I hesitate writing this post because uncertain times lead to irrational decision making, which leads to a divisive environment, which helps nobody. However, as I scroll through Twitter, it appears to me that more people WANT the infected numbers to go up. Like it’s proving their point how dangerous this virus is and that’s what I want to write about today and how this negatively impacts our society.
First off, I want to share a little story to emphasize a point. Last Saturday Sam, Shee and I went golfing and Sam was struggling. I told him, “try keeping your head still”, because someone at a 1-2 table about 10 years ago told me he was a 2 handicap and this was a good tip. I tried it throughout the years and it seemed to work. Here’s what I saw yesterday.
I’m a Dolt
The pro I took a lesson from said the exact same thing as Paddy. So in this scenario I’m going to say to the world, I AM WRONG WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS RIGHT. This relates to the Corona Virus because there is a lot of information among the uncertainty. Deciding what and who you want to take info from is your prerogative. Here is a video I found encouraging.
You don’t get it if you’re hands are clean and you don’t touch your face. Also stay away from people who have it. Fantastic. Does this source sound credible? If he’s working with people on a daily basis, and doesn’t have it (which I didn’t watch the full 57 minutes so maybe he said he does), I think it’s credible. Which makes me not worry as much like I know people out there do.
Is This Person a Dolt?
Here an example of what I see on social media that I don’t understand.
In a running club on Facebook someone wrote:
Some responses:
And this virus lives a long time in air and spit that’s left in the trail.
I hope you reprimanded and educated him.
I have to pause here and ask, “Am I afraid of spit on the ground from a runner? If you are answering yes to this, then you shouldn’t leave your house. The first issue I have with this is assuming that the person has it. Currently there are 133k cases out of a population of 350 million. Even if that number grows to 1 million cases, that’s only 2.8% of the population. If that number gets to be 100 million, then everyone is going to catch it anyway. You aren’t going to stop it. So assuming that runner who spit on the ground is spreading the virus is insanity in my opinion. Is it irresponsible of that runner? That’s for you to judge. People read this though and this is the information that is spread. My main thought is panic ensues for no good reason.
Moving to the other issue I can’t wrap my head around, and why this uncertainty produces so many problems, is being asymptomatic and having it. I ran 7 miles today and yet the information about a virus being within you that is asymptomatic makes me feel like I can still have it. I have no shortness of breath. No fever. No runny nose. Yet I can’t be tested and have no idea if I’m contagious. That’s a problem.
There’s no solution to this other than don’t leave your house and be careful. My underlying thought behind this solution is that it’s not a solution. The numbers keep rising. They will continue to rise. No one will deny that when you keep testing more and more every day. Yet how life threatening is the virus and how scared are you of catching it? Personally, I’m not that scared of catching it. The mortality rate of infected seems to be about 2% and I’ve already wrote about how few infected people there are. If I lose to those numbers, it wasn’t my day. If I get through with a headache and a runny nose, I’ve beaten the virus. But you can spread it to people around you? This leads to an endless loop unless you can get tested.
Now I get that people are going to read this post and call me an idiot. I’m ok with that. If this wipes people off the face of the Earth, you can revert back to my post and say this guy was a huge dummy. I understand the hospitals are overwhelmed. I understand people die from this disease. I think people are taking the precautions seriously to the best of their abilities. What more do you want? We need to be scared to be around each other? We resent people who “don’t take it seriously”. We insult other parties because some predict a doomsday when others call it the common flu.
I don’t have the answer. I only see millions of people calling others stupid and the bottom-line right now is that we just don’t know. I know I have a laissez faire attitude towards the virus because I tend to think the media enjoys panic. Fear is a powerful motivator. I don’t like to be afraid.
I don’t think anyone wants the numbers to go up, but when you have the President not following the science and not doing what is right for the country, there will be a large backlash to try to get people to listen to save lives and hold the President accountable for not doing the right thing.
What makes this bad is: The infection rate is very high, 20% of the people who get it require hospitalization and about 2% die.
If you put the 2% death rate aside for a second. If 20% of the population of an area is going to require hospitalization that’s a problem since clearly we don’t have that many beds. If people can’t get hospitalization when they need it, then potentially more will die that could have been saved.
2% death rate is misleading. It depends on a lot of factors: what age group gets the infection for a region, if the hospitals get overwhelmed, how well are you counting, among others. I think 2% is a best guess.
In Italy the death rate is around 10%. Spain/Iran 7%, US 1.5% (all last I looked).
The virus is serious and when people don’t take it serious (especially the President) it’s going to tick people off.
I’m not a mathematician, but 1M out of 350M is 0.28%, not 2.8%. Even directionally, 1% of 350M is 3.5M, and 1M is less than 3.5M.
Happily, I have two math degrees and this is not about simple math. As I posted, the issue is to not overwhelm the health care industry. If you do, then medical care will not be available. The death rate is different by country depending on what heath care is available and other factors. Medical people normalize the data around those factors as best they can.
If this was not a true threat then you wouldn’t have the unity across the globe to shut down major parts of the economy.
Even better. Remember, I got a degree in Finance.
*from Pitt
Follow this guy for numbers. He is on point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPeRF2mWi30&feature=share
Deaths US/Current US cases = 3,013/162,620 = 1.8% death rate
Worldwide deaths/ current worldwide Cases 37,743/783,171 = 4.8% death rate
For reference- Influenza (seasonal flu) death rate 0.01%
Source:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://infection2020.com/
Both live aggregate data from the CDC and WHO
Things to take into consideration- this is the number of KNOWN cases (people who have TESTED POSITIVE). With many people being asymptomatic or having mild symptoms, they are not tested in the first place. The number of cases of COVID is likely to be MUCH higher than the number of confirmed cases shown above as the number of infections in these untested individuals self resolve without anyone knowing. On the other hand, consider the fact we are reserving testing for people presenting critically ill or at high risk of complication from this infection. This leads us to believe the death count due to COVID is likely much more representative of people actually dying from the virus.
My 2 cents- as far as you thinking people WANT the numbers to go up, they do. Everything comes back to politics. Trump initially tried to downplay how serious the situation was before eventually getting on board. Because of this, the media will use every chance to make things seem as bad as they possibly can to say Trump should have acted sooner and everything is his fault. I mean for fucks sake, some dipshit mixed koi pond cleaner with soda and died after drinking it, and CNN and MSNBC were reporting this was on Trump because he said hydroxychloroquine was showing promise in early studies for treating COVID. One of my colleagues joked, that’s like hearing a glass or two of wine a night is good for your heart and then slamming a bottle of rubbing alcohol. On the flip side, when Trump initially restricted travel from China as things were developing, I remember multiple news sources reporting how this was just another racist action by the Trump administration. No matter what you do, people will bitch and Monday morning quarter back the situation.
I got my degree from MIT…T Tech… I went to ITT Tech.
Also forgot to add, best part about the guy becoming an hero with the fish bowl cleaner- no symptoms. Wasn’t even sick.