I really wish people would start clarifying that EVEN IF we are "at the peak," EVEN IF it doesn't "get worse than this," EVEN IF the numbers are right & we don't discover previously underrepored numbers, EVEN IF - we'll have roughly double the number of dead on May 1st.

Let's pretend we know for a fact that WaPo is right & NBC is wrong, & let's pretend that all of those numbers are solid & won't be revealed to be short, & let's pretend that deaths are poised to significantly drop. So what's that, 50,000 dead? Rather than double NBC's 32,000+?

And I don't know how else to say this, but none of that will prove true. We will be lucky, we will be BLESSED, if on May 1st, we have fewer than 60,000 dead. And then, on May 2nd and 3rd and 4th and 5th and 6th and 7th and 8th and 9th and 10th and 11th, people will keep dying!

I've been thinking a lot today about this from former POW James Stockdale, that he survived not by being optimistic, but by combining “the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail” & “the discipline to begin by confronting the brutal facts, whatever they are."

The facts are BRUTAL. The facts that we know right now are BRUTAL, & under the circumstances, there is no way that the facts we know are all the facts there are to know. We're not testing, people in power are hiding or ignoring deaths - "brutal" doesn't even begin to cover it!

Think of this one thing: I learned from WBEZ today that the quick test recently rolled out (which doesn't have FDA approval, btw) has a HUGE false negative rate. So folks are getting letters attesting to the fact that they're negative & going back to work - & they're positive!

And again, here I am sounding like I tooting my own horn, but for real - I saw all of this on Mar 19 when I wrote this, a wk before it ran in Dame. If I could see it - from isolation, with a Chromebook & the internet - it was knowable at least a month ago! https://www.damemagazine.com/2020/03/26/can-history-help-us-cope-with-covid-19/

The goal cannot be to successfully place the facts beyond a veil so we don't see them until they're in our frontyard. The goal HAS to be to be honest about the brutal, brutal facts, while doing what needs to be done so our "unwavering faith that we can prevail" will be warranted.