It's a long, but very rational analysis arguing for serious "social distancing" to slow the spread of the corona virus to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with serious life threatening corona virus cases.
The Diamond Princess cruise are best quantifiable numbers - think test tube enviro. Death rate 0.14%
When someone wastes this much words touting the rigor of his reasoning and the value of his point instead of just getting to it, I lose interest.
Sober is not to be mentioned on St Pattys Day!
On the other hand, Gateway Pundit is running a story claiming the Ethiopian head of WHO grossly overstated the mortality rate of COVID-19, leading to the panic. Problem is, it’s Gateway Pundit...
And the bigger problem is, we’re in the “fog of war” and it’s impossible to separate fact from bullshit from propaganda and intentional lies.
With the exception of maybe NYC and LA, hospitals are FAR from overrun. It is possible (and we will find out in a few weeks) that we are flattening the curve way too much and we need to let this thing run through because the wait and lack of activity is hurting us more.
Some people get the impression that this virus will pass, as if you can paint blood on your door and hunker down for a few weeks. That is wrong. It will lurk among us for the rest of our lives. We can only use proper hygiene to fend it off. Hopefully, it is seasonal and hopefully we will find a vaccine. But every one of us WILL be exposed to it and it may or may not find us as a host. We may develop an immunity or we may get it again and again. This is just part of the risk of living.
BTW a I got an email with this same BS (same arguments including the 5th grade arithmetic) except it was "written by a doctor from the Cleveland Clinic" .
Korea had a method of distancing that didn’t shut down their country, and it seems to have worked well.
I don’t know if this guy understands america, but most of us are socially distanced anyway, or we socially interact in pretty tight circles.
I feel like there was a place somewhere between “ignore this”, and “shut down the world”, that would have helped.
I mean, we needed to stop most traffic, since we can’t test at every airport, and the europeans with their socialized medicine seem to be handling this very badly.
But here in this country, we see companies stepping up, we see insurance covering stuff, we see manufacturers stepping up, we just need to train people.
Disney in florida was closing on monday. Sunday night, their parks were packed, while Disney threw a “celebration” for their customers. This is why we might have needed more forced social distancing, because people are not very bright about it.
On the other hand, I bet there were no coronavirus cases at disney, and none from their celebration.
“I was a Chemical Engineering major in college and have a business degree from a top undergraduate business school.”
So was I. But, I actually made it through ChemE, and have the degree. Business courses were easy. Congratulations, pal.
I’m not panicking at all. This is just more a result of the hysteria generated from the National Enquirer level crappola media these days.
I’m fine, and will continue to be fine and haven’t adjusted a single thing in my life, nor will I.
500 or fewer people in the US will succumb to this (unfortunately) when it’s all said and done by mid-May.
We seem to be in a catch 22 situation. We either destroy our economy with extreme restrictions on travel and commerce or we accept the death of 1-5% of our population. Having millions of loved ones die a painful death is awful to contemplate but losing our livelihoods and our children’s economic future is just as terrible.
In the long run, the social distancing is not sustainable. Business and life must carry on. The question is how long will we keep it up, how much damage we do to our economy and society to protect the weak and infirm.
I worry for my parents and in-laws that all have multiple age and illness indicators saying they will likely die if they catch this virus. I worry for my own and my children’s economic future as the company I work for and the money I have invested sufferers staggering losses.
The best hope is for a vaccine double quick. The vaccine will never be a permanent solution as the virus mutates rapidly, but once our immune systems have experience fighting the novel aspects of this Coronavirus subsequent infections will be less virulent and survival odds will greatly improved. But it needs to be quick as economic losses are already mounting and further restrictions bring greater costs.
Math is right. Assumptions more worst case than reality as it’s too soon to tell. Swine flu is still in estimation status.
I maintain that if we assume the mortality rate and infection rate is the same as the 2009-2010 H1N1 flu, we don’t have a problem that’s catastrophic. Here’s the final CDC report:
“From 12 April 2009 to 10 April 2010, we estimate that approximately 60.8 million cases (range: 43.3-89.3 million), 274,304 hospitalizations (195,086-402,719), and 12,469 deaths (8868-18,306) occurred in the United States due to pH1N1. Eighty-seven percent of deaths occurred in those under 65 years of age with children and working adults having risks of hospitalization and death 4 to 7 times and 8 to 12 times greater, respectively, than estimates of impact due to seasonal influenza covering the years 1976-2001.”
Is it worse to have old people die or the young? That’s a tough question but I say older deaths are less stressful to society than young deaths. If true Covid 19 is better in that sense.
Unfortunately we tend to react to scary news when it is offered 24/7. Nothing is wrong with social distancing and simply staying home if you don’t need to work. If you do however, economics dictate otherwise.
Fine EXCEPT for QE2
All Quiet on the Western Front
Early in the post the author genuflects to Google COO Sheryl Sandberg. I stopped reading at that point. If he thinks she’s deserving of any respect whatsoever he’s clueless.
"the hospitals will become overwhelmed very quickly. Most American hospitals will become overwhelmed in approximately 30 days unless something changes."
"Wuhan went on lockdown after roughly 400 cases were identified (and they had access to testing that America has systematically failed to do well to date). The US already has more than 4 times this number of known infected cases as Wuhan did when it was shut down,..our response is tepid at best. "
[And Wuhan has how many people vs. 333 million?]
"there are only two ways, as of today, that the virus can be stopped: let it run its course and infect 100s of millions of people, or social distancing."
[meaning no vaccines are to be assumed, but overwhelmed hospitals are.]
"the quantity of infected people, most who will not show symptoms, is doubling every three days."
[And how is this a fact? And if most will not show symptoms then the death rate plummets in the light of increased carriers]
"The virus is already in your town. It’s everywhere."
[Somehow it gets into areas that had no social contact, or is almost everyone a carrier of a disease that shows no symptoms in most cases?]
"For every known case there are approximately 50 unknown cases."
[An assumption.]
"This is because if I become sick, I infect several people today,"
[An assumption, but "Those who are only mildly sick are likely not still infectious by about 10 days after they start to experience symptoms.' (https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/09/people-shed-high-levels-of-coronavirus-study-finds-but-most-are-likely-not-infectious-after-recovery-begins.), and at least "one study suggests that people are mainly contagious before they have symptoms and in the first week of the disease.... Patients produced thousands to millions of viruses in their noses and throats, about 1,000 times as much virus as produced in SARS patients, That heavy load of viruses may help explain why the new coronavirus is so infectious. (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-most-contagious-before-during-first-week-symptoms.]
[However, about 80 percent of people recover from the symptoms of COVID-19 without needing any special medical treatment. (https://www.healthline.com/health/coronavirus-incubation-period#symptoms).]
"So instead of the 1573 reported known cases today there are likely 78,650 cases, at least, in the United States. Which will double to 157,300 by this Sunday. And this will double to 314,600 cases by this coming Wednesday...March 18th."
[4,556 this morning in the US, and 85 deaths. For the record.]
"Yes the mortality rate of COVID19 is relatively low (1–2%). All of this true, but is immaterial."
This is as far as I am going on this.
I’ve been telling my wife the same thing about unknown carriers since Saturday. Even though there were only 2 reported cases in our entire state of 3 million I estimated 1 out of every 300 to 3000 people in our city might have it. Maybe a few days early, but it kept me vigilant. There’s now 10 with at least 7 more in hospitals.
Maybe he can use his math skills to explain the drop off of cases in China, Singapore, South Korea.
Another number cruncher with a bit more pedigree stated that what China did had no effect on the disease—it was already everywhere in the population when the government started its crackdown and did what viruses tend to do-—die off.
I, of course, have no clue. But I have read supposedly authoritative articles saying completely contradictory things.
Meanwhile, we’re committing national suicide over 91 lives lost to this, while more people get killed every day in auto accidents and the death rate from the flu is more than 40 times higher.
Not sure I could get through his whole article. I was dozing off just reading his narcissistic prelude telling us about his credentials.