COVID-19: Is this the Perfect Storm?

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil   India   South Africa

May     21    1418     4934         1188     150         30

            22    1293     5252           966     142         28
            23    1036     4183           965     142         10
            24      617     2826           703     156         22
            25      505     3096           806     148         52
            26      774     4048         1027     172         43
            27    1535     5283         1148     190         28
            28    1223     4612         1067     177         25
            29    1212     4873         1180     269         34
            30    1015     4084           890     205         32
June      1      638     3189          480      223         40
              2      730     3053          732      200         22
              3    1134    4669         1232      221          50
             4     1083    4928         1269      259         37

Summary:  Not much to add, although Sweden now admits that it screwed up on the coronavirus pandemic.

• They went against the consensus by continuing with a strategy to maintain an economy, and finally saw that they erred.  
• The brains behind all this was Anders Tegnell, the country's top epidemiologist.
• At 440 deaths/million, their mortality rate is among the highest, even more so than the U.S., with 330.  
• Their neighbors:  Norway (44), Finland (58) and Denmark (100).  
• The World?  50 deaths/million.  
• Spain, the UK and Italy are pretty similar:  580, 585 and 556, respectively...worse than Sweden.  European countries lead the world in this category

You've seen the movie, The Perfect Storm, with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.  That was exactly 20 years ago.  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers did not like it, bestowing a 47% rating.  All the bad weather conditions came together for a 100-foot wave.  Did not affect you because, first its a film, but second you were not on the boat.  Today, unfortunately, if you are part of the United States of America, we appear headed for the equivalent of another 100-foot wave, a conjunction of the COVID-19 Pandemic, racial riots in the USA and President Trump.

We got close a century ago with the Spanish Flu and Red Summer, my posting last week.  675,000 Americans died from this H1N1 virus, with an additional 1000 rioters and victims killed, including 49 lynchings of Blacks, that time.  The nation recovered.  However, all was not over, for soon came the Great Depression, then World War 2.  

Read this article about H.L. Mencken, "sage of Baltimore," who predicted the coming of someone like Donald Trump.  There also was something to do with women voters ultimately making the difference, as maybe too will happen on 3November2020, and the fact that The Donald's main resistance is a female, Nancy Pelosi, who happens to be from Baltimore.

Now comes General James Mathis, former Secretary of Defense, who so appropriately and convincingly floored Trump, helping the nation come together in a way that will no doubt rescue us from this looming Perfect Storm.  We still don't know yet.  Will our boat sink, with some of us scrambling back to shore, or will be able to withstand this once in century calamity?  

I have no doubts that we will continue to be #1 into the future.  However, there will be more pandemics, stock market crashes and Donald Trumps, unless we can find a way to better solve our problems.  Perfect storms, though, do provide the opportunity to work in unison to find these solutions.  Maybe we'll be smarter this time.

We're now into the year 2003:

• Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry, killing all seven astronauts.

• The World Health Organization issues global alert for SARS.
• The Human Genome Project is completed.
• Dewey, first deer cloned, by Texas A&M.
• Prometea, first horse cloned, in Italy.

• Mars gets closest to Earth in 60,000 years.
• Hubble Telescope first seeing.
• Concorde makes last commercial flight.
• Saddam Hussein captured in small town by the U.S. Army.
• Greta Thunberg of Sweden born.

The #1 songs of 2003 in less than 3 minutes.  10-year old Roberta Battaglia sings Shallow in America's Got Talent, receiving a golden buzzer by Sophia Vergara, the new judge.  Finally, 50 from Hawaii sing Magic of Da Mind, congratulating the Class of 2020.

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