For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends. --- Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

For a guy that lived more than 2500 years ago, Aeschylus was certainly prescient about our present reality of social distancing. Covid19 is spreading rapidly through the US population and while China has managed to get the disease under control, the United States is foundering in the deficits of our national leadership.

The numbers don't lie. This is a hockey-stick-shaped curve. The further it rises the steeper it becomes. It is accelerating upwards. Already that fact and the numbers which they imply leave our minds numb with shock. So let me put this in cold, political terms.

Today is March 27th. At the time of this writing, 401 Americans have died from Covid19 today. That's 107 more than perished in the First Gulf War against Iraq.

Tomorrow, if the trends hold, another 536 will die and the day after that about 670. Monday will see 870 deaths and the last day of March will mark the first day in which more than 1000 Americans die from this disease.

Those four days will represent a greater loss of American life than the D-day invasion. The next four will see more Americans die than perished in the Guadalcanal campaign in WWII. The next four will surpass the loss of American life in the American Revolution.

Together those twelve days will dwarf the American lives lost in the Korean War. All three years of it.

The scale of a pandemic is brutal and it is hard to imagine the horrible work that hockey-stick shaped curve does until we are already too far along it to stop it.

But we are not.

Numerous states are already implementing Social Distancing measures and every day more are extending that policy to one of Shelter In Place. Such policies will likely save a minimum of 100,000 lives and may save many times that number. The time to act is now and it is not too late.

Write your Governor. Write your state legislators. Write the House and the Senate. Write the President of the United States and demand Shelter In Place policies.

We can beat this thing. We can flatten the curve, slow the spread of the virus, and conserve our hospital beds, ventilators, PPE, and anti-viral drugs so that no American who fights Covid19 fights alone.

But to do that we need to treat this like the threat it is. We need to act now.

What Can I Do?

Given the gravity of this situation and the importance of swift action, we've wired up a petition you can sign very simply. Just text, message, or tweet covid actGet state and county pandemic data from COVID Act Now to Resistbot on SMS at 50409, Facebook Messenger, or Twitter and the 'bot will dispatch this message to your state government (with the relevant information for your state).

If you feel like writing your own, that's great too. Just send monthly by the same methods and the 'bot will help you through the rest.

And wash your hands. 🧼👏🤖