Going forward: a metric for measuring COVID

By millions of dead, do you mean worldwide or just in the US?  And are those who have recovered without significant medical intervention included in that population that will have longer term health issues?

One thing you're spot on about is there are still some significant "we just don't know's".

Here's how I look at the numbers so far. I'm rounding off a lot of them. 2 million infections; 115,000 dead; that's close to 6%.

The only thing that will stop the virus is herd immunity. There have been various numbers postulated, but I will use 75% immunity as the threshold. This may be too optimistically low. Herd immunity can only be achieved by two things: Infection recovery or a widely-available vaccine.

There are about 334,000,000 Americans (we'll know better in about a year). At 75% herd immunity would require 250,000,000 infections and recovery.

If there is no vaccine, that will mean (in accordance with the rate so far) 15,000,000 dead Americans.

There are a number of potential vaccines under study, but there is no guarantee any of them will succeed. It took something like 25 years to get a vaccine for polio. I keep hearing about how much better technology we have available. But nobody knows and they're lying if they say they do.

Until there is a vaccine, people will continue to die. And this thing kills you in some of the worst ways possible. We have to intubate you; we have to induce a coma before we do; once you lapse into a coma, there's a 50 percent chance you'll never wake up; say goodbye to your family; here's your smartphone.

The disease will continue to spread, the only question is 'how fast?' The more we do to slow this down, the fewer lives will be lost before there is a vaccine.

The only reason not to make every effort to slow this thing down is if you believe we can't find a vaccine before the 15 million are dead.

Now let me return to the 6% death rate I mentioned in the first paragraph. The death toll is a trailing indicator. It may well be that the rate of death/infections has been falling and that the 6% is too high. In that case, pick a percentage you think is more likely. And then decide what fraction of 15,000,000 is an acceptable loss.

So far, the average deaths are about 44,000 a month (2 million divided by 4.5 months). If a vaccine becomes widely available in April 2021, that puts us at around 550,000 dead. If it takes to December 2023, it's around 2 million dead.

I am not convinced anyone knows enough about COVID-19 to make an accurate prediction. But I am convinced there is way too much happy talk.

Therein lies the problem.  What if you separated our COVID-19 mortality rate into two basic categories: 1) death associated with underlying health conditions (hypertension, obesity, etc.) and; 2) death in an otherwise healthy person.  I realize it's not that simple, but it could guide policy.

The problem as I see it is that American's are an impatient lot, who don't like following orders that constrain what they can do over an extended period of time.  Add to that the mixed messages being broadcast.  Infectious disease experts saying that going forward we've got to maintain the recommended social distancing guidelines, including some extra steps to protect our most at risk population, while some politicians are downplaying the pandemic and pushing a nothing more to see here, time to move on type of approach.

As Blu says, herd immunity is a ways off, as is a vaccine.  Somehow we've got to give enough rope to those who want to take a chance and hang themselves while still protecting those at risk as well as others who still want to do the right thing.

In about two weeks it will be interesting to see if cases spike up due to the mass protests associated with the murder of George Floyd.  

 

Sago, blu, and mhb I think you are all right on. A totally failed response by the trump admin coupled with the fact that a very large number of people in this country don't have the IQ of a grasshopper makes for a potentially explosive situation.

A maga woman told me yesterday that the death counts are completely fake because she has it on very reliable inside info that the govt has been paying hospitals $30,000 for every covid death so hospitals across the country are calling every death even accidents and gunshots a covid death. Insane? Yeah, and of course she takes no precautions.

Because I think we all have a responsibility to do what we can I wrote and sent this letter yesterday:

Ann-Marie Campbell
Executive Vice President
Home Depot
Ann-Marie_Campbell@homedepot.com

Dear Ms. Campbell,

I am a long-time customer and stockholder of Home Depot. I do business with your stores in several states.

Recently, I was very disappointed and concerned to observe that no one in your Bainbridge, GA store wears a mask or practices social distancing. I’ve had the unfortunate experience to have to visit this store several times in the past few weeks. This is a very busy store. I’ve observed employee groups huddled together laughing and talking with no protection, no distancing, and doing the same with customers. Several times I had to repeatedly back away from employees who tried to approach within inches from me, all with no masks.

Other local, responsible businesses like Winn Dixie and Walmart are practicing the common sense precautions recommended by the entire US medical community and have all employees wearing masks and social distancing.

As someone with a pre-existing lung condition there is little doubt that the covid virus could be fatal to me. It is obvious that no one in your Bainbridge store cares. Can all of the employees and the store manager be that ignorant or misinformed to not know that infections and deaths continue countrywide and are increasing in some states like Georgia?

I hope that you agree that the conduct in this store is not only socially irresponsible but is a threat to public health, and is not representative of the values that Home Depot wants to reflect.

As an aside, all of the Home Depot stores that I have visited in Florida have employees wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

Regards,