Can California handle this many wildfires at once? Crews and equipment already ‘depleted’

Sacramento Bee ^ | Aug 19 2020 | Sacramento Bee reporters

[Right_Wing_Madman]

I’m getting tired of California’s problems.

Same here. Californians don't like controlled burns or regular maintenance of forest growth. Instead, they prefer massive catastrophic fires. Why have sympathy for people who get what they want?

[RetiredTexasVet]

“...11,000 lightning strikes.”

...alleged lightning strikes.

[McGavin999]

If they allowed grazing a lot of that dry fuel would be gone. If they allowed logging, a lot of those trees would be spaced out enough to slow the burn. I would imagine most folks farming and ranching in CA would agree.

[oldasrocks]

It is called Forest Management which they lack. they’d rather let it all burn than allowing harvesting of trees and ranchers to graze sheep on it.

[BuddhaBrown]

"...harvesting of trees and ranchers to graze sheep..."

Yes. More lumberjacks and more sheep are the correct way to flatten the curve of CA wildfires.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

“If you pay the Wildfire tax, you never get rid of the wildfires!” (Apologies to Kipling)

[Boardwalk]

Stop making sense! That is so frightening.

[Chode]

my bad...

[Cold Heart]

California scientists, in a breakthrough on scientific earthquake prediction, predict a major earthquake in Southern CA prior to Sept 5th. So there ya go.

[Keyhopper]

Was it peaceful lightning?

[KDCa.]

Most people with common sense in CA would agree.

[Svartalfiar]

But what will happen if they catch COVID? Of course! They will die! But they won’t die. The odds of dying are 1/2 of 1 percent if you are diagnosed, 1/8000 if you don’t get a positive diagnosis, of course 0 if you get a negative diagnosis. The odds of getting covid are 1 out of 40, just to catch it, chances of dying 1/20, if you do catch it. Numbers based on 8000 homeless people in San Francisco, 200 positive tests, 1 fatality.

1 chance out of 40 to win any prize, and 1 of 8000 of winning an upper-tier cash prize, nobody would buy a lottery ticket with odds like those.

Your numbers are off. A 1 in 40 chance out of a 1 in 20 chance is 1/800, not 1/8000. Either way, people still buy lottery tickets all the time with much worse odds!

But a homeless camp is a poor example to reflect on society. Hygiene, crowding, health, all of these are going to make a homeless camp much more likely to spread anything. Here's a better example:

Dallas County is currently considered a 'hotspot', so these numbers are inflated compared to most places. Anyways, they have ~69M positive tests, out of 26MM people. 2.65%, or 1/40, cumulative from March. Current 'cases' is estimated at around 17M, which is 0.65%. Deaths is currently numbered at 855, so that's 1/80 chance of death out of those positives. (For this, I am assuming those are actual deaths, not the grossly inflated numbers, like the guy who was run over by a bus but had a cough. ChinaVirus!) So that gives us 1/40 chance of catching it so far, with 1/80 further chance of death, or 1/3200.

Or, another way to look at it, is if only .65% of people currently test positive, You have to run into 154 to possibly encounter one person. But wait, the majority of people with current positives are either A) in the hospital, or B) quarantining at home. So really, you chance of actually encountering someone currently infectious is even smaller.