CORONAVIRUS: What Numbers Do We Use?

When it comes to the coronavirus, the media throws all sorts of numbers at us. But all they do is confuse me. They compare the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. with those of other countries…most of which have far, far fewer people than the U.S. has. They publish the daily COVID-19 death totals, but those numbers – as horrible as they may be - are meaningless without context.

This whole coronavirus thing is pretty upsetting, mainly because we were told that COVID-19 is very contagious and very deadly. Nobody I know wants to die at this moment. And so we all want to get a handle on how serious this disease is. 

The two Big Questions are:
1) Just what is the actual coronavirus death rate; and
2) How many Americans can we expect will get COVID-19?

Unfortunately, neither of those questions is answerable in the absolute right now. And so that makes us want to stay holed-up in our self-isolation until this thing blows over – if it ever does.

As time goes on, we are learning that COVID-19 actually is fairly contagious among family members and people who live or work in the same indoor environment (but not so much among people with casual contact outdoors). If you get it, there’s a pretty good chance your office- or housemates (or cell mates if you're in prison) are going to get it unless you all wear full biohazard suits all the time. However, if you get it, chances are you won’t even know it. But even if you do get sick, it is far less-deadly than we were told.

You can run numbers and do percentages and hypotheticals until your brain hurts. For me, that doesn’t take long. But none of the numbers really mean anything. The only numbers that are valuable to me are the ones published here where I live. First, the infection rate. While it keeps going up, it is doing so in small steps – not exponentially as everyone feared. That’s good news. Secondly, we’ve only had four people die, a number which has not changed in a couple of weeks. That’s very good news!

Indulge me a little math, okay? Today we have 280 confirmed-positive cases here in Escambia County. If we go by general assumptions that 80% of people who have COVID-19 show no symptoms, then we can deduce that a total of around 1,500 people here have the disease right now. But only *4* of them have died! That means the actual death rate is (4 / 1,500) = .0026, or .26%.

Finally, because I can’t resist, let’s assume that 5% of our county population of 315,000 ultimately gets the virus. That would mean 15,750 people. If the fatality rate of .26% holds, we’ll see 41 deaths.

Now, the COVID-19 infection rate may be higher than 5%. Maybe it’ll be 10%. That would give us 31,500 people who get it, and 82 deaths.

Your mileage may vary, as they used to say.

The media focuses on the worst-case scenarios. They cloud the issue with all sorts of other problems and complications. They only interview the health care professionals who are stressed-out and, well, bitchy enough to go on camera and complain. The media wants us to think that it’ll be the end of the world if we so much as open our front doors and peek outside. However, the hard numbers don’t seem to be all that bad. The “experts” have been predicting a big spike in confirmed-positive cases and COVID-19 deaths, but we’re just not seeing either of those things happening.

All the big, scary numbers just aren't adding up.