every time i see a tweet that says “stay home so we can be done with this sooner!” i’m reminded that the messaging on coronavirus is really bad. cuz actually if we all went outside right now we’d be done in weeks. the problem, of course, is tons of people would die

obviously public officials don’t want people to panic but self-isolating and quarantining will actually drag out the pandemic as the rate of infection drops, and the only safe way to return to normal would be a vaccine. we’d be looking at more than a year of halted life

but we have to do that because covid-19 patients will not only die of the disease’s normal mortality rate but *also* because hospitals are overflowing, there’s no beds or ventilators, and the doctors + nurses themselves are getting sick

like not enough of the messaging is centered around “we have to stay home because our medical infrastructure is not built for a pandemic”. instead it’s like “stay home so we can have summer!”

summer is not happening y’all. fall isn’t happening. and it’s scary and causes a lot of anxiety, but the sooner the general public realizes and accepts this fact the better we can adapt to a new life

like everyday we spend self-isolating and quarantining the longer we drag this out.... which is fucking awesome because that means less dead people! but i feel like that point has been totally lost in the shuffle

anyways basically what i’m saying is prepare to spend the rest of 2020 at home y’all. this shit is not stopping anytime soon

damn i just realized how depressing this all sounds and it totally is but i just have to remember that models were predicting millions of deaths in america alone but we’ve managed to significantly reduce that number because of self-isolating so yay! look on the bright side!