Right now, America is a land of incredibly mixed messages. Seattle-based companies Amazon and Facebook have joined follow tech giant Twitter in asking all their employees to work from home. But at the same time, the organizers of the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle were still intent on holding their convention in the city next week—even though many of the 100,000 expected attendees have already declared their fear of coming to the beloved event. Basketball teams are refusing to travel for games in the area near America’s largest current hot spot, while sci-fi fans are being encouraged to show up and put on those costumes, even though most of the media guests that are a big part of what makes Comic Cons so popular have already pulled out.

America is simultaneously a country that is fast running out of hand sanitizer and one in which people are still crowding together in theaters and at sporting events and concerts. Some large conferences are being cancelled. Others aren’t. Some employees are being sent home. Others are still being forced to travel for business.

It’s generating a kind of societal bipolar disorder that could be addressed if there was a central authority to provide consistent, reasonable advice and instructions. But there’s not.

Instead, not only has the CDC removed the number of people who have been tested from the information available on its website, but it’s also impossible to get a straight answer on the availability of testing materials. Just two days ago, the Mike Pence-led coronavirus task force promised “a million tests” by the end of the week. That’s not going to happen. Instead, a number “way smaller that that” will literally be “in the mail” by the end of the week.

Neither Trump nor any other member of the White House team has even come close to admitting something as simple as the number of cases that have been confirmed within the United States. Thanks to state health departments, a fairly accurate number is available—164 at the time of this writing—but nothing even close to that number has been uttered by Trump, or Pence, or anyone else they’ve allowed in front of a microphone.

It’s almost as if, having spent not just the Trump years, but many years before that, working to destroy the credibility of major media sources, scientists, and experts of every stripe, Republicans have discovered that when push comes to shove, there is no one at all they can point to as a reliable authority. It’s almost like that … because it’s exactly like that. Republicans have systematically undercut every source of information not named Donald Trump. And now there is a significant portion of the population who understands there is no one to turn to except a man who can’t stop patting himself on the back for how well he’s captaining the Titanic. A perfect trip. Everyone says so.

This is the kind of situation that demands a president step forward and address the nation—not as part of a press stunt, but to provide reassurance and instructions. It demands that someone:

Explain to the public just what precautions they should be taking. Not in a “Wash your hands” sense, but in the sense of, Should I travel? Should I go to the office? What should I do about my mother who is in a nursing facility? Is it still safe to send my children to school?

Address the nation’s critical lack of hospital beds by announcing how that shortage will be abated before the crunch becomes deadly—perhaps by taking over hotels and convention centers to convert them into the necessary facilities now. As in … today.

Address the critical need for respirators and oxygen by announcing partnerships with manufacturers to increase output, stockpile supplies at critical locations, and prepare teams to move these and other supplies into place.

Work with the National Guard across the country to be sure that it has the resources necessary to act as backup in transporting health care supplies, erecting temporary structures, and preparing health care sites without placing members of the Guard at undue risk.

Announce not only relaxed regulations for testing, but also a systematic national campaign to test travelers, those known to be exposed to confirmed cases, those suffering from pneumonia, and a percentage of the general population in order to determine the real extent of the spread of coronavirus.

Announce the standards by which the government will decide to suspend schools. This cannot be left to every school district in the country. And it should come with dollars to support workers forced to remain home with their kids by offsetting the costs of either missing work or finding safe care. If farmers can get billions to keep them in Trump’s camp over his trade war with China, American parents can get some help in dealing with a genuine crisis.

Explain how the hell everything will be paid for. On Wednesday, Mike Pence fled the room rather than answer whether or not uninsured patients would even be able to get testing. Make it clear now that the government will cover all costs associated with testing. For everyone. And stop pushing nonsense about “essential health benefits” that do not exist. Covering Americans in this crisis is going to take direct government expenditure. Do it.

If you haven’t watched the testimony of health researchers before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on Thursday morning, you really should. Not only was it an informative session on the current outbreak of coronavirus, but it also offered genuinely fascinating insight into multiple areas of public health, the history of disease, and how both viruses and vaccines operate. Plus … even the Republican representatives who bothered to show up asked mostly sensible questions.

And … okay, this could go on. But let’s look at the numbers.

COVID-19: Global case status

Large numbers of reported recoveries pushed down the floor of that blue zone again after it had started to rise on Tuesday, and it’s good to see the much larger number of recovered cases than active. However, the overall growth of the pandemic continues to … grow. As of Thursday morning, global cases stand at just under 97,000, while global deaths have topped 3,300—numbers that show, once again, that by the time I make a chart, it’s outdated.

COVID-19: U.S. states with active cases

To be clear, the four pins on each of the daily maps so far don’t represent all cases, or even all new cases. They’re just four areas that I’ve singled out for attention over the last day. Some discussion in comments on Wednesday suggested that this is confusing, so I’ll be looking for a different approach to this map in the near future. At this point, California is a shade darker as the only state to have over 50 active cases. Washington state would be close behind, with 45 confirmed cases, but 10 of those cases have already resulted in death—not the way to keep the active case count down. There is now a total of 13 cases in New York state, putting it ahead of everywhere that’s not acting as a site to house passengers returned from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

Before we get out of here today, let’s look at a couple of graphs that give a hint about just where the United States is hovering this morning.

COVID-19: Regional epicenters

Here are the three regional epicenters—South Korea, Italy, and Iran—compared with the United States over the last three weeks. With the rocket-ship rise of South Korea, and Iran arcing up to surpass Italy in the last day, the red line of the United States appears very mild. And in a way it is.

But here’s another view.

COVID-19: Regional epicenters and the United States at inflection point

This is just a very brief period of five days, cherry-picked out of the data sets to look for the inflection point where cases moved off a period of slow increase fueled mostly by cases introduced by travelers, to a much sharper increase fueled by local transmission. Even under this kind of a microscope, the United States clearly hasn’t entered the kind of growth seen in the nations that have become those new centers of the outbreak. Whether it will stay that way is uncertain, and all too dependent on someone making good decisions.

Note: As I was putting this together, Italy turned in a new set of numbers. As of Thursday, Italy has exceeded South Korea in reporting new cases, with 769 cases and 41 deaths at this point on March 5.

Resources on novel coronavirus

World Health Organization 2019 Coronavirus information site.

World Health Organization 2019 Coronavirus Dashboard.

2019-nCoV Global Cases from Johns Hopkins.

BNO News 2019 Novel Coronavirus tracking site.

Worldometer / Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak.

CDC Coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) information site.

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Information on preparing yourself and your family

Some tips on preparing from Daily Kos.

NPR’s guide to preparing your home.

Ready.gov