here in the States: this has become real to - or its scope has dawned on - most people in, essentially, the last 3 days
personally I'd been mentally prepared since about the middle of February for it to be bad
tho I definitely had to revise my estimate of how bad upward
my moment of clarity was Tuesday night, a combination of near 200 dead in a 24-hour span in Italy and, stupid as it sounds, the NBA suspending its season
the latter being hugely symbolic "oh shit" moment
I've been telling friends/family/coworkers for 2 weeks to be ready for the U.S. to be in an Italy-style situation by the end of March, only worse
but I didn't fully comprehend how bad "Italy-style situation" is, or I guess I was thinking mostly about social disruption of draconian lockdown etc
as opposed to people dying in hallways in hospitals because doctors are forced to triage due to lack of beds, ICU space, ventilators, etc
if you look at pretty much any metric we're probably going to do worse than Italy
less hospital beds per capita, virtually zero testing/tracing, response took far too long and was until basically today was haphazard and piecemeal