Who Am I?

My photo
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?

30 May 2020

Working When I Want - and Vice-Versa

Friday dawned crystal-clear - I mean it was a beautiful day! I was "working" (not that driving a ride-share is actual work) when my friend Terry called. He was out walking his dog, Charlie. "I'm wearing pants today," he blurted right off the bat, which caused me to momentarily wonder if he usually did not wear pants when he walked his dog?  It was an image I did not want to conjure up.

Ohhhhhh, pants as in "long pants" and not the shorts he usually wears.  Imagine that cop on "Reno 911." Me, I almost never wear shorts. Don't know why. Maybe it's that cop on "Reno 911." And "board shorts" just look stupid on a 64 year-old man, even one in as great shape (round) as me. I mean, it's not like I'm gonna be grabbing my surfboard and hitting the tiny waves we get along the Lake of Mexico, brah'.

Once he cleared up the reason for him not wearing shorts that day, Terry then said, with great solemnity...

"Let's ride."  (We do not ride in shorts.) 

Okay, okay, I'm all about spontaneity. You don't have to twist my arm to ditch "work" and ride my motorcycle. I needed a good excuse though, so I told the boss I had screaming diarrhea and had to quit for the day.  He bought it - such a sucker. Trouble was, I was out Ubering and stuck way over on the west side of town. I told Terry, "Let me drop this next trip and I'll head home." Which I did...and I did.

We met up at the usual rendezvous point and headed, of course, out to the beach. A week or so earlier, we had intended to hit up a place called Juana's on Navarre Beach for breakfast. But our plans got changed unexpectedly - my fault. And so two days ago the stars aligned and we headed thataway, for lunch this time. 

At this point I would rhapsodize about riding down the beach road between Pensacola and Navarre, but you've all heard me blather on and on (and on!) about it already. Suffice to say, it's a really nice ride.  I don't normally like riding in just a polo shirt, but it really was too hot for a jacket.  I did remember (for once) to put on some sunscreen before I left the house, however.

Juana's was great, as usual. I had a very messy guacamole/bacon burger and sweet potato fries, which I never liked until I had them at The Club up in Washington State. Now I love 'em. Weird.

On the way home, the weather out in the Gulf started looking really ominous.  By the time we turned northbound towards our respective homes, storms were a-brewing!  So our timing was pretty good - this time.  

My ride-share passengers will often remark about how it must be nice to "work when you want," as Uber proclaimed in their ads back in the beginning when they needed drivers.  I correct them.  That's not it at all.  The great thing about Uber is that I can not when I don't want to.  It's a subtle but important difference.

28 May 2020

CORONAVIRUS: The Sheep Aren't Frightened Anymore

Well, it seems that Americans have voted and the results are in: The coronavirus pandemic is over. At least, it looks that way here in Florida.

The Sunshine State has been "open" for a couple of weeks now. People have been going to restaurants, and the beach like it was last summer. No, it's not exactly the same - there is more social-distancing going on. But people are out and about en masse, which gives the Chicken Littles the heebie-jeebies and sends them into fits of frenzy and panic.

The worrywarts all predicted that the number of new cases here in Florida was headed for a big "spike"... a "surge," and that we were in for a "second wave." Sorry to report, it does not seem to be happening. Statewide, the number of new COVID19 cases appears to be trending down. Nobody is reporting a big increase in hospitalizations, and the FDOH shows the number of deaths being pretty stable.

What? I mean, we were promised that the sky would fall, the world would end...cats would be sleeping with dogs...Armageddon...the whole megillah!

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, because we have no way of knowing how many people have been infected with COVID19. What we *can* say with authority is that, of those who are infected, very, very, very few get sick enough to warrant hospitalization, and very, very, very, very few of them die. It is the Plague That Wasn't.  (It will be interesting to come back and revisit this post in a month or two or six.)

Don't get me wrong! 100,000 deaths is a sobering number, that is true. It is worse if you believe that any of them could have been prevented.  I still believe that we'll see a total of perhaps 150,000 COVID19 deaths here in the U.S. eventually. And I also believe that those deaths would have happened anyway, Trump or no Trump.

Could it be that all we needed to do was protect the elderly and most vulnerable, social-distance ourselves, wear face masks if we deemed it appropriate, and wash our hands more? Could it be that the whole national lockdown was...you know...unnecessary? It could be! Because - here in Florida, at least - the "lockdown" and "post-lockdown" situations look exactly the same.  Cats are not sleeping with dogs.

Shame on us sheep for being scared into believing that the government knew what was best for us. Trust me, it will not happen again.

21 May 2020

CORONAVIRUS: It's A Numbers Game

When it comes to the coronavirus, there are lots of theories, predictions, and outright falsehoods. Some people say that we all should stay in lockdown until the virus disappears or the rate of transmission becomes negligible. Some people think we should open the economy back up and abide by the results.

Staying in lockdown might work to inhibit or reduce the spread of COVID19, but it's not going to stop it completely.  Maybe the same number of people are going to get infected, and the same number are going to die no matter what we do.  Because as long as we allow people to come into the U.S. from overseas, we are going to have people come in who have the COVID19.  

But there are other costs associated with the lockdown, some financial and some societal in terms of increased deaths from other things, like the ones caused by the delay in getting diagnoses or treatment for other medical problems which cannot be addressed because hospitals only want to deal with coronavirus cases now and everything else gets put on the back burner.

Not to mention what this lockdown is doing to our GNP.

So, to us as a society, how important is it to deal with the coronavirus and stamp it out? In the beginning, we were told that this COVID19 would be as deadly as the Spanish Flu from 100 years ago. Those predictions turned out to be very, very wrong. But yet some people are still operating under the mindset that if we don’t do something to stop the virus from spreading, we might see millions! of deaths.

The truth always lies somewhere in between the extremes.

Now that we’ve come down the road a bit since the virus first started spreading here in the U.S., it’s instructive to look at the numbers. Let’s take the place where I live: Escambia County, Florida. We have 315,000 residents here. So far, our Health Department reports 719 confirmed-positive cases, and 21 people have died.

On a strictly deaths-per-population standpoint, the total mortality rate of COVID19 here is 0.007%. If we divide the number of deaths by the number of confirmed cases, we get a case-mortality rate of 2.9%...let’s round that up to 3%. That seems high. But it makes one other figure look suspiciously good – and that is the percentage of the population that is infected with the virus. Our 719 cases divided by 315,000 people works out to be only 0.2%. Not “2%” but point two-percent. Two tenths of one-percent. That seems low.

Obviously, only 0.2% of us infected is not correct. It’s got to be higher than that.

We know that more people have the virus than are being tested. We know that some people suffer no symptoms at all, and others suffer symptoms so mild that they don’t even go to the doctor. Estimates are that the “actual” number of coronavirus cases is, like, 25 and 80 times higher than the official number of confirmed-positive cases. That leaves us guessing.

So let’s split the difference and guess that the number is actually 40 times higher. Forty times 719 equals 28,760. If you divide our 719 real deaths by 28,760 estimated cases, you get a case-mortality rate of 0.07% - extremely low, not even a tenth of one percent.  Using math again, that also means that around 9% of our population has been infected, which may be a more accurate number – at the moment.

So now let’s work backwards! Let’s assume that 60% of our 315,000 residents will ultimately become infected with COVID19. That would be 189,000 people.  Let’s further guess the case-mortality rate goes from 0.07% up to 0.1% (it makes the math easier). A tenth of one-percent of 189,000 cases would be 189 deaths. That number of people would certainly stress the capacity of our three local hospitals. And if all those deaths happened at once it could be a catastrophe. (Of course, 21 people have already died, so we’d “only” be dealing with 168 more deaths – still a horrible number.)

However, if the case-mortality rate stays at 0.07%, then our county would “only” see a total of 132 deaths (minus the 21 we’ve already had). And if for some reason it goes to 0.05%, then we'll only see 126 deaths in our county.  

The Big Question becomes, In any community, how many people will ultimately become infected with COVID19?  The next question must be: Can we reduce or otherwise limit the number of people who get infected?

This is where the pro-lockdown people come in. They believe that if we all just stay in our homes and self-isolate, then we’ll effectively stop the spread of the disease. Fewer people become infected = fewer lives lost. Ergo, self-isolation saves lives!

And that might be true if we forced everyone to stay inside and also closed the supermarkets and other stores and places where people gather en masse. However it is foolish to believe that the virus could have been totally stopped. There’s no way that could happen.

So, given that reality, we get back to our Big Question from before: How deeply will the virus penetrate society? Again, anyone who makes any kind of claim is guessing. I’m guessing 80%. And then, what will the case-mortality rate be? Because those are the two most important numbers. If 80% of the total U.S. population (264,000,000 people) eventually becomes infected with COVID19, and the case-mortality rate is, say, 0.1%, we could be looking at 264,000 deaths.

What I’m praying for is that "only" 60% of our national population becomes infected with the coronavirus and the case-mortality rate stays down around 0.07%. This would give us 138,600 deaths. It must be noted that we are already at nearly 94,000 deaths.  So right now, I'm guessing that we'll see another 44,600 more deaths before the virus works its way through society.  And I don't think there's much we can do about it.  

I hope my guesstimates are ridiculously high.

15 May 2020

CORONAVIRUS: Getting On With Our Lives

This coronavirus pandemic sure is confusing, isn’t it? Some states are opening back up; some are closing down. Some studies say that the virus dies in sunlight and is dispersed by fresh air; others say we should all stay indoors where it’s “safe.” Lost Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has decreed that all citizens of his fair city will now wear face masks 100% of the time...indoors, outdoors, awake, sleeping...doesn’t matter. If you breathe, you need to be wearing a face mask in L.A. (Stagecoach robbers and Lone Rangers are excluded.)

There is soooooo much conflicting information out there…what the hell are we supposed to think?!

Some people really, truly believe that all of the isolation and social-distancing that we've done so far really, truly “tamped-down” the virus and inhibited its spread and deadliness. Those same worrywarts predicted that once society started opening back up, we’d see a huge spike in the number of COVID19 cases and deaths. But so far this has not happened.  (Perhaps it is too early to tell.)

For all of the drastic restrictions that have been imposed on Los Angelenos, their COVID19 mortality rate is 0.043%. We get that by dividing the total number of deaths in the city (1,712) by their population (4,000,000).

On the other hand, Sweden, which did very little in the way of mandatory isolating and distancing, has a mortality rate of 0.034% (3,529 deaths divided by 10,330,000 people.

The obvious question is: Why is Sweden’s mortality rate lower than that of Los Angeles? The answer is complicated because comparing the two places is not “apples to apples.” But still, the difference is striking, don’t you think? The next question one must then ask is: Do the mandatory social-distancing, isolation and various lockdowns actually work? Or more specifically, what would the mortality rate in L.A. be if the city did what Sweden did?

Here in Florida, for the last week the state has been enjoying limited openings of beaches, restaurants and other businesses (tragically, no topless bars yet). So far, we have not seen a spike in new cases. The numbers are up and down from day to day, the curve is pretty level and it’s hard to discern any definite trend. Deaths? We saw an increase of 48 today for a total of 1,827 statewide. Our COVID19 mortality rate is 0.009%.

So the “experts” were mostly wrong. COVID19 was not the dreadful, horrible killer that was going to run rampant through society, leaving millions of people dead like the Spanish Flu did a hundred years ago. Instead, nowhere near. Yes, COVID19 is particularly threatening to certain segments of the population, and people in those at-risk categories would do well to lay low for a while and limit their exposure to other people who may be infected but asymptomatic.

As more and more people get out-and-about and start socializing again, we certainly will see an increase in the number of new cases. That’s inevitable, and nobody but an idiot news reporter should be surprised. Not to worry. What we’ll have to watch is the number of people needing hospitalization, and of course the number of people who actually die from coronavirus, not just those who die with it.

In the meantime, let’s all get on with our lives.

12 May 2020

CORONAVIRUS: Did We Or Didn't We?

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.

Unfortunately, the computer models that the U.S. government was using for this COVID19 outbreak were wrong, although we did not know it at the time. The models suggested that the number of COVID19 deaths might be in the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. They suggested that the death rate from this virus might be ten times that of the good ol’ seasonal flu. Those numbers put people into a state of panic.

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.

03 May 2020

CORONAVIRUS: Wait - *HOW* Deadly?

Here's the Big Question: Does social-distancing actually save lives?

My friend, Ed left this comment on my previous blogpost:


"I forgot to mention, probably a month ago I saw a very excellent youtube video about highly mutating RNA viruses which the Covid-19 virus is. He said that it is quite common for their mutations to essentially burn themselves out so they aren't as lethal or even noticeable in terms of visible symptoms. All this is to say that it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't as lethal now as it was in China or even Italy."

That's a fascinating possibility - that COVID19 could become less deadly as it mutates! Let's hope that is the case.

But Ed said something else that is worth exploring...

I know that we tend to think that Italy was hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, because that’s what the news reports told us.  And it’s true that it appears that Italy’s health care system was indeed overwhelmed.  But let’s look at the actual numbers.


Italy has 60,000,000 people.  They report 28,884 deaths from COVID19.  If we divide 28,884 by 60,000,000, we get .00048, or a mortality rate of 0.048%. 

By comparison, Sweden has 10,330,000 people.  They report 2,679 deaths, which gives us .00026, and makes their mortality rate 0.026%.

Sooooo… 0.048% for Italy, and 0.026% for Sweden?

Sweden’s death rate is *half* that of Italy’s?   How can this be??  Sweden implemented very few social-distancing rules while Italy went on virtual lockdown!  It’s a puzzle, no?  We then have to ask: how big a difference does social-distancing make?

Funny you should ask!  The U.S. has 330,000,000 people, and we’re reporting 67,155 deaths.  That gives us .0002, or a mortality rate of 0.02% - slightly less than Sweden’s 0.026%, and way less than Italy’s.

But playing with numbers is tricky.  First of all, the numbers are not set in stone - they're constantly changing.  Plus, numbers that seem small might not be!  Just suppose that the U.S. didn’t implement any of the various “lockdown” or “Safer At Home” rules.  We’d probably have the same death rate as Sweden, no?  And 0.026% of our 330,000,000 people would be 86,000 deaths.  So we’d have about 20,000 more in this country than we have right now. 

It will be interesting to see if Sweden’s death rate hits a plateau while ours continues to increase, which is what I suspect will happen as they reach the so-called “herd immunity” before we do.

So yeah, Italy was hit hard by the coronavirus - sort of.  But their 0.048% mortality rate is in fact lower than that of New York City which is at 0.16%.  If you break out the numbers for New York City from those its parent state, New York State’s mortality rate is 0.05% - about the same as Italy’s.  And, we must mention, about twice that of Sweden.

Hey, let's do Florida!  My home state has 21,500,000 people, and we are reporting 1,364 deaths.  That give us a mortality rate of 0.006%. Only the state of California is lower, at 0.005%.

Interestingly, Iowa, with 3.155 million people is at 0.01%. 

The City of Los Angeles, CA, has 4 million people and is at 0.03%

But...but...but how many people who get the disease die from it?  Well, that we cannot say for sure, because we simply do not know how many asymptomatic people are walking around with COVID19.  Likewise, we cannot accurately say what percentage of the population has the virus, or will eventually get the virus.  We can guess, but the range is huge and varies by demographic area - there is no one "blanket" number you can apply to the entire country.  


All I can do is look at the number of deaths versus the population.  Divide one by the other and you get a third number that you can convert to a decimal. At this point, that's the only way you can compare apples to apples.  Every other number is a guesstimate.

01 May 2020

CORONAVIRUS: What Now?

Okay, as we start to reopen our economy, one of two things are GOING to happen:

EITHER... 
The rate of COVID19 infection and death is going to increase.

OR...
The rate of COVID19 infections and deaths will stay on its current path.

If the first scenario happens, we'll have to deal with it.  We cannot stay locked-down forever, no matter what some extremists want.  

If the second scenario happens, then we'll know that all of these emergency quarantine, isolation, social-distancing and "Safer At Home" policies were bullshit.

In the Comments section of my previous post (viewable below), my friend Ed worried that his state (Iowa) will become a "guinea pig" because the rates of infection and hospital visits are still increasing to record highs as their governor relaxes restrictions.  Ed says, "Yes, most of those numbers setting our record highs are in areas that aren't being relaxed just yet."

Me, I keep an open mind and look strictly at the numbers. Some of them are known, and some of them we're forced to make an educated guess at - like the *actual* number of people who've been infected by the virus. We know from studies in other states that somewhere between 25X and 80X more people have the coronavirus antibodies than have actually been tested and come back positive.

So Ed, if Iowa has 6,843 confirmed cases, the *actual* number of cases could range anywhere from 171,075 to 547,440. Quite a range! It really screws things up when you're trying to calculate a case-mortality rate, and of course when you're trying to figure out what percentage of the population has already been infected.


Let's use a conservative multiplier such as 40X, and focus on Black Hawk County, which is 50 miles NW of Cedar Rapids and has a population of 132,400 people.  Black Hawk County has 43,280 infections, or 33% of its population. That's high, considering the rest of Iowa is down around just under 9% (using the same 40X multiplier). By comparison, New York City is up around 40% of the population infected.

Remember, we *cannot* stop the spread of the disease; we can only slow it..."flatten the curve" so to speak.  (Maybe.)  On the other hand, we cannot stay in lockdown forever. My mortgage, car payment and insurance payments have not been put on hold.

If you believe in your heart that the isolation, quarantine and social-distancing techniques *absolutely* slowed the spread of the virus, then you should expect that the number of infected people *WILL* go up once we start getting out and about again. Nothing we can do about that, really. It's going to  happen.

There is a part of me that believes (hopes?) that the rates of infection and death will not go up markedly...that the numbers will continue to slowly rise AS THEY'VE BEEN DOING in most places - like the county where I live. 

The numbers of infections and deaths will rise until we reach "herd immunity," which may give some protection against getting the virus again when it resurfaces in the Fall. Or not. People get the flu more than once a year, so I wouldn't bet my life that having COVID19 once would give me any immunity from getting it again.

Also in the Comments section of my last post, Kelly mentions talking to her brother about Sweden, a country that put minimal social-distancing policies in place.

Kelly says, "When I posed the Sweden scenario...to my doctor brother, he said there was no way to predict how it would have played out in our demographic.  It would have probably overwhelmed the healthcare system even more."

That's such a typical cop-out.  "Yeah well...that wouldn't be the case HERE!"  Oh no?  Why not?  Why make the assumption that our healthcare system would have been overwhelmed?


Kelly, if you talk to your brother again about Sweden, all you need to do is look at New York State. Governor Cuomo was sounding the alarm that he needed "30,000 to 40,000" ventilators. He ended up needing only a small fraction of that. *NONE* of his hospitals got overwhelmed...nobody who needed a ventilator was denied a ventilator. 

It is likely that even if New York State had done *nothing*, their health care system would not have been overwhelmed. After all, the federal government built extra hospitals and even sent a big hospital ship up to New York to handle any overload (which packed up and set sail yesterday back to its homeport). Thankfully, none of those extra capabilities was needed.

So New York was prepared. And remember, best estimates are that 39% of all New Yorkers have already become infected in that petri dish they call The Big Apple. (Glad I don't live there anymore!)

Point being, I doubt that any other city's health care system would have been overwhelmed either. I keep droning on about my county here in Florida, but with 315,000 people we *still* have had only 11 deaths. We never even came close to running out of hospital beds, ICU beds, or ventilators. Not even close.

Let's say worse comes to worst and, ohhh, 70% of our population - which would be 220,500 people - gets infected.  If the current case-mortality rate of 0.04% holds, then we could see 96 deaths. 

I'm sure that all the hospitals we have in this area can easily handle that load, because: 1) We've already had eleven deaths, so it'll probably only be 85 more; 2) The deaths won't all happen at once, and 3) If a person is going to die from coronavirus, it happens pretty quickly. At this point there is no reason to think that the case-mortality rate will change very much. In fact, it may go down a bit since the most vulnerable people have already succumbed to the disease.

The computer models the government was using for COVID19 in the beginning were horribly flawed and waaaaaay pessimistic (perhaps deliberately?). They modified them as the real data came in, but by that time non-government geeks...regular people like you and me had already made up our minds as to the severity of the virus and how many people might die if we all didn't hunker down and hide away in our houses like the frightened pigs with the big, bad wolf at the door. Or whatever that fairy tale was.

Personally, I don't think that getting back to "normal" is going to be a bad or cataclysmic thing. Yes, more people will get infected, and more people will die, but that's going to happen anyway. There was never any hope of lowering the death rate to zero.

But maybe I'm wrong. We shall see.