From the beginning, this whole social-distancing thing was implemented so that we would “flatten the curve.” You remember, Dr. Deborah Birx showed us a version of the above graph. The idea was that we had to do what was necessary so that the virus followed the trajectory of the blue curve, not the red one.
As the real numbers began accumulating, the models were modified…downward and downward. And now, here in May of 2020, it appears that COVID19 is much more contagious than feared but also much less deadly than predicted.
As I write this, the U.S. alone has suffered 80,900 deaths from COVID19. That number may be skewed a little (I’d guess 10%?) by the fact that everybody who dies with coronavirus is recorded as dying from coronavirus. Dr. Deborah Birx even admitted as much in an interview on national television. Her explanation was kind of weaselly and vague, and it was not challenged by the interviewer.
One year, when I was getting my annual flight physical, the FAA doctor told me that some great percentage of all men die with prostate cancer - I forget the number he quoted. Not all of them die from it, but he said that if we live to be 80 or 90, we'll all have it when we die even though it might not be our primary cause of death. If we applied COVID19 standards, every male over the age of 90 would die of prostate cancer.
I get it: Hospitals get more money for every COVID19 death they log. And they get even more money if that patient goes on a ventilator before he/she dies. Obviously, the incentive is to attribute as many deaths as possible to COVID19. So what's the real number of deaths from COVID19? Who knows.
Whatever that real number is, the CDC is now reporting 80,900 COVID19 deaths here in the U.S., where we have 330,000,000 people. If we divide the number of deaths by the number of citizens, we get a mortality rate of 0.025% of the population - a quarter of a tenth of one percent. Now, the number of deaths will continue to climb - no doubt about that. But let's do a little quick math.
Let's assume that 40% of the entire U.S. population ultimately gets infected with the coronavirus over the course of a year. And let's assume that the death rate quadruples to one-tenth of one percent (0.1%). That would mean we'd have 132,000,000 cases and 132,000 deaths. If we divide the number of deaths by the total population of the country, we get a mortality rate of 0.04%. Not four percent (4%) mind you, *point* zero-four percent- a little under half of one percent.
Now, sure enough, 132,000 deaths is a lot, especially if one of them is a loved one/family member- or...heaven forbid(!), an actor or a celebrity. But in the "big picture" scheme of things, COVID19 will simply not be a major killer of people in the U.S. Not when there are so many other things killing Americans in much greater numbers and we don't even bat an eye. I mean, just look at THIS chart.
Stop, stop, stop...I hear you. "Heart disease and cancer aren't contagious, you sonovabitch!" And you're right. But the fact is, COVID19 is simply not as deadly as we were promised.
Okay, back to the chart. It shows the blue curve conveniently coming up and touching the dotted line of "health care capacity." And in some places/cities, I'm sure it did that. But not everywhere. In fact, I'll bet in the vast majority of U.S. cities, COVID19 cases haven't come anywhere close to exceeding the capacity of the local health care systems. The federal government built extra hospitals in New York City and even deployed a 2,000-bed hospital ship - neither of which were needed despite New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo's panicky shrieks to the contrary.
What's my point?
I believe that even if we as a nation had done nothing but tell us the truth and strongly suggest that we social-distance, wear masks and protect the elderly (e.g. keep them from going shopping at Walmart), COVID19 cases still would not have overwhelmed our health care system. And in places where the hospital capacities were maxed-out, we would have found a way of dealing with it.
In other words, I believe that the national lockdown was silly and unnecessary, and ultimately more damaging to our society than the disease ever will be.
5 comments:
Although I'm beginning to agree with you in hindsight that the lock down did more harm to our society than the disease probably did, I'm not sure we still had an option to do otherwise. Had we proceeded as say Sweden and been wrong, or perhaps if the virus had mutated into a more deadly form, the damage could have been a lot worse and a the ramifications lasted a lot longer. Although there has been damage to our economy, I think it is much easier to fix/heal than say 2,000,000 Americans dying because those who could stood by and watched.
We are finally getting our reality check here in my rural county. After nearly two months in the single digits, we are now above 300 cases and rising rapidly, so rapidly our state has issued an emergency testing station that is setting up today to start tests tomorrow. The worst part is that nobody will tell us what we all suspect, that the virus has invaded a meat packing plant which is the biggest employer in the area. There also hasn't been any word of how many cases are needing our two ventilators (or more if the government shipped us more). Judging from the medivac flights going overhead, I'm guessing they are in use and the overflow is being choppered into a regional hospital. I doubt we will ever know how many lives were lost because the virus overwhelmed our hospital ventilator capacity.
Whether I agree with you or not (my opinion varies from day to day, though at this moment I'm feeling we should have gone the way of Sweden), I can't think about "shoulda, coulda, woulda". What's done is done and now we have to live with it. There are a lot of difficult days ahead for many, many people.
Ed, it *could* be that the rise in number of positive results is simply because your county is doing more testing. Logically, more tests = more positives. We can say with some assurance that the "actual" number of people with coronavirus in a given community was somewhere between 25 and 80 times the number of those who tested positive. So the 300 cases you cite in your area may be much, much more than that in reality. As more people are tested, the positive returns are just naturally going to go up.
In the beginning, the criteria to be tested was pretty stupid; you had to have a lot of boxes checked before a hospital would let you be tested. I imagine that Iowans are pretty tough cookies and don't go see a doctor every time they have the sniffles. Also, we're hearing that for a large majority of people with COVID19, the symptoms are pretty mild. So there *may* have been some reluctance to go get tested when they only met six out of seven, or eight out of nine of the symptoms or whatever - even though they might have actually had the virus!
And remember, this coronavirus does not pose an equal threat to all age groups. Just because you *get* the virus doesn't necessarily mean you've received a death sentence. Younger, healthy people are obviously in pretty good shape. Older people with so-called "comorbidities" should absolutely stay in the house for a while - and should have since we learned about this virus back in the beginning of the year.
There are always going to be "hot spots." I don't know where you live, Ed, but down in Black Hawk County where the Hormel plant is located, today they're reporting 1,521 cases and 28 deaths out of their population of 132,408 people. That puts the county's overall mortality rate at 0.021% - which is no higher than that of Sweden (0.032%), or Spain (0.057%), or Italy (0.051%)...or of the U.S. in general, which is at 0.025% today.
On the subject of ventilators, I'm sure Iowa's Republican Governor Kim Reynolds is in close contact with the White House and can tap into the country's reserve (and ample!) supply of ventilators if she needs them.
I'm not sure that it's fair to make the assumption that lives have been lost because of lack of ventilators in Iowa. That would be a story worthy of national news. And if that is the case, hospital administrators should be making that known - loudly.
Sadly, we know that in nine out of ten cases, once a person goes on a ventilator, the need for it is very short-term and that ventilator becomes available again pretty quickly. It's why hospitals try everything they can to keep a person from going on a ventilator.
Kelly -
Right or wrong, the president did what he did in the beginning and I won't argue with it. So now that more accurate numbers are coming in, we should just open the damn country back up. There's no reason to continue this charade that mandatory social-distancing is SAVING LIVES! It's not, and it won't. The general population can and should get back to their normal lives, period.
But we still do have a vulnerable segment of society - that being older people with other complicating health conditions, *and* younger people like diabetics and people with high blood pressure, etc. THOSE people are the ones who need to practice social-distancing. There is no reason for them to be outside - you can order groceries on your phone and have them delivered to your door without having to leave your house.
Nursing homes and such need to be taking the temperature of their employees as they show up for work - like Walmart does. There is no excuse for not doing this!
I repeat, we did not "overwhelm" our national health care system - we didn't even come close. So open the damn economy back up! If the same number of people are going to get the coronavirus until we reach this "herd immunity," then let's get it over with sooner rather than later. Dragging this thing out too long is more damaging than what the actual virus is doing to us.
Yeah I'm not arguing that deaths have occurred due to our hospital being swamped. And since our governor was recently with the president and vice president and is thus quarantining herself now, I'm hoping she was able to secure ventilators if needed.
Truth be told, we are such a rural place, that even before all this mess began, if you were anywhere close to being in serious condition, you were life flighted to a regional hospital. They don't say how many are in a specific hospital but they have the state divided into five regions and only state per region. Thus far, we are fortunate to only have had our second official death due to Covid-19 in our county. But with nearly 300 cases and serious testing (without many restrictions) set to begin tomorrow, I suspect we will have more deaths to come. But as you stated earlier, I don't think it will be nearly as bad as what they said in the beginning for whatever the reason. (Their were four obits in our paper today, none covid related.)
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