It’s Sunday March 15th, and I can’t think of anything witty to say about the situation we’re all in. I’m one of those people who think the US COVID-19 outbreak is going to get pretty bad, so we’re hunkered down for the next couple of weeks. No contact with anyone is the plan. Only upside is plenty of time to read and write.

The news from Europe is pretty grim, with France and Spain now shut down much like Italy. The only somewhat good news is that infection and death totals are definitely leveling off or falling in the original outbreak sites of China and Taiwan. That’s 7-8 weeks from inception and is a good indicator of what might happen here if things go well.

The CDC’s US status page  isn’t yet alarming, but you have to take those stats with a grain of salt due to the lack of testing in the US. It’s criminal how little testing we’ve done both in absolute terms and in comparison with other countries. Our federal government has let us down in a big way, where China, Korea, Taiwan and even Mexico are better prepared with tests than we are. Hard to believe, but there’s a lot of that going around right now.

UPDATE: A good friend just sent me what I think is a great resource for facts/stats about COVID-19. Check it out.

I intend to spend part of today reaching our to friends and family and seeing how they’re doing. Physical isolation is good right now; emotional isolation not so much.

The featured image above is from better time, July 2009 to be precise. We were at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (I refuse to call it whatever god-forsaken name they’ve changed it to) on a fun day. Here’s looking ahead to more times like that.