The past few weeks have been extremely challenging and taxing for this country. The major reason why is that we are going through things that we have never experienced before and we do not know when these things will end.
There has been a lot of speculation about worst case scenarios and it has created a lot of fear and anxiety for many. And understandably so, when experts say 100,000 to 200,000 Americans could pass away in the next couple of months, that’s a very scary thing.
But we are starting to see more encouraging signs come out of states that were once (or are still) hot spots which I think should give a lot of people hope.
First, New York is quite likely at a plateau point in their cases of coronavirus. It’s still a little bit early but their numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are slowing down and starting to show a good trend by leveling off. And this plateau is arriving sooner than expected which means social distancing is likely having a substantial effect and that they could be loosening up their lockdown sooner than expected.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee stated that they are going to return 400 ventilators, a great sign that their healthcare system is not going to be overwhelmed and California is set to return 500 ventilators. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards believes that the state has reached its peak and that they will be declining soon.
So we are seeing a combination of increased resources in the healthcare system and decreased transmission rates in many places.
And there are also updated models that have decreased the total death count and reflect flatter curves with peak dates that are closer to today. All of those are strong signs that we are making progress and that the outcome here may potentially be less bad than many have believed.
Again, it is still early so I don’t want to give people false hope but these are all facts and they portray outcomes more favorable than what many of us believed would happen.
There are still some regions hurting a lot and still plenty of reports of healthcare systems under major stress, but based on a lot of the early facts I’ve seen, I’m starting to think that we will be able to avoid that worst case scenario in this country of many people dying who could have been saved.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.