Maggie's Farm

Here is the thing: If the efforts that the federal and state governments are taking are even moderately successful it will save a lot of lives, prevent overwhelming and incapacitating our health care system and make this crisis manageable. That success will make it appear that maybe this crisis wasn't as bad as we all thought it was and the economic impact wasn't worth it. That is success will in some ways look like failure to a lot of people.

On the other hand if we don't get a handle on this crisis the deaths rate will be greater than the Vietnam war, the Korean war and 9/11 put together AND knock out our health care system and hospitals for years.

Either way, there will be major criticism and major misunderstanding about what happened.

I have a bachelors in math. I understand statistics and I can process the numbers. It took 75 days for the number of people sick to go from 0 to 100,000 worldwide. It took 12 days to go from 100,000 to 200,000. This is exponential growth and does not bode well.

The death rate in Italy followed a similar trajectory and most of their deaths come from a fairly small corner of their country.

We are about two weeks more or less behind Italy in the outbreak. Two weeks ago Italy had a total deaths from covid19 of 150. Today it is 4032 deaths.

It really doesn't take a degree in math to understand these numbers but it does take an open mind. What will those numbers be in the U.S. in 14 days? I don't know. If Trumps efforts are somewhat successful It may not be that bad. We could go from 256 dead today to a mere 3-4 thousand dead in two weeks. If fate is cruel it could be 5000 or more. The experts have made estimates of half a million dead in the U.S. Again no one knows with certainty but I do know that simple and understandable math tells me that half a million is very possible in 12 months time.

One of the problems with making good decisions on this disease is the lack of information and the age of information. The rate of infection is doubling on average every 5 days. But take Italy for example because of approximately 20 days between contracting the disease and dying from it that yesterdays record number of deaths were all first infected 20 days ago. But 20 days ago it wasn't yet a serious problem in Italy. In the next 20 days the death rate could increase by 800% because of infections just begun today. That is the problem, i.e. we are looking at current data that was chiseled in stone 20 days ago and we cannot know what will happen 20 days from today even though that is now predetermined. Was Italy successful in slowing the spread of the virus (flattening the curve) such that 20 days from now the death rate does not rise dramatically or maybe even declines? We don't know and by the time we do know it will be too late to change it. THAT is the fear that our leaders and doctors have and cannot (or at least have not) properly communicated to us. THAT is why the actions they call for appear draconian but in fact may not be sufficient.

What does "not sufficient" mean and why should we care? The 'potential' death rate from this virus is 5% of everyone who gets it and the prediction is that 70% of every country will get the virus before it runs it's course in 18 months or so. Imagine the worse case where 5% of your population dies from covid19. "Won't happen" you say. The death rate is much lower; look at South Korea. Yes! Because South Korea implemented draconian quarantine rules early. Because they did their hospital was not overwhelmed. Because their hospital was not overwhelmed their death rate stayed on the low end. In other words they flattened their curve.

The simple fact is if we flatten our curve the death rate will be low. Let's say .1%. That means that in 18 months 70% of our population gets the virus (that's 231 million people) and only .1% die (that's 231,000 people). BUT if we don't flatten the curve and the hospitals are overwhelmed the death rate 'can' be 5%. That would be 11,500,000 people in the U.S.

All of this is speculation and it is even speculation based on data that is 20 days old in a fast moving situation. But I can tell you this; a very serious and covid19 dedicated think tank has the worst case prediction for U.S. deaths over 18 months at 27 million. That's worst case! That means our hospitals are overwhelmed.

That's what we know/think and that is why our leaders are running scared and implementing strict measures even though it may create an economic disaster.