CORONAVIRUS: How Contagious?

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

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.

Getting Back to "Normal"

I'm going to go out on a limb here - and actually it's not much of a limb. I predict that everything will be opened back up by the end of April. We're talking restaurants, bars, barbershops (dear God, PLEASE)...beaches, bowling alleys, strip clubs...uhhh, oh yeah, and churches...will all be reopened. Here's why:

EITHER... 

Scenario #1: The COVID-19 disease is MUCH more contagious than previously thought and has infected far more asymptomatic people than we are seeing in the "confirmed-positive" case numbers. If this is true, then the coronavirus is orders of magnitude less deadly than they warned us about.

OR...

Scenario #2: The number of "infected-but-asymptomatic" people is only slightly higher than the "confirmed-positive" case numbers. If this is true, then COVID-19 is not that contagious at all, and is far less deadly than they warned us about.

Either way, this was not a modern day Black Plague. And I think that The People (you know, the powers-that-be's) are seeing this as well. Furthermore, I believe they know that if we don't get people out and working and mingling again (and yes, perhaps getting sick), we'll never develop the immunities and antibodies to fight this disease when it comes back in the fall. 

Oh, and it WILL come back in the fall! And if we don't have a vaccine by then, what are we gonna do, go through this nationwide shut-down drill all over again? Hah. Not likely. What was that song by The Who?*

And so I think this will all be "over" soon. I put that word in quotes because it's not like someone will throw a big switch in Washington (or wherever) and we'll magically go back to The Way It Was In Ye Olden Days Before Coronavirus. No, there will be a new normal, and we don't know what that looks like yet. But as long as Sammy's "Gentlemen's" Club here in Pensacola is back open, I'm good. I've got women named after expensive automobiles to support!

Answer: It was "Won't Get Fooled Again" from their 1971 album, "Who's Next." (No, they did not use a question mark, those punctuation-eschewing bastards. Although, come to think of it, they also could have used an exclamation point.)

Coronavirus: Have We Reached The Peak?

Like you (probably), I wondered how this coronavirus could spread throughout the country so thoroughly and so quickly. And never mind the U.S., this thing spread around the globe like the proverbial wildfire!

The Chinese only admitted to the world that they had a problem in December of 2019. Believing anything the Chinese tell us would be horribly naïve. We can safely assume that they were aware of this novel coronavirus "at some time" before December.

My curious, skeptical mind makes me think that this coronavirus was probably in the U.S. waaaaaay before "patient zero" showed up in Washington State. I won't venture to say how long ago, but I'd bet the virus has been here for "a while."  I believe that quite a number of people have gotten COVID-19, mistaken it for the flu, and gotten over it already.

WHY THIS IS IMPORANT

When the government publishes a timeline of COVID-19 penetration into our society, they always show us a bell curve graph. The big question is: where does that timeline begin?

Linked HERE in a very interesting article published by a woman who theorizes that the U.S. may already be as much as sixty days earlier in the spread of the disease...that we're already at the "peak" of said bell curve, contrary to what we're being told by the authorities. And maybe we're even past the peak.  If she's right, then some of this pandemic panic has been meaningless and unnecessary. Intuitively, I've agreed with she's saying, but I haven't been able to put it into words like she can.

Here in my Florida county, we've been practicing mandatory social-distancing for well over two weeks.  My kids think I don't love them anymore.  Instead of tucking them in bed and kissing them goodnight (which I always considered to be coddling), now I merely wave at them on the upstairs landing as I sit in my recliner in the living room, drinking my beer, binge-watching "Tiger King" on Netflix and composing nasty emails to their mom (my ex-) in my head.

If what the authorities say is true - that you cannot get COVID-19 simply by breathing the same air as a person who is infected, then we should not be seeing a big spike in new cases.  If Walmart employees start showing up disproportionately in the local numbers, then I'll worry.

Out of 315,000 residents of Escambia County, 136 have tested positive for coronavirus.  That is .043% - less than half of a tenth of one percent of the population.  In other words, a tiny number.  In terms of confirmed cases, we're seeing an increase of about ten people per day.  Nine people are in the hospital, and only one person has died.  Epidemic, you say?

So yeah, the disease is still being transmitted, just not at the huge, exponential rate that "experts" were predicting.  Sooner or later we're all going to have to get back to work - restaurants and bars and our beach, etc. will have to re-open.  We can't stay on a statewide lockdown forever.  And so the virus will continue to spread until we come up with an effective vaccine.  If we're already at or just past the peak, that would be a very, very good thing.  

Coronavirus: How Deadly?

On Monday, in an effort to inject some sense of normalcy to this insane world...and to give at least a tiny bit of support to the businesses that are still open and haven't folded yet...my friend, Terry and I drove out to Pensacola Beach for lunch. 

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.

I get it that the risk of death from COVID-19 is small.  But I also get that we don't want our hospitals (and ICU's) overrun with COVID-19 patients.  Thus, all this "flattening the curve" they keep talking about.  Without a vaccine, we really are playing with fire.  I'm one of those, "I never get sick!" guys - because I don't.  But guess what...when they do come out with a vaccine, I'll be one of the first in line to get stuck.

Grocery Buying and Fear-Mongering

Yesterday, instead of my usual adventure to Wal-Mark, which used to be a happy thrice-weekly occurrence, I decided to eschew Mr. Walton's Supercenter and hit up the nearby Publix. I mean, sure, Publix is slightly more expensive, but It's such a nice shopping experience!  And since I'm not planning on paying my April rent anyway, I figured what the hell - I can splurge, baby! And splurge, I did. Did I say, "slightly" more expensive?  Yow! Publix has apparently doubled their usually-high prices to "Cat-5 hurricane's a-coming!" levels.

I was meandering around the (candlelit!) store with the other rich people (and not many of them at that!), sipping on a complimentary glass of wine - a rather nice cab, actually. In the back of the store, the meat section was pretty empty, of course, but I don't eat much red meat anymore. There was *plenty* of ground turkey though, which is fine.

Suddenly, this heavyset, middle-aged woman comes rushing over to a nearby clerk - or maybe it was just a guy in a pale green shirt who looked like a clerk, I dunno. "WHERE'S THE TOILET PAPER?!" she blurted out. No greeting, no "Excuse me," no nothing but her loudly-barked question. How rude! I felt like telling her, "Hey toots, you can just take that attitude to Winn-Dixie!"

With a bemused expression the "clerk" (or whoever he was) politely directed her to the appropriate aisle, and she scurried off. I kind of laughed as I moved on over to the guy holding a tray of free, hot hors d'ourves. I mean, just how much toilet paper are people using?? Is it because as my friend Gene suggests, we're all home, sitting on our butts and just eating more, and therefore pooping more? Maybe!

Publix had everything on my shopping list, so even though my belly was full from the freebie snacks and I was a little buzzed on the wine, I headed for the Bakery aisle to get some (more) snacks. Passing by the Paper Products aisle, I noticed that it was...(any guesses - show of hands?)...right, EMPTY. No paper towels, no toilet paper...no nothing. Now I understood the clerk's bemused expression. (Fortunately I didn't need anything from that aisle.)  

I went to the checkout - where I did NOT have to do that myself, thank the Lord!  The valet then brought my car up front, and one of the anonymous green-shirt servants carefully loaded my groceries into the trunk.  I should shop at Publix more often!  Wal-Martz could surely take a lesson from these guys!

You know, it's a good thing that this coronavirus is an upper respiratory disease and not something that affects the bowels or intestines. Then we'd really be up Shit Creek without a paddle, wouldn't we? (Ouch, sorry for that one - I couldn't resist.)

Okay, continuing our grocery shopping theme, on to the meat-and-potatoes of this post! Here in Escambia County, Florida (pop. 315,000) where I live, 19 cases of the coronavirus have been reported. That's 19/315,000, or .00006 of our population. Nobody from my county as died.  Our next-door neighbor, Santa Rosa County (pop. 180,000) has had nine...or .00005 of the population.  One guy died, but he was in his 70's and had other medical complications.

Out on the west coast, my friend Hal Johnson lives in Redding, California which is in Shasta County which has a population of 177,000.  Shasta County has had three reported coronavirus cases; one person has died.

To the above I hasten to add: "So far."

It appears that "COVID-19 2020" is probably not the nationwide epidemic that the government and especially the media feared (and maybe hoped?) we'd have.  Is it because of the pro-active steps the government took to cajole us into shunning one another?  Probably.  The other thing is that we Americans who don't live in densely-populated big cities were already pretty good at "social distancing."  And Americans had become pretty much germaphobes already.

Are we completely through with this pandemic?  Oh no, certainly not!  I'm sure that there are parts of the country that will continue to experience a rapid "community spread" of the virus.  I sure wouldn't want to live in New York City right now!  But at least the numbers are encouraging...for now.

Can I Be Serious For A Moment? About Coronavirus, I Mean

I may have done some lighthearted joking around about this coronavirus mess, especially when it comes to what some perceive as the government’s overreaction in wanting all American citizens to “just stay home” for the next few weeks and not do anything…you know…sociable. But I need to be serious for a moment.

COVID-19 attacks the respiratory system. One of the common results is pneumonia. In serious cases, patients need to be hospitalized and put on ventilators that helps them breathe. And let us remember, right now there is no cure…not even a vaccine that can prevent coronavirus! And no real treatment protocol for it, either.  

We need to think that through.

Let’s say I get the coronavirus. Now, I consider myself a superhero because “I never get sick!” (he says). But the fact is that I’m 64 and not exactly the picture of health. Let’s say that my lungs - ravaged by years of relentless cigarette and pot-smoking – let’s say they’re affected to the point that I need hospitalization. It’s not a stretch of anyone’s imagination. So I trundle myself off to Sacred Heart Hospital just down the road, where I get admitted and stuck on a ventilator.

But let’s also say that my doctor contracts coronavirus too. And since he’s older and more important to society than me, he needs to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator. Since the number of ventilators is not unlimited, guess who gets the ventilator before I do? It would be a tough choice for any hospital to make, but if I were running the place, even I would give it to the doctor.

Doctors, nurses and health care practitioners are not immune from this coronavirus. In fact, they are even more susceptible to it than you and me, because they deal with sick people every day. I deal with mentally ill people, but so far that's not as contagious as the COVID-19.

THIS is why we need to slow down the spread of the coronavirus…so that our health care system is not overwhelmed by patients with respiratory issues for which the treatment options are so limited.

Below is a short, but pretty scary YouTube video of just what happens when you contract the coronavirus. When you consider the number of people in this country who might get it, and then think about the number of those ventilators and respirators that hospitals might (or might not) have, you’ll understand how very important it is for us to self-quarantine and do what the government is suggesting. I may think of myself as bulletproof, but even Kryptonite can kill Superman.  I don’t want to get sick, and I surely don't want our health care professionals getting sick.