Dude, we don't need a depression to unseat Trump. All that's needed this time around is to run a Trump vs. Trump campaign.

Show Trump side by side saying one thing on one date vs. another thing on another date, constantly contradicting himself. Ad after ad after ad.

We can run a barely alive democrat and still do this. Which frankly, we seem to be doing...

And really, his base has no problem with legal immigrants that won Greencards in the lottery? A program that's purely designed to increase the diversity of people coming into the US? A program that Trump already threatened once to terminate and that republicans tried in 2017 to pass a bill to terminate?

As they continue getting paid and living in their mansions. FUCK THEM.

However, culture is the most important – or should be the most important – in modeling the spread of any disease in a human population. Next and almost equal to it should be the physical home of that culture: where do the people live? How dense is the population? How much air do they share?

The models for how bad COVID-19 would be, and the measures for mitigating its spread, all, without exception, ignore these factors.

I don’t think COVID-19 is a hoax. (Though frankly, this news makes me wonder, but that’s another matter.) I do think it has got really bad “in clusters.”

I also think if you go and look at the clusters, you’ll find that there are reasons why it got exceptionally bad there, but not anywhere else. And it was never going to get as bad anywhere else. And the measures should have been taken specifically in those places, without the ruinous cost of crashing the economy.

For instance, my friend in Albany, Georgia, tells me he assumes part of the reason it got so bad in his neighborhood (the worst per capita in the U.S. last I looked) is that “we are the touchiest, most social people I know,” i.e., there is a lot of touching and hugging.

At a guess, this is the reason it got so bad in Italy, too, but not nearly as bad in Germany, where, frankly, people aren’t that touchy/feely/huggy.

New York City — do I really need to say this? — is not Colorado.

I can go months without using an elevator. I can’t remember the last time I used a subway, and the last time I used public transport was last year while visiting my parents in Portugal – and even then, only when I was going to downtown Porto because it’s almost impossible to park. If I keep the curtains closed in the bathroom, I can’t see my closest neighbor (who admittedly is close, but that's on one side). That’s in Denver. I have open space in the front and back of the house, and the only people I share air with are my family.

Now, in NYC, besides the fact they all live in modified closets with shared air, you can’t get anywhere without rubbing elbows with strangers. Subways and elevators are simply parts of daily life for most New Yorkers. And as for social distancing… well! Every time I go East, when I hit the first layover, I want to start singing, “Don’t stand so close to me.”

So, would a complete lockdown of the city, with perhaps distribution of food so the grocery stores could be closed, make sense for NYC? Sure it would. Of course it would.

A grave violation of everyone’s rights? Sure. No doubt about that. But perhaps necessary for a limited time in a limited space.

Does a complete lockdown in places where the culture is completely different make any sense? No. Also no. With a side of no.