200

Today I learned it’s been 200 days since I last entered my workplace:

Nevermind that 200. We are at a death toll in the US of 200,000. Two Hundred. Thousand.

Meanwhile, the CDC can’t get their story straight, our anti-leadership is monstrous including counterproductive finger-pointing, and people continue to die. On September 17, the CDC ensemble forecast predicted 207,000–218,000 deaths by October 10.

Of course, given the stunning incompetence on display, who knows what will really happen next. On the bright side, I recently learned that CU Boulder went five weeks before abandoning in-person teaching. I doubted they would last three weeks, just long enough for the COVID symptoms to manifest.

The virus is a fast-moving, direct threat to our way of life. Not as fast as, say, a wild fire, of course. But if we can’t muster the basic forces necessary to get our arms around this thing, what hope is there against a slower-paced but more insidious threat.

It feels more and more like we are discovering first-hand the great filter.