How is that affecting their mission/jobs? Are they replaceable, in the sense of other people being ready to do what they do? How will industries deal with massive personnel disruptions? Will this impact delivery of products and services? Can our health care system deal with treatment and containment at once?  And in a capitalist health care system--how does payment for services impact care negatively? 

This is not fearmongering, nor are these questions intended to make the administration look bad. These are the realities with which everyone must cope in a reasonably projected model of the future. If we are looking at a disease with 2-2.5% lethality, I am seeing people use the math of, if the flu has .1% lethality and about 40-50k dead of flu on average per year (although it can be higher) , then call the potential death toll of COVID-19 around 1 million.  

But that's assuming that COVID-19 is contagious at a par with regular influenza, and that might not be true. After all, we have a vaccine, imperfect though it may be, for flu, but are possibly a year and a half away from a vaccine for this outbreak. And we can't even get a guarantee on how accessible it will be to everyone. 

Some part of this is, sad to say, entirely out of the government's control anyway. But it would be great if I thought the government we had was more interested in fighting the disease with science than pacifying us with bullshit to keep the stock market happy. They are trying to sound very much like they have it covered. But we have seen how quickly things can go from "I have it covered" to "I have COVID-19".