I write a lot about this coronavirus, and how deadly it is - or isn't. The media and the government seem to want us to panic and live our lives in fear and paranoia. It is likely the government did not fully understand the virus…how deadly it was and how quickly it would spread. The media (and the people in that industry)…well, they’re despicable scumbags that must highlight the worst in everything. So we've been fed some misleading information.
In talking with my friends, who are all adults of average intelligence, wisdom and common sense (in other words, smarter than me), we see the published numbers of “confirmed-positive” cases, and we know that the total number of people infected with the virus must be somewhat higher. The question is: How much higher? We each had our theories. Admittedly, neither I nor any of my friends are doctors or statisticians, so we’re making guesses here – but guesses based on what we’re being told by so-called official sources.
There is no doubt that the coronavirus is very contagious. We have been told all along that up to “80%” of coronavirus victims never even know they have the disease because they have no symptoms. That always seemed like a guess to me. But okay, 80% of what total?
Looking at it one way, here in Escambia County, Florida we now have 290 “confirmed-positive” cases. Let’s say 300 to make the math easier. If we had 1,500 actual cases (symptomatic and asymptomatic), then the 20% with symptoms would be 300 people. Okay, fine, that works. 1,500 total cases.
But a new study has come out indicating that the number of infected-but-asymptomatic people with coronavirus may be as high as FIFTY TIMES the number of those with symptoms who test positive. This is an astonishing number that strains credulity. To wit: How can that many people be infected with a virus and not even know it?
By that calculation (50X), with 300 confirmed-positive cases in my county, that would mean that 15,000 residents are actually infected. At first, I thought, “No way.” But the more I think about it…maybe it’s true. If that’s the case, 15,000 out of 315,000 is .047 of the population. Put another way, that’s 4.7% - which is quite high. Could that number be accurate?
The numbers are, after all, not static; they continue to change on a daily basis. We continue to see incremental growth in the number of confirmed cases, and it must be said that the county now has six deaths attributable to COVID-19. If we divide 6 by 15,000 people, we get .04%.
We know that the deaths lag behind the number of infections by a couple of weeks, perhaps by as much as a month. Nevertheless, the percentage of deaths to infected people seems to be quite low. Even if we double the number of deaths, 12 divided by 15,000 is only 0.08% - less than a tenth of one percent. Let's keep that "0.08%" number in mind.
So now the questions become: 1) Is it possible that right now, nearly 5% of the residents of our county have the virus? And, 2) How many people will ultimately end up becoming infected?
The answer to Question #1 is, “It seems possible.” As for Question #2, estimates and predictions are all over the map. Some “experts” postulate that as many as 40% of the U.S. population may eventually become infected. We currently have 330,000,000 people in this country, and 40% of them would be 132,000,000. And if .08% die from the the disease, that’s 105,600 people. No wonder the government wanted to “flatten the curve”!
Let’s hope that the number of people infected with COVID-19 is less than 40%. During the Swine Flu pandemic back in 2009, the CDC estimated that 62,000,000 people got infected. That was about 20% of the population of the U.S. back then.
We should hope and pray that only 20% of the American people get infected this time. If that’s the case, 20% of 330,000,000 is 66,000,000 people. Then .08% of 66,000,000 equals 53,000 people. Considering that we’ve already had over 37,000 people die from coronavirus in the U.S., 53,000 deaths seems likely.
What we're seeing is the COVID-19 was and is not the cataclysmic, end-of-the-world disease that many predicted. Can it be fatal? For sure. Is there a vaccine? Not at the moment. But I think The Great Shutdown was probably unnecessary, and we should get back on with our lives.
Here is the CNN report on the study:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/health/santa-clara-coronavirus-infections-study/index.html
Who Am I?
- Bob Barbanes:
- A nobody; a nitwit; a pilot; a motorcyclist; a raconteur; a lover...of life - who loves to laugh, who tries to not take myself (or anything) too seriously...just a normal guy who knows his place in the universe by being in touch with my spiritual side. What more is there?
5 comments:
What troubles me is when you look at other countries that did far more testing than we have done. Looking at them this morning I see the death rate (positive cases/deaths) are:
Italy 13.2%
England 13.5%
France 17.1%
Belgium 14.6%
US 4.6%
Canada 4.1%
The trend I see is that those countries who were infected weeks before the U.S. and Canada have much higher percentages. Assuming the same 80% of people never get tested in all these countries, to me that means we can expect a heck of a lot more deaths to come in the U.S. We are currently at nearly 750,000 positives in the U.S. If we just use Italy's death rate percentage of 13.2%, we can expect 99,000 deaths or 65,000 more deaths than right now, and that is assuming we don't get any more positive cases added to the toll. I find that pretty sobering.
Ed...no offense, buddy, but the numbers are deceptive.
So far in the U.S., 37,000 people have died and 707,000 people have tested positive. We could say that means our death rate is .052 or 5.2%. But that number is misleading because we KNOW that there are more people infected than just 707,000.
If we apply the "50 times" rule (and remember, that's on the conservative side of the California study), we could say that 35,350,000 people (707,000 X 50) have now or have had COVID-19 in this country. That would make our national death rate .001 or .1%. (Up in the body of my blogpost I guessed that the national death rate might be .08%. Point-zero-eight percent...or point-one percent...I suppose that's within a reasonable margin of error.)
It also means that COVID-19 has infected 10% of our population - so far. As I said above, I would guess that 20% of the U.S. population will ultimately be infected.
Now, Italy:
Italy's published death rate of 13.2 is calculated by dividing their number of deaths (22,745) by the number of confirmed cases (172,434). Well, we know that's not right. Suppose we use the recent estimate that the real number of people with coronavirus is fifty times 172,434. That works out to be 8,600,000 people. The population of Italy is 60,000,000. So their total infection rate right now is 0.14, or 14% of their population - a little higher than the U.S. - maybe they're not as good with the social-distancing and hand-washing as we are. Will Italy get to 20% total population infection rate? We shall see.
Okay, deaths in Italy. If we divide the number of deaths (22,745) by their total population (60 million), we get .000379, or let's round it off and call it .04%. Coincidentally, this lines up well with the figures here in Escambia County, Florida. Granted, as we know the death rate lags behind the infection rate, so that number will go up. Some people predict it will go up "exponentially." I disagree.
Maybe Dr. Fauci was right. From the beginning he's been saying that it is probable that the same number of people would eventually die from coronavirus, no matter what we do. Maybe Italy just wasn't able to "flatten the curve" like the U.S. did, and their hospitals got, as my friends in the restaurant business say, slammed.
Now, it's one thing to say, as you did, that some other countries have done "far more" testing than the U.S. Uhhh, that's great but did they test for antibodies? Or just the active virus? Makes a big difference.
Running numbers and percentages like this can be confusing and migraine-inducing. We often don't know which numbers to use, and we certainly don't know if they are even correct. We might be tempted to just look at the number of deaths in Italy versus the number of confirmed cases and go, "Holy crap, what a horror show!" But those two numbers by themselves don't tell the full story.
Saw on the evening news tonight where I believe Stanford did an antibody test in a town in California that was hard hit earlier and found that a little over 4% of those tested had the antibodies which according to the calculations, made the number of infected people 85 times those that were tested. I thought that was pretty close to some of your numbers on earlier posts. Of course what they didn't way was who they chose to test for antibodies and if it was random or not. They did say the sample size was fairly small so that may skew things as well.
And yes, statistics can make anybody mad.
And that's the problem with numbers. I wrote about it on my Facebook page - it's called "confirmation bias." I see encouraging figures or statistics, and I am convinced that they prove my point and I give them more weight than numbers that are not so agreeable. I try not to do that, but I'm human like most other people on this planet.
But yeah, you probably saw the study I mentioned, which occurred in Santa Clara, California. They had a drive-through station set up where people could just pull in, get their finger pricked, give a blood sample and be on their way. The results were that the number of people who already had antibodies was 50 to 85(!) times the number of people who'd been tested and confirmed as positive. That's crazy. But as you note, Ed, how big was the sample; and how specific to that local area was it? Perhaps not all areas of the world would return similar results?
As a pilot, I'm a numbers guy. I understand hard numbers. We pilots live by them. I try to look at them objectively, but you always have to wonder if the numbers you're using are correct. A person can use statistics to prove any point, or shade the situation in any light he/she desires. Not only that, but external circumstances make numbers seem worse.
For instance, New York City. Because the city was in "lockdown," relatives of sick people in the ICU could not get in to see them before they died. Also, funerals and burials couldn't be held, because gatherings of more than one person were prohibited. So everything got put on hold, and the bodies piled up - a unimaginably horrible situation.
Yes, they've had a lot of deaths from coronavirus. But their hospitals and such were not overwhelmed - not even close. The federal government built a big hospital in a convention center, *and* sent that 1,000-bed hospital ship up. Both were used (because it would have looked awful for New York Governor Cuomo to not put any patients in them at all), but neither were needed for overflow coronavirus patients. Governor Cuomo, who'd been hysterically screaming that he needed "30,000" (or was it 40,000?) ventilators, needed only a small fraction of that many (as President Trump accurately predicted), and the governor ended up returning many of the ones that were sent to him. Oopsie! But better safe than sorry, I guess.
Point being, if NYC had done *nothing*, the number of deaths may have been the same as they are now, but compressed into a shorter time frame (the curve would not have been flattened)- and then the beds at the Javits Center and on Navy ship would probably have been needed...and of course more ventilators would have been needed too. But they would've had all those things. People severely over-estimated how deadly the coronavirus would be. It was just made worse because of the hysteria caused by the unnecessary nationwide lockdown.
"...but I'm human like most other people on this planet"
I like that you used the word "most" in that statement, Bob.
Post a Comment