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.
Who Am I?
- Bob Barbanes:
- 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?
15 May 2020
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.
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.
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.
EITHER...
OR...
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.
29 April 2020
CORONAVIRUS: The Start of the Recovery?
The problem with writing about the coronavirus pandemic is that there have been a lot of things happening, and things are changing relatively quickly at this point. It's hard to keep up.
Government officials are moving to reopen our economy. They claim that we’ve “passed the peak” of this COVID19 pandemic. So now we can start to get back to work and play.
Here’s the problem: We may be trending downward in new cases, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped getting infected altogether. In my county, we are still seeing ten to fifteen new cases every day. Thankfully, the mortality rate has stayed pretty stable at only eleven deaths.
By my calculation, only about 7.8% of the residents in Escambia County have contracted COVID19. That’s awfully low. I’m betting that it will increase. Studies now suggest that 39% of New Yorkers either are or have been infected at some point. But that number doesn't apply smoothly to the whole country. Some areas are much lower than that. Nationwide, it looks like around 13% of all Americans have been infected. The mortality rate for COVID19 itself (independent of total population) looks to be around 0.15%
Some experts theorize that as many as 50% of Americans (or more) could ultimately contract COVID19. That’s 165,000,000 people getting infected! If that happens, then perhaps 250,000 of them could die. 250,000! We’re only at 60,900 deaths right now!
My point is that we’re hardly out of the woods with this disease. If the lockdowns, social-distancing and “Safer At Home” policies had any effect at all on the number of infections, then as society begins to get back to "normal," that number will go up, perhaps drastically.
Did we “flatten the curve?" Perhaps. Experts disagree as to whether any of the draconian isolation policies that were put into effect did any good at all. But even if they did help in any way, the curve still never would have gotten as high as was initially predicted. In other words, New York Governor Cuomo never would have needed those “30,000” ventilators he was screaming for. The computer models were simply wrong.
As the deaths from COVID19 continue to climb (at whatever rate they do), the True Believers in self-isolation and social-distancing will loudly screech, ”We told you so!” What they do not acknowledge and accept is that those deaths would have likely happened anyway – sooner or later, even if the American public had stayed in quarantine until the end of the year.
Government officials are moving to reopen our economy. They claim that we’ve “passed the peak” of this COVID19 pandemic. So now we can start to get back to work and play.
Here’s the problem: We may be trending downward in new cases, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped getting infected altogether. In my county, we are still seeing ten to fifteen new cases every day. Thankfully, the mortality rate has stayed pretty stable at only eleven deaths.
By my calculation, only about 7.8% of the residents in Escambia County have contracted COVID19. That’s awfully low. I’m betting that it will increase. Studies now suggest that 39% of New Yorkers either are or have been infected at some point. But that number doesn't apply smoothly to the whole country. Some areas are much lower than that. Nationwide, it looks like around 13% of all Americans have been infected. The mortality rate for COVID19 itself (independent of total population) looks to be around 0.15%
Some experts theorize that as many as 50% of Americans (or more) could ultimately contract COVID19. That’s 165,000,000 people getting infected! If that happens, then perhaps 250,000 of them could die. 250,000! We’re only at 60,900 deaths right now!
My point is that we’re hardly out of the woods with this disease. If the lockdowns, social-distancing and “Safer At Home” policies had any effect at all on the number of infections, then as society begins to get back to "normal," that number will go up, perhaps drastically.
Did we “flatten the curve?" Perhaps. Experts disagree as to whether any of the draconian isolation policies that were put into effect did any good at all. But even if they did help in any way, the curve still never would have gotten as high as was initially predicted. In other words, New York Governor Cuomo never would have needed those “30,000” ventilators he was screaming for. The computer models were simply wrong.
As the deaths from COVID19 continue to climb (at whatever rate they do), the True Believers in self-isolation and social-distancing will loudly screech, ”We told you so!” What they do not acknowledge and accept is that those deaths would have likely happened anyway – sooner or later, even if the American public had stayed in quarantine until the end of the year.
25 April 2020
CORONAVIRUS: The Return Engagement in the Fall
Let's talk numbers. And don't worry - I do the math so you don't have to!
When it comes to the coronavirus, there are two death rates we have to consider. The first is, obviously, the number of deaths among people who become infected with the disease. The message we keep getting from the media and government/health officials is that if you get the disease you can die. Well...yeah...you could...but how big of a chance is that?
The second is the number of deaths as a percentage of the total population (e.g. country, state, county or city). These two numbers are related in a very real way.
But here’s the problem: A very large number of people who contract COVID-19 will never know it because they either have no symptoms whatsoever ("asymptomatic"), or the symptoms were so mild that they assumed it was “just the flu” and didn’t go to the doctor. And without testing everybody in the country for COVID-19 antibodies, we’ll never know just how widespread the disease is. And testing everyone is just not going to happen.
Oh sure, you can test a sample of the population and extrapolate from there, and that’s fine. But the number you come up with may not be representative of every demographic group in every city or state. And that number cannot predict how many people will ultimately come down with the disease. As it turns out, according to three studies that have been performed, the percentage of people who’ve already contracted the coronavirus but were asymptomatic varies widely – like from 25X more to 80X more! As they say, your mileage may vary...
Take California. Governor Newsom may want to claim that the fairly extreme measures he imposed for his 39,500,000 residents concerning self-isolation and social-distancing have produced numbers far below those of other states. But have they? Let's look at that. To be exact, California has 39,254 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and they’ve had 1,562 deaths.
Two separate studies done in California determined that the "39,254" number might need to be multiplied 35 to 85 times to be accurate. Let’s split the difference and multiply by 50. That would give California an actual infection rate of 1,962,000 people…round it off to 2 million. Okay, the number of deaths doesn’t change. So if we divide the number of deaths by the number of actual COVID-19 cases, we get .00078, or a disease mortality rate of .078% (let's round that off to .08%) - less than one-tenth of one percent. California state’s per capita mortality rate (1,562 / 39.5 million) equals .0039%...say .004%
Now let’s look at Florida. My state has 21,500,000 people. We have 30,522 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,046 deaths. Using the same math and multiplier as before, Florida comes up with 1,526,000 actual COVID-19 cases. This gives us a disease mortality rate of .07%, which is…what the…slightly lower than California’s?? Our state’s total per capita death rate works out to be .005% - slightly higher than California’s. I don’t know why that is – statistical anomaly?
Here’s where all these numbers come together. If we calculate the rate of infection of the entire state’s population, we come up with basically 5% for California and 7% for Florida. Pretty low so far, right? (By the way, New York State is showing about 14% of their residents have had COVID-19 so far – but that number is obviously skewed by New York City.) Remember, we cannot accurately predict how many people in the country will ultimately contract COVID-19.
Government and health officials keep insisting that we can keep that number low. But can they? And more importantly, should they? When the coronavirus resurfaces in the Fall with the start of the regular ol’ flu season, what happens then?
In other words, what will happen in five or six months when we still don’t have a vaccine for COVID-19 and the disease comes back and we haven't developed any sort of "herd immunity?" If less than 10% of the U.S. population has developed antibodies and immunity to the coronavirus, won’t it pose the same threat to us then as it does now? And will we have to go through this isolation and social-distancing bullshit all over again?
When it comes to the coronavirus, there are two death rates we have to consider. The first is, obviously, the number of deaths among people who become infected with the disease. The message we keep getting from the media and government/health officials is that if you get the disease you can die. Well...yeah...you could...but how big of a chance is that?
The second is the number of deaths as a percentage of the total population (e.g. country, state, county or city). These two numbers are related in a very real way.
But here’s the problem: A very large number of people who contract COVID-19 will never know it because they either have no symptoms whatsoever ("asymptomatic"), or the symptoms were so mild that they assumed it was “just the flu” and didn’t go to the doctor. And without testing everybody in the country for COVID-19 antibodies, we’ll never know just how widespread the disease is. And testing everyone is just not going to happen.
Oh sure, you can test a sample of the population and extrapolate from there, and that’s fine. But the number you come up with may not be representative of every demographic group in every city or state. And that number cannot predict how many people will ultimately come down with the disease. As it turns out, according to three studies that have been performed, the percentage of people who’ve already contracted the coronavirus but were asymptomatic varies widely – like from 25X more to 80X more! As they say, your mileage may vary...
Take California. Governor Newsom may want to claim that the fairly extreme measures he imposed for his 39,500,000 residents concerning self-isolation and social-distancing have produced numbers far below those of other states. But have they? Let's look at that. To be exact, California has 39,254 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and they’ve had 1,562 deaths.
Two separate studies done in California determined that the "39,254" number might need to be multiplied 35 to 85 times to be accurate. Let’s split the difference and multiply by 50. That would give California an actual infection rate of 1,962,000 people…round it off to 2 million. Okay, the number of deaths doesn’t change. So if we divide the number of deaths by the number of actual COVID-19 cases, we get .00078, or a disease mortality rate of .078% (let's round that off to .08%) - less than one-tenth of one percent. California state’s per capita mortality rate (1,562 / 39.5 million) equals .0039%...say .004%
Now let’s look at Florida. My state has 21,500,000 people. We have 30,522 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,046 deaths. Using the same math and multiplier as before, Florida comes up with 1,526,000 actual COVID-19 cases. This gives us a disease mortality rate of .07%, which is…what the…slightly lower than California’s?? Our state’s total per capita death rate works out to be .005% - slightly higher than California’s. I don’t know why that is – statistical anomaly?
Here’s where all these numbers come together. If we calculate the rate of infection of the entire state’s population, we come up with basically 5% for California and 7% for Florida. Pretty low so far, right? (By the way, New York State is showing about 14% of their residents have had COVID-19 so far – but that number is obviously skewed by New York City.) Remember, we cannot accurately predict how many people in the country will ultimately contract COVID-19.
Government and health officials keep insisting that we can keep that number low. But can they? And more importantly, should they? When the coronavirus resurfaces in the Fall with the start of the regular ol’ flu season, what happens then?
In other words, what will happen in five or six months when we still don’t have a vaccine for COVID-19 and the disease comes back and we haven't developed any sort of "herd immunity?" If less than 10% of the U.S. population has developed antibodies and immunity to the coronavirus, won’t it pose the same threat to us then as it does now? And will we have to go through this isolation and social-distancing bullshit all over again?
21 April 2020
CORONAVIRUS: Testing, testing...
So, yet another study (this one done by the University of Southern California) determined that in the Los Angeles, CA area, the number of people who have been infected with COVID-19 is 40 times greater than the number of people who have been tested and confirmed-positive. FORTY TIMES! This is a little lower than the first study I referenced before.
What does this mean? Well, it really confirms that the coronavirus is much more widespread than previously thought, which means it's also much more contagious. But it also tells us that COVID-19 is not nearly as deadly as people thought.
We cannot be on a permanent national shutdown. Vaccine or no vaccine, we have to get the economy working again or the collateral damage will be incalculable. The murder rate WILL be going up. (And soon, too. At least, here in my house my wife "jokes" that if I stay home any longer she's going to kill me, hah-hah, what a comedienne she is!)
But reopening the economy means infected and non-infected people are going to be intermingling with each other like the smelly hippie kids at Coachella in any given year. And the virus is GOING to spread like pot-smoke at said music festival.
And there's not much we can do about it - unless we come up with a way of simultaneously testing every living person in the U.S. and immediately quarantining The Infected Ones. Which simply isn't gonna happen. (Oh, and hope that no Undetected Infected Ones come in on any overseas flights.)
You could waltz out of the testing center, virus-free and clear ("Yippee! I'm going out to Sammy's to get drunk and then drive home and give the good news to the wife!"). But you bump into an Infected One in the parking lot - an old friend you haven't seen in years. You talk, reliving old times. It's noisy. You're under the busy approach path of the Pensacola "International" Airport which is like being at the end of the runway of that airport in St. Marten, and the two of you are standing close to hear each other over the roar of non-stop widebody arrivals (he's a Seinfeldian "low-talker"). He sneezes spontaneously and doesn't have a chance to cover it. Ooops! Sorry. And you're like, "God bless you! Wait a minute...you...you...YOU BASTARD!!" and now you've become assimilated like the Borg did to that famous French Englishman, Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard - boom! - just like that.
There are people who are loudly claiming that we should have been doing antibody testing from the beginning. Perhaps they know somehow that the U.S. had this capability; I'm not so sure. Such testing, they say, would "by extrapolation" give us a better idea of how many people are infected. Good information, I guess...but fairly useless at this point. I suppose it could be helpful for the next time 'round with this virus.
"Experts" tell us that an asymptomatic person could be contagious for up to two weeks. But they really don't know. Antibody testing could tell us something about what percentage of the population already has (or has had) the virus. But it cannot tell us or predict how many Americans will ultimately become infected.
Right now, here in the U.S., 44,805 people have died from the coronavirus. The CDC says that we have 823,500 confirmed cases. Let's multiply the number of confirmed cases by 40. That would make it 33,000,000 infected people. Dividing the number of deaths by the number of infected people gives us a disease death rate of .0013 or .13%.
Now, how many people in the U.S. will contract COVID-19? Again, that is something that the antibody testing cannot really tell us. The government must be thinking that only a small number of us will become infected, because they're estimating maybe 60,000 deaths. To get that number, it would mean 15% of us get infected. (330,000,000 X 15% = 49,500,000. That number multiplied by .13% = 64,350.)
But some people believe that between 35% and 70% of the total population may become infected. So let's split the difference and say 50% of all Americans become infected eventually. Fifty percent of 330,000,000 is 165,000,000 people. If 165 million people get coronavirus, and .13% of them die, that number will be 214,500 deaths over the course of the next year or so.
If the government is right, somewhere around 60,000 people in the U.S. will die of COVID-19. But it could be as many as 214,500! That's quite a margin of error.
We better hope for a vaccine soon. Real soon.
What does this mean? Well, it really confirms that the coronavirus is much more widespread than previously thought, which means it's also much more contagious. But it also tells us that COVID-19 is not nearly as deadly as people thought.
We cannot be on a permanent national shutdown. Vaccine or no vaccine, we have to get the economy working again or the collateral damage will be incalculable. The murder rate WILL be going up. (And soon, too. At least, here in my house my wife "jokes" that if I stay home any longer she's going to kill me, hah-hah, what a comedienne she is!)
But reopening the economy means infected and non-infected people are going to be intermingling with each other like the smelly hippie kids at Coachella in any given year. And the virus is GOING to spread like pot-smoke at said music festival.
And there's not much we can do about it - unless we come up with a way of simultaneously testing every living person in the U.S. and immediately quarantining The Infected Ones. Which simply isn't gonna happen. (Oh, and hope that no Undetected Infected Ones come in on any overseas flights.)
You could waltz out of the testing center, virus-free and clear ("Yippee! I'm going out to Sammy's to get drunk and then drive home and give the good news to the wife!"). But you bump into an Infected One in the parking lot - an old friend you haven't seen in years. You talk, reliving old times. It's noisy. You're under the busy approach path of the Pensacola "International" Airport which is like being at the end of the runway of that airport in St. Marten, and the two of you are standing close to hear each other over the roar of non-stop widebody arrivals (he's a Seinfeldian "low-talker"). He sneezes spontaneously and doesn't have a chance to cover it. Ooops! Sorry. And you're like, "God bless you! Wait a minute...you...you...YOU BASTARD!!" and now you've become assimilated like the Borg did to that famous French Englishman, Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard - boom! - just like that.
There are people who are loudly claiming that we should have been doing antibody testing from the beginning. Perhaps they know somehow that the U.S. had this capability; I'm not so sure. Such testing, they say, would "by extrapolation" give us a better idea of how many people are infected. Good information, I guess...but fairly useless at this point. I suppose it could be helpful for the next time 'round with this virus.
"Experts" tell us that an asymptomatic person could be contagious for up to two weeks. But they really don't know. Antibody testing could tell us something about what percentage of the population already has (or has had) the virus. But it cannot tell us or predict how many Americans will ultimately become infected.
Right now, here in the U.S., 44,805 people have died from the coronavirus. The CDC says that we have 823,500 confirmed cases. Let's multiply the number of confirmed cases by 40. That would make it 33,000,000 infected people. Dividing the number of deaths by the number of infected people gives us a disease death rate of .0013 or .13%.
Now, how many people in the U.S. will contract COVID-19? Again, that is something that the antibody testing cannot really tell us. The government must be thinking that only a small number of us will become infected, because they're estimating maybe 60,000 deaths. To get that number, it would mean 15% of us get infected. (330,000,000 X 15% = 49,500,000. That number multiplied by .13% = 64,350.)
But some people believe that between 35% and 70% of the total population may become infected. So let's split the difference and say 50% of all Americans become infected eventually. Fifty percent of 330,000,000 is 165,000,000 people. If 165 million people get coronavirus, and .13% of them die, that number will be 214,500 deaths over the course of the next year or so.
If the government is right, somewhere around 60,000 people in the U.S. will die of COVID-19. But it could be as many as 214,500! That's quite a margin of error.
We better hope for a vaccine soon. Real soon.
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