Plague journal

After telling the public that everything was fine, Richard Burr quietly dumped a ton of his stock. Recordings now prove that he knew weeks ago that the epidemic was going to be serious and just opted not to tell the rest of us.

The CDC is now saying that contrary to earlier belief, younger people are being hit badly by COVID-19 too, with 20% of US hospitalizations being 20–44 years old. Some states are seeing a 20x increase people filing for unemployment, so expect those figures to look terrible next week as they’re already worse than the worst week of the last major recession. A survey suggests we could be looking at 14 million newly unemployed, i.e. 9% of the population, and the official prediction is up to 20% unemployment in the longer term. If you want a graph of how the epidemic is going for assorted countries, the FT one is probably the best choice.

Tomorrow is Animal Crossing release day. It’s about the only thing I can think of to look forward to right now. I don’t expect to take much of a vacation this year, and I’m sick of living in this slow motion train wreck. I’m ready to retreat into a fantasy world.