We ate at the café NOLA, which serves pretty damn good Cajun food. I had the Nola Burger, which is basically a fully-dressed cheeseburger topped with their crawfish and andouille dip. Oh Lord, was it messy! To say it was fantastic would just not be doing it justice. Seriously, when the airlines start flying again, you must book a flight and come down here and go out to the beach and eat at NOLA. I'll drive...and I'll even buy!
Anyway, the beach was a ghost town. Shops and restaurants are open, but they're dying. There was absolutely no reason that Terry and I could not have eaten at any of the outdoor tables at NOLA. Swab 'em down with a sanitary wipe, and enjoy your food, boys! Nobody could ever convince me that it would be a huge risk. But nooooooo, the tables had signs saying that you could not eat there. So what did we do? Well, we didn't eat there, but we waited at said outside tables while our food was prepared. And who stood leaning on these very same tables before us? Who knows. If they have COVID-19, we now probably have COVID-19. Them's the chances you takes.
So Terry and eventually grabbed our grub-to-go and repaired to the boardwalk where we found some benches that looked out on the bay where we could eat our food and drink our ice tea (sweet tea, of course because, the south!). We felt a little guilty, like we were being major threats to public safety. "We're scofflaws," we laughed. The government has us scared to be within six feet of one another, whether you've got a hacking cough and are sneezing or not. Be afraid...be very afraid!
Let's look at some hard numbers. As of today, Wednesday April 1st, the Pensacola and surrounding area (Escambia County, Florida) had 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19. For perspective, that's 94 out of 315,000 people. If we divide 94 by 315,000, we get .00029 (or .029%). That's a really tiny number.
For clarity, 1/10th (10% or .1) of our local population would be 31,500 people. 1/100th (1% or .01) would be 3,150. 1/1000th (.001) would be 315 people. As I said, with only 94 people ill, we're talking very small numbers....right now.
And so far, nobody here in Escambia County has died. That said, according to some sources, if you're going to die from COVID-19, it generally happens within 14 to 19 days of infection. So the death-rate for the disease will lag behind the infection rate, but it shouldn't lag too far behind - a couple of weeks or so.
Fortunately, the mortality rate for COVID-19 is remarkably low - at least here in the U.S. But absolute rates are impossible to derive because we don't really know how many people have the disease, because you only get tested of you exhibit symptoms. So estimates are all over the place as to how many people in the country will become infected with COVID-19 and not know it. And without testing everyone in the country, we cannot know the total number of people infected. As my friend Matt astutely says, "We don't know what we don't know. And it's true.
Just because Escambia County, Florida has 94 people who've tested positive for the virus doesn't mean they'll all need to go into the hospital. You might take the number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19, and multiply that by five times to estimate how many people are asymptomatic and never get tested. In our case here in Pensacola, that would mean around 450 people are infected - that's .14% of the people, still a very small number.
But let's be pessimistic! For argument's sake, let's say that one-quarter (25%) of all the 315,000 people in my county eventually contract coronavirus. If that happens, then we'll be looking at 78,750 cases (315,000 X .25). As I said, what we do not know is how many of them will show no symptoms at all.
If the statistics hold, 80% of those people do get infected and do get tested will recover on their own. So if we have 94 confirmed cases here in my county, 75 of them will not need hospitalization. That leaves perhaps 19 people who will! Not very big numbers.
You can drive yourself crazy when you start to crunch numbers. Statistics are funny things; they don't come with guarantees. When it comes to the percentage of people infected, or the percentage of people needing hospitalization, or the percentage who might fall critically ill, or any percentages at all for that matter, the actual numbers will vary depending on the demographics and population density of the particular area.
My friend Matt adds: "How many people die *with* coronavirus versus those who die *of* the coronavirus?" In other words, how many people would have died anyway this week? Right now, every person who dies with coronavirus is shown in the statistics as dying of the disease. And maybe that's not quite accurate.
3 comments:
What worries the most is not catching COVID-19 but catching it at the wrong time and being one of those 20% that end up in the hospital or the 5% that end up on respirators. The wrong time would be during the peak when hospitals are struggling with staff, respirators and space like what we've seen in Italy where the death rate is closer to 10%. Another worry is passing it on to my elderly grandmother or someone else who may die because I had it and either didn't know or my symptoms were so mild that I thought it wasn't COVID-19. Because of these concerns and that I love the thought of just staying close to home for awhile, I'm more than willing to shelter in place for another month.
Your post cheered me up. After watching tonight's NBC news, I wanted to slit my throat rather than have to take the precautions they recommended for when you bring home groceries or fast food. (did you know the virus can live on plastic and metal for 2-3 days?) I have to keep reminding myself that I still have pretty good odds in this. (based on my calculations, my county has .05% positives) I'm trying to limit my forays for groceries and other necessities (wondering, are they really necessities??) as much as possible, but honestly... when I finished working a shift at our local food pantry yesterday, I felt better mentally than I've felt in weeks.
There is a line between caution and paranoia. Very obviously, the media wants us waaaaaay over the line toward paranoia. They would prefer that we just shut down the whole country until this coronavirus thing "blows over." Problem is: IT WON'T. It's not going to go away until we develop an effective vaccine - which Dr. Anthony Fauci admits could still be a long way off.
So Americans are going to have to be adults - we're going to have to keep doing the things we've *been* doing: not sneezing/coughing on one another, coughing into our elbows, and washing our hands.
I will admit that I have not been taking this coronavirus thing *too* seriously. Why not? Very simply because I don't believe the government when they tell us how terribly contagious this disease is. (Is it perhaps that they don't really know?) I was in the grocery store today and came up behind a woman in the fruit/produce section. All I wanted was a couple of lemons. But she was standing there, poring over them like she was sifting through beach sand for her dropped wedding ring. As I approached from her blind side, I made my presence known and said, "Excuse me for getting within six feet of you." All of a sudden she literally jumped and darted away with a horrified look on her face. I was, like, "Really?" Then I rolled my eyes and went on with my life.
I will add that yesterday evening we ended the day with a total of 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Today we ended up with...(drumroll)...96. That's a huge increase of, umm, *2*? Social-distancing and the other precautions are obviously having their effect.
One little tidbit that our local TV news station mentioned VERY BRIEFLY was that of those 96 people with the virus, only one of them has been hospitalized. ONE. And so far, no one has died. ...Aaaaaannnd, this is a big deal, why?
We have a County Commissioner who is pushing the governor to let us open our beaches again. Opinions vary on this, as you can imagine. But I think that if our numbers stay low over the weekend (like, small or zero increases in confirmed cases), then we probably could safely open the beaches again. But the nanny state doesn't want to encourage infected people from out of the area coming here and contaminating the pure.
Having said all that, I do agree with Ed. I would hate to be one of the people who got COVID-19 and needed to be hospitalized at the wrong time, when there was a line out the door waiting for a bed in the ICU. That would suck. But I'm not going to worry about it so much that I go to the extent of disinfecting my McDonalds soda cup.
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