Crunch Time - Worst week brings the best news 04/10/2020

With the huge increase in deaths, almost 100k, how can I see a light? Well, lift your head and look around. The numbers are as depressing as the context from which they come. Meaning if you have no context, you just see the numbers, how could you help but feel doomed and overwhelmed? So… let’s look at this week's synopsis.

The Numbers (04/10/2020)

US Population (est.): 348,860,000
+Estimated exposed to the Virus: 4.67M- 46.69M
(Estimated Percent of National Population 1.35%-13.46%)
*Confirmed Cases: 489,404
(Increase of 199,947)
Total Deaths: 17,991 (increase of 11,084)
**Total Recovered: 27,491

Estimated odds of you contacting an exposed person between 1 -13 out of 100. That is twice as likely as the previous week. Yet still, 86% of the population are not infected. Even having enough symptoms to get tested means you only have a 20% chance of testing positive for CV19. 80% of the sick people tested, come back negative. What can we learn here?

The rate of infection is decreasing. The number of people confirmed was increasing nationwide by about 11% a day, now it is down to 9% a day. That indicates #personal distancing is working. So the acceleration is dropping.

Your risk is still low. Though the “death rate” versus known cases is up to 3.83% when you extrapolate with the estimated number of exposed persons to the death rate, that is down to 0.383%. That is still higher than the seasonal flu, but much lower than say SARS-CoV or H1N1. We know that 5.86% of confirmed cases have recovered nationwide. Remember to be confirmed cured you need to have been tested 2 times in 2 weeks and come back negative. I would expect that number to continue to grow as more testing becomes available. Some people have recovered but have not been retested. This makes sense, test the sick and not the healthy since we are short on time and tests.

What should I do?

Here in Oregon, we are under a mostly voluntary sequester. We are still shopping at stores, and many people when going out are wearing masks. Oregon's rate of increase is almost half that the rest of the nation.

It might be time to consider how to start living again! This was the worst week for the death count, but not the infected count. The percentage of increase is on the decline. That means the disease is running the natural course. This is good.

When do we declare success?

I am smart enough to know I don’t know. But it will need to be soon. There are things not getting done that will show up soon. And if we do not identify the “new normal” (See my other post 04/10/2020), we will be in trouble. Do you think toilet paper was hard to find? I’ll be focusing on canned meat and vegetables on this shopping trip.

Dairies are destroying Milk because they don’t have anybody to bottle it. Here in Oregon, I feel lucky, there are small farms around here, and I would hope we can develop a more local food economy. But Los Angles California? Sorry dude.

Be cautious, if you can work from home, do so if you can’t thank you for your service and be careful. Use precautions. The big question is can we sustain this current status quo? A collapsed economy will ruin more lives than this pandemic ever could.

We as a people need to switch from hunker down to get out and risk. If we don’t, there will be nothing to come up to after we hit bottom.

Notes:

• * - Tested or diagnosed through clinical means.
• ** - Tested free of CV19 twice over 2 weeks, after diagnosed as positive.
• + - Estimate of infected based on the idea that only 10% of the total infected have been confirmed.
•  # - I use personal distancing because “Social Distancing” is such an oxymoron. How can you be social while distancing? It was probably invented by a politician’s focus group in someplace like New York City that thinks opposites can co-mingle.
• All sourced from the CDC.

 Gregor - Back from the brink! From there and back again. A spiritual Hobbits journey.