The Agrinautica

   A week ago I finally got my first vaccine dose (pfizer), after having reloaded the appointment webpages multiple times daily for months. I still wouldn't be eligible if I weren't a volunteer firefighter, general eligibility is only 40+ at this point. Currently 12.2% of Australians are fully vaccinated, which is a lower number than any other developed country and even India (US presently stands at 49.4%).

   Australia has been unusually successful with containing outbreaks with spot lockdowns, but I fear the government has come to rely on this method and it's given people the sense that covid is beatable and getting a vaccine may not be urgent. Also I fear that lockdowns will become less effective as people grow complacent and tired of them. (And there's currently an outbreak in the state of New South Wales which may be out of control (that being said, 1,563 current locally acquired cases, with 495 new cases in the last week would be a miraculously low number anywhere in the states)

   As with other issues, I will qualify that I live in rural Australia which may skew more conservative than in the cities, but nearly every conversation I've heard about the vaccine mentions "the bloodclots." Which remind you, you're more likely to get from flying on an airplane and nearly all these same people would willingly fly on an airplane. I'm not very plugged in to Australian news but there was a radio on near me at work the other day and while the host was urging people to get the vaccine, he never failed to mention "now there are risks and it's a choice you need to carefully consider, but I do think you should get the vaccine," a recommendation so qualified I think its more likely to encourage hesitency than vaccine-getting.

   A year ago I thought we'd be getting back to normal much faster here than America since we were barely hit by Covid, but it looks like due to the extremely lackluster vaccination rollout we are now way behind. International travel, which is of paramount importance to me, shows no sign of re-normalizing here in the forseeable future.

   Today the first vaccines were administered, in the UK. (and the second person to receive it was named William Shakespeare!)
   This is the 40th consequtive day with no cases here in Victoria, Australia.
   209,756 new cases today in the United States, 2,960 deaths. The hospitals in my home county (Orange, California) are all at ICU capacity now.


   One thing that's kind of funny over here is that we no longer need to wear masks outside, and we can go eat in the restaurants and pubs and don't have to wear a mask while sitting at the table, so in effect we put on a mask for the thirty seconds between the door and sitting down. Normally I don't poke fun at any mask wearing activities and I understand and agree with the mix of rules that cause this circumstance ... but still its a kind of funny sign-of-the-times sort of ritual I wanted to jot down for posterity.

   Yesterday (Friday) was a very lovely day. 76f and sunny. My application for permanent residency had just finally been lodged, finally freeing me from the threat of being expelled from the country on the 5th, so I was in a very good mood. For an hour or two at twilight I've been cutting blackberries along the slope beside the river at the edge of town, to make a trail, and this fun project was much on my mind in the morning. The trail is being bored a dozen feet a day through the thick tangle of brambles and was getting very near the comparatively clear "other side" of the entangled slope. In particular just the evening before I had discovered instead of slipping on the loose hillside and carrying the cut tentacle-like branches all the way back out of the track, if I carefully laid them lengthwise underfoot and stood on them they made a great stable trackway. So in the morning I eagerly thought about getting back to that, but first I had a busy day of beekeeping, to take advantage of the good weather!

 Mid-afternoon, around 3pm-ish, I was emerging from the forest when my phone started giving me notifications. I glanced at my phone and my brother (Tobin) had sent me a screenshot of a Trump tweet announcing he (Trump) had coronavirus. I nearly swerved off the road! I had to stop and demand "IS THIS REAL???!?" it turns out, as you probably know, it was.
   The rest of the day I was checking my phone between every hive as the updates continued throughout the day. More Trump allies infected! Trump off to the hospital!

   I'm not gonna lie, this already good day was suddenly upgraded to euphoric. I've seen some hand wringing from people saying its immoral to wish ill on even Trump, and some Trump supporters posting that we should be ashamed, but you know what, no. Trump has downplayed this all along. Becuase of his downplaying this 200,000+ Americans are dead and now he himself is sick. It's his own damn fault and I'm not sorry. He mocked Hillary for getting pneumonia during the 2016 campaign, he mocked the McCain family when McCain died, he deserves exactly zero sympathy. He is a direct threat to the health and very lives of Americans and if this severaly damages his elections then it is objectively good.
   On top of all that, I think there's been every indication he planned to lead a chanting mob on election night to dispute the results, which was a terrifying prospect for democracy, but I doubt he can do that from a hospital bed. So yeah, no, this development may have saved America and I won't pretend some imaginary "high road" compels me to feel sympathy for this ogre.

   Anyway, in this state of euphoric wonderland I mnaged to finish the day, inspecting at beehives until the sun set around 6ish. Driving back to work to unload the truck, legendary cat Cato came to greet me and I held his warm furry purring koala-self for possibly an hour while I contentedly watched the big yellow moon rise. And took a photo:


Here is the moon. Did you know it's surface is "slightly brighter than that of worn asphalt" according to wikipedia?

   This morning (Saturady) wasn't even forecast to be a sunny day but it turned out to be yet another nice sunny day. I eagerly walked over to where the blackberry cutting had been going on and found the other two guys who have been having a hack at it in mornings had actually succeeded to cutting all the way through!! I was disappointed though that they didn't seem to take note of my track-laying technique and had manually lugged all the cut branches all the way out and left the soft bare earth of the slope to be directly walked on.
   And then throughout the day today about every hour we find out that yet another member of the Trump camp has come down with Covid!
   It kind of reminds me of the 30 Years War. Ah it seems like just yesterday ::gazes off into the distance:: but no really, so the war raged across Europe with important battles happening in different corners with important ramifications but the news might take weeks to get across. So for example, RBG dies, it feels like "our" side has just lost a significant battle somewhere a bit far away but turning the tables so things seem nearly hopeless for our side. But then just two weeks later there's another battle, and throughout the day news is slowly trickling down to us of all the major figures of the opposing side who have fallen as casualties in it.

   Though in studying the 30 Years War, which I've been finding fascinating lately, I still can't decide for the life of me which side to root for.

   Anyway, in conclusion, Spring is here, in spirit, in the weather, and apparently in politics.

   So I've been thinking a lot lately about conspiracy theorists and covidia deniers and how their actions can be explained by either philosophical theory or psychology. I've come up with two main explanations for the outbreak of conspiracies and denialism, which probably are both in effect to some degree.

1. Equilibrium, Cognitive Dissonance, and Tranquility - One does not enjoy to be stressed or anxious. One's mind seeks an equilibrium in which they feel just engaged and challenged enough to not be bored, but aren't stressed out of their mind. Because the scale of the coronavirus disaster is literally "too horrible to contemplate," after an initial unsustainable level of stress about it, they seek to regain a stress level they can handle. Presently their mind hits on denial -- "it's really not that bad!" the fact that prominent people such as the president are saying this makes it easier to swallow, and so they do. Once they've swallowed it they no longer feel stressed, they feel more tranquil. They have good feelings once again about life and their glorious president. Cognitive dissonance, the desire to bring their thoughts and beliefs into cohesion, causes them to fiercely defend this belief that makes them feel alright.


2. Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Social Contract - Most of us will vaguely recall these concepts from high school civics or intro to poli sci. I probably remember them better than average because I'm a huge nerd and admit even I did some quick refresher googling. Thomas Hobbes believed people were basically selfish, and then government was divinely ordained because it was necessary to keep people in check. Rousseau believed people were born good but corrupted by society, and that they organized amongst themselves government as a "social contract" to arrange a life well-ordered for mutual well-being. I rather hash between them and believe people are basically selfish ogres amongst whom the social contract is necessary to maintain order.
   Sovereign Citizens, a Tangent - both the US and Australia and probably all places have these self styled "sovereign citizens" who of late have taken to filming themselves here driving through police checkpoints insisting their rights to not wear a mask and go whereever they want are above the law, innate and inalienable, and the police somehow have no authority over them. Interestingly here in Australia the police seem content to say "yeah okay fine go ahead ::eyeroll::" and then later send them a fine in the mail or even come arrest them at the officer's convenience. (Some comments have reminded me that non-Australians won't know the context of the checkpoints -- no they're not enforcing an irrational requirement to wear masks while alone in the car, it's a travel ban on unnecessary travel and in particular unnecessary travel out of the hotspot of Melbourne or the hot state of Victoria. Yes it feels a bit dystopian (we need travel passes signed by our employers if its for work!), but seems reasonable to me given efforts to control this outbreak, and anyway this essay isn't about whether rules are objectively good but people's attitude towards adherence, so anyway now you know the context of this). It seems to me these sovereign citizens have more in common with Hobbes than Rousseau, thinking their rights come not from any social contract (which would after all make allowances for the well being of persons other than themselves), but somehow come down from on high as divinely gifted and objectively existing rights. They do at least have that they are innately selfish right.

   But bringing this back to the larger issue of why we're seeing more people exhibiting this behavior during the pandemic, I posit it pertains the the social contract in a more informal sense. These people, whom I believe are no more civilized than feral and slightly rabid dogs at heart, learned through their rowdy teenage and early adult years where the lines of acceptable social norms are. Having learned where it's appropriate to throw a fit and where they must behave, they have proceeded down the bowling lane of life without going into the gutters, and would happily proceed along to the bowling pins of life without serious mishap. But suddenly the coronavirus has changed the rules! What is and is not appropriate behavior has suddenly significantly changed and things they've always done are no longer acceptable! These people are suddenly back to their feral state, and any concept that they were actually guided by concern for others is shown for the illusion it always was, they've always only proceeded along the path of what they could get away with without running afoul of social norms.

   You may note that the social contract in this sense is no longer "the law" or government but social norms. I think, basically, people only follow the law to the degree that it is the social norm to do so amongst the people they really care about: their family and close friends. You have to keep in mind that for most of human history, for most of the 100,000+ years of history, people's society was the village/band/tribe of a few dozen people in which they existed, and by and large they were not innately opposed to trying to kill everyone in the next tribe over and take all their stuff if the mood suited them; ie, people lack a great deal of empathy for people they don't know and are not innately constrained by views outside those held by their immediate social group. What that means for modern society is that people are primarily concerned with the social norms embraced by their immediate family and close friends. If their immediate family and close friends are all saying "don't be an idiot, wear a mask" they're going to be heavily inclined to do so. If their immediate family and close friends are all "woo yeah Trump woo!!" they're going to look at him as an acceptable moral authority and be all side-eyeing eachother like "does this mean it's okay to be racist again? are we all on board with this? yeah? you in too? alright yeah woooo let's not recognize the social contract as applying to people different from us! yeah woo I always hated that woo!!!"

   Which also explains why, to retain moral cohesion, what I might term here by parallel as "moral dissonance," they may start blocking and unfriending close friends or family members who are subscribing to a different set of moral values as regards to all this.

   That being said, I think this really only applies to about 70-80% of everyone. I optimistically think 20-30% of people are not feral beasts but possess the moral integrity to stand up for what they philosophically feel is right and guide those around them.

   A friend I was discussing this with asked "well, yes, but is there a practical application to all this?" And I think understanding this can effect the communications strategies used to influence these people.
(1) In the first case, the "too horrible to contemplate" cognitive dissonance, while we're inclined to emphasize the dangerousness of the pandemic and usually it is they who are trying to downplay the danger, the most effective strategy might actually be to focus solely on how _safe_ it would be if everyone was wearing masks.
(2) The second case is more difficult (and remember they are probably overlapping as dual causes of antisocial behavior), but the key might be trying to get figures they actually look up to as moral authorities to actually endorse taking masks and social distancing seriously. Also remember that people don't respond well to negative feelings (ie, shaming them), but do respond to measures that make them feel good about themselves,so if you find yourself surrounded by a majority of family members or friends who are anti mask, if you can contrive to cajole them positively in a pro mask direction as a group ("I'm glad we're all taking it seriously, as are our uncles and [name a bunch of family members to give the impression of a majority]") rather than shaming or berating them, it will be more effective.


   Anyway, I'm admittedly a bit rusty on the philosophical concepts herein mentioned and would love to further discuss the ideas so let me know what you think (:

1,293 active cases in Australia.

   So as I mentioned the other day, cases are really ramping up in Melbourne. A true "second wave," after weeks of single digits nationally now Melbourne alone has over a hundred new cases a day and trending upwards.

   Tuesday, I believe, they announced new lockdowns would be in place both to contain people within Melbourne and to prevent travel between Victoria and the neighboring states, to come into effect a little over 24 hours later, the following day's midnight. Not surprisingly this led to immediate traffic jams at the borders as people tried to get out while they can, as well as more traffic headed down here (Geelong, the Surf Coast, and my area). At present they haven't imposed any new restrictions on rural Victoria outside of Melbourne but my friends are all pretty sure that will happen in a few days, this seems to be roaring to life even faster than the first time.

   Also yesterday or today they announced a case at a supermarket in Geelong (the nearest large town, and an hour south of Melbourne so "the next town over" from there), as well as a case in the seaside town of Torquay where my friend Trent lives and works. Trent was feeling unwell yesterday but immediately went to get tested. Apparently, As our friend Ben dryly pointed out, he is obligated to self quarantine and not go to work once he's taken a test. Which, well yes you shouldn't be going out if you think you might have it, but to have it automatically triggered by taking a test is a disincentive to taking a test. Incidentally, shortly later, Ben, who works in Melbourne, someone at his work has come down with it so they've shut down work. "I'm not getting tested myself though" he said. "get tested!" we all said.

   Trent, btw, says after he had some of my honey he felt better, and no longer feels unwell at all. Nevertheless he's in self quarantine for (a mandated?) six days.

   So yeah, it feels like things are progressing rapidly here now.

   One of my friends keeps sharing memes downplaying the seriousness of coronavirus and/or sometimes outright conspiracy theories. What's weird is this friend is one of the most empathetic people I know. He'll know you're having a bad day before you do an he'll be asking you about it in a very caring way. He'll know if a passing stranger is having a bad day and be genuinely bummed about it. So why these posts?

   And I have other facebook friends who also post these kinds of things, but they're generally people who are generally predisposed to conspiracy theories and/or less empathetic political views. So what could my empathetic friend have in common with them??


   It is commonly known that a "sociopath" is someone completely lacking empathy, and I've read elsewhere that people can generally only truly care about 7 people. I propose that there's actually a lot more shades of grey in both these numbers. That there's the empathy you feel for the people you directly know, and the empathy you feel for the people you don't know. Whether or not you care about 7 people, I think for some people people they don't know aren't real people. This isn't because the person is necessarily evil, my friend is the nicest goodest person I know, but it's a sort of form of object permanence or abstraction that he just can't wrap his brain around.

   I actually came at this theory not from an empathy angle but another. I was thinking about how could you possibly believe these crazy schemes that involve vast multi-organizational government conspiracies, and it occurred to me that they could only make sense if you don't think of everyone presumably involved in putting it on as people but as some sort of cartoonish evil minions. I know people are basically self interested; I know on an organizational level organizations are definitely self interested; but I also know there's just know way you could get thousands of humans to work together on a sinister conspiracy such as making airliners disappear or faking a virus without loads of them betraying the whole thing, because they're humans.

   If I might contrast myself with my friend, I don't really consider myself particularly empathetic. One person I know tells me about their bad day I'll say "that sucks dude" and try to look sincere because it's expected and it probably does objectively suck, but I probably won't lose sleep over it so to speak. But I remember when this whole pandemic began, and before it effected me in any way, I remember I was feeling really genuinely depressed and down, which is really unlike myself. I rather propose that in contrast to my friend, the abstract millions I don't know are very real to me and if something bad is happening to a great deal of people I feel it -- but conversely, and possibly as a direct consequence, one person's bad day pales in the scheme of things.

   But a lack of being able to think about people they don't know as real people can explain so much about conspiracy theorists, racism, and why these people usually espouse the less empathetic side of politics. But again, even otherwise good people can apparently be afflicted by this apparent lack of stranger realness. Hmm I need a good word for this theory.


PS: in response to the meme he posted, I wrote back that "all available information indicates that if left unchecked covidia _would_ overtake all those other causes of death, and to suggest that because social distancing is working it needn't be taken seriously is preposterous"

***Edit: it's been pointed out that the chart uses data from extremely early in the whole situation. Current data even on low reporting days (weekends) still tops the chart, and at it's height the numbers were around 8,000 deaths per day, more than double the top of this chart. See this animated chart for how things progressed.

5/1 - 929 active cases in Australia - 14 new in the last 24 hours
5/2 - 899 active cases in Australia - 16 new in the last 24 hours
5/3- 889 active cases in Australia - 18 new in the last 24 hours

   Today marks the 40th day of quarantine, which is of course the traditional length of plague quarantines in early modern Europe, giving rise to the word itself. I believe the word on the street here is that they're going to give it at least two more weeks and see where we're at at that point. In the nearest large to me, Geelong, there have been no new cases for ten days now. Meanwhile in the US: The US just reported its deadliest day for coronavirus patients as states reopen.

   Winter is setting in here. It's been frigid the past few days (in the 40s fahrenheit). More people seem to be out walking then there were before quarantine, albeit everyone is very bundled up against the cold now. The general store in my little village changed hands mid quarantine and now carries a lot of staple groceries, allowing people to avoid going into one of the bigger towns. My tourist-based sales locations were all annihilated early in the pandemic, but it actually caused me to, in desperation, throw out two assumptions that had apparently been holding me back: (1) that new sales locations can only be established by going in in person; and (2) its prohibitively costly to ship honey therefore the immediate area is my only possible market. I emailed literally every single whole or organic food place in Melbourne asking if they were interested in carrying another line of honey, nearly half a dozen wrote back, and as long as I'm delivering to multiple places its cost effective for me to drive down there (it's about two hours from here). As such I think my sales are now better than they were pre-pandemic, and when the tourism-based places finally do re-open I'll be at double where I was before. My visa future is still extremely uncertain though.

   At this point everyone's developed new habits and I think certain things will never go back. No I don't actually mean the meme about "we shouldn't go back to normal because normal was broken." ...yes, it was, but the big things, environmental degradation and lack of health care and income inequality, those blights I don't see changing sadly. But I think there will be more telecommuting, meetings by videoconference, and grocery delivery services.

   Anyway, I think we're on the home stretch here in Australia. It might be awhile yet before they lift quarantine but the worst is over. In the United States I think the worst is still yet to come -- I think all these premature liftings of social isolation are going to lead to a tsunami of new cases.

   And by some miracle Venezuela doesn't seem hard-hit but it could still be coming down the line there so I'm not going to jinx it by declaring they've made it through. So FAR it's been good though.

   In some alternate reality where no one took a particular bat to a seafood market in Wuhan, Chima, on Nobemver 17th, I would be in Nassau, Bahamas. Probably getting ready for a very exciting day. Perhaps I'd already be on the beach now, but being as as present moment it is 7:20am there, more likely in a few hours. A few hours from now, but quite possibly while you are reading this, I would be standing in the soft sand of a Bahamian beach beside Cristina. It's a bit warm, in the 80s today, but I'm sure it would be nice on the beach. I'd be wearing a nice guyabera and slacks. She'd be wearing a nice white dress. My parents would be in attendance. A man named Robert would be presiding, who looks like a nice jovial black minister, and I would look into Cristina's large sparkling eyes, her smile would be radiant, and I'd say "I do."

   Today was supposed to be our wedding day.

   Like Ms Haversham, I'm wearing my nice white guyabera today. Cristina, she's wearing scrubs and a mask today, because she's at work at the hospital and there's a pandemic on.

04/13 2804 active cases in Australia, 46 new cases in last 24 hours.

   In Australia we get a four day weekend to celebrate Eostre, because apparently "Easter Monday" is a thing of some kind. Friday was a bit nice so I checked some beehives, and was pleasantly surprised by how much honey I was able to harvest from them. Saturday and Sunday were so bloody cold I thought I might die the one time I opened the door (it was 53-54f, yes I'm melodramatic about temperatures under 60, I'm from Southern California). At one point we were getting sideways rain and the wind blew a bunch of things over.
   Sunday evening I got good and snug in front of my computer, consumed an unusually large amount of caffiene and started writing. I've been reading other people's travelogues on the writing site scribophile.com and it had inspired me to work on a nice polished travelogue of my own. It's mainly just a writing exercise at this point. So I've been working on the story of my journey into the heart of Tanzania to help the Hadzabe hunter-gatherers. Sunday night, while my friends were complaining about being "bored out of my mind" I was like "I'm reading about the Bantu expansion!!" (which had nothing really to do with what I was writing, so much as I got distracted by the wiki article on it). I actually get a bit annoyed when people complain about being bored. There's so much to do, how can you be bored?? (other than if caught out at the DMV without a reading book or other such specifically trying circumstance)
   My travelogue had some challenges, such as (1) that in my livejournal, my primary "rough log" to use as a foundation, I pretty much just skipped over four days in Nairobi in the beginning -- I don't remember anything I did and my rough-rough log was notes on my phone which were later lost. And (2) yesterday I was trying to jam some regional history in where I visit the museum in Arusha, and trying to make the history interesting and/or fit in nicely. It does appear that the area was "pacified" by a German Captain Kurt Johannes, which is delightfully reminiscent Colonel Kurtz. His apparently cruel second in command was a Lt Moritz "the Hyena" Merker. This stuff at least lends itself to good story telling. As these things go I probably spent 10x more time researching than writing. This kept me up until about 4am which is probably literally the latest by far I've been up in years. But hey I was on a roll.



   Today, "Easter Monday" was actually a nice sunny day. From the moment I woke up I managed to stay primarily outside until around 5pm, having not gone outside for the previous 48 hours. Town was eerily quiet. I expected to hear kids playing and see people walking about and all that but for whatever reason town was just super quiet.
   My mom convinced me to pick apples from my tree to make applesauce. I actually have a bumper crop of little apples. Usually they're all gobbled up by the cockatoos but the latter haven't been as abundant as usual -- must be socially isolating themselves. Messaged my across-the-street neighbor asking if he had any lemons so I could put lemon-peel in the applesauce and he came over to deliver some lemons ... which he placed on the porch and then ew chatted from a safe distance. It seems the fellow who has owned the General Store ever since I've been here has very abruptly handed over ownership of the store to someone else. I knew he kinda wanted out for awhile but this seems really sudden and I really wonder if it was coronavirus related.
   Trevor mentioned that the store now has fresh produce and other groceries! It always had SOME stuff, like sausages in the fridge, and milk and eggs and a few packs of one kind of pasta, but it wasn't really a sufficient selection to replace a trip to the grocery store. I had bene thinking with the new fear of going to the grocery store he was missing a golden opportunity. And I guess someone else thought so and bought him out with immediate effect. Suddenly the General Store has as many of all kinds of groceries as they can fit!
   I trotted over there to introduce myself and ensure a continued honey sales presence there. So weird to make a new business acquaintance and NOT shake hands. Doesn't feel right!

   Then I mowed my lawns and generally futzed about while procrastinating making applesauce becuase I always put off food production related tasks (but also that would have involved being indoors).

4/07 3313 active cases in Australia, 113 new in last 24 hours
4/08 3150 active cases in Australia, 105 new in last 24 hours
4/09 3066 active cases in Australia, 90 new in last 24 hours
4/10 3009 active cases in Australia, 100 new in last 24 hours

   Well it's official, we're over the hump here. I'm still waiting for the day when there's actually hand sanitizer on grocery store shelves.

   Cristina went with her motercycle-taxi-driver today to get him fuel so she can get to work. I think I mentioned her doing this last week, at that point the military controlled the gas stations. She couldn't get any gas at the first one but was finally able to persuade the officers at a second one that she needed and had a right to fuel as a doctor. This morning when she went for fuel the gas stations were controlled by "collectivos" -- pro-government militia, and she was unable to persuade them to give her any fuel.


   I drove into the bigger town of Geelong the other day for the first time in a month. There was a noticeably larger number of people out walking than I've ever seen before. I suppose even if they're limited to one walk per day, most of these people probably did not formerly take one walk a day.
   My purpose was to try to find more places to sell honey since the tourist-driven places have all closed up shop and gone into hibernation. I didn't really have high hopes but I sold honey to both of the small organic/whole foods places I went into. In both of them I asked if they were interested in carrying my local honey (one had no honey, the other hand "organic honey" but it was from somewhere across the state. Its funny the honey they had was crystalized in layers, which to me looks kinda janky, but to the whole/organic food crowd maybe that looks more authentic), and their principal question was just if I really was local. Then, conversationally, I mentioned that I'd been driven into the city because my usual outlets on the Great Ocean Road had dried up, and they both very earnestly said "oh, we definitely want to help you out." Very sweet of them.
   I've been afraid to even venture into the metropolis of Melbourne, but given this reception, I might try to use the google to identify specifically similar small organic/whole-foods places and hit them up. If I can line up a few it might be worth going down there periodically to make deliveries. For the months that remain to me ::sigh::


The United States now has over a third of all deaths (37%). Yes, I know there's probably a lot of deaths going unreported in underdeveloped countries (Apparently at-home-deaths of undetermined cause are up 8x in NYC), but it's not good. A number of countries are either over the hump or flattening the curve (Italy looks like it's nearly there, Spain looks very close to the hump), but the US is still on the same upward trajectory its been on with no sign of flattening.