We’re heading out to visit our kids for the first time in 2 ½
months. It was supposed to be moving day for son Economic Sphere—their first
house. But an additional inspection put that off for another week. So, instead
of moving the big furniture, we’ll just help pack up. And share a birthday cake.
And hug kids.
I think we may end up stopping at Buc-ee’s on the way; we
usually do. They were OCD about cleaning way before the lockdown; that’s what
made them famous.
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| Found on Facebook. Source unknown. |
Is it safe to go out? I think so. The grandkids haven’t been
anywhere to see anyone, and they’re in a rural county with single digits of active
cases. The other kids have been working at home or away from the public.
And we’re pretty certain we’re not spreading anything to
them. We’re coming from a zip code with a total of 70[i]
cases (no known deaths) in a population estimated at 37,146[ii],
so I do the math and only 19 per 10,000 people have been infected—that is, have
been tested and confirmed. Some unknown number of these 70 cases are no longer
infectious. Infection rate in the population is likely several times higher,
but since that is not increasing the death rate, it’s only relevant to show
that the death rate is even lower than reported. Anyway, the stats available
say I need to come into contact with 1,000 people to have the likelihood of
running into anyone with the virus. I’m not that sociable.
We get a daily count in the Houston Chronicle of
cases so far. And we get a total death count. But we don’t get how many of
those accumulated cases have recovered. I found some data from a few days ago
that listed those recovered[iii].
So I subtracted deaths (90) from total confirmed cases (3958), and then used
the number recovered (2484) to learn that 64% of cases are no longer infectious.
We have 1,384 known active cases in a population of 4.6 million. That’s .03%.
Your odds of randomly running into an infected person in the county are about 3
in 10,000.
And, among that number are those who know they’re ill, so,
unless you’re caring for them, you’re not coming into contact with them. That
means for the average person in the county, only the asymptomatic spreaders are
a risk. It would be nice to know how many of those there are. But, for those of
us who haven’t known anyone who has Covid-19, this is why.
What we do see, three weeks into Texas’s slow reopening, is
no spike.
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| Chart from a Sean Trende tweet a week ago found here |
Florida hasn’t seen one either. Neither has Georgia, which
has had a full month of opening up to see that data pop up. Governor Abbott won the internet with this chart he tweeted:
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| Tweet from Texas Governor Greg Abbott (Note: pretty sure he means "mortality rate," not "morality rate.") |
Worldwide, there’s reason to think the lockdown is not only
no longer necessary, but maybe it never was. There’s this data, coming out of
The Netherlands, showing odds based on age. Co-morbidities (other conditions)
are not separated out, so healthy people in any of these groupings are better
off than these numbers show.
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| Dutch data, charted by Daniel Horowitz; found here |
Notice that, of people age 80-85, 91 out of 100 who get the
disease will recover without hospitalization. If you’re 80-85 and you get the
virus, you have a pretty high fatality rate: 7.836%. But that means 92.164% do
not die from it; they live. The more risk factors, the more likely in that list
of those who don’t make it. But all things mixed together, 92 out of 100 in
that age range get through it.
If you’re in your 30s, only 3 in a thousand who get the disease
end up hospitalized, and only 8 in 100,000 die. If you have no additional risk
factors, the odds are even more in your favor. This chart from Massachusetts shows just how skewed the data is toward that upper age range:
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| Massachusetts government data, also provided by Daniel Horowitz, here |
Here are some more Dutch projections, charted by Daniel Horowitz, for the younger to middle age groups. Notice how likely that an infection is mild or asymptomatic:
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| Dutch data gathered from 4000 blood donors, chart by Daniel Horowitz, found here |
The math is pretty uplifting.
If we had taken care to protect those two 70+ age ranges, our
national death rate would be so much lower that it would be on par with a bad
flu year. Again, that’s not a zero risk; that’s on top of flu and all other
risks.
But, except for the elderly and those with conditions that
really need to stay away from this, Covid-19 would have passed through the
population without much notice—except for the lockdown, which has meant economic catastrophe and plenty of other health and life issues.
We couldn’t imagine that our elected officials—and not just
local, but national, and in countries around the world—would impose these
severe measures on us unless the risk merited it. We didn’t have good data to say otherwise.
The panicked response had me picturing lines out the door of
hospital ERs. Of course that never happened here. It didn’t happen really
anywhere in the US outside of New York and New Jersey, and they never got so
overwhelmed that they couldn’t provide care.
But they did send nursing home patients who still had the
virus back into their nursing homes—where so many of the deaths happened. They
only lifted that insane policy earlier this month. Also, they kept public
transportation open—with its enclosed spaces for long enough periods of time
for spread to happen. They didn’t even start wiping them down at night until a
couple of weeks ago—and they still don’t do that between trips during the day.
There’s so much we didn’t get right. Some of it, common
sense should have resolved.
Daniel Horowitz, in a piece with plenty of links to support
his claims, lists these six things we got very wrong:
1. Covid-19
death numbers were inflated.
2. States
with longer lockdowns had worse results.
3. Outside
nursing homes, the fatality rate never warranted such action, even if it would
work.
4. Outside
New York, this is barely worse than bad flu seasons.
5. Excess
deaths are from the lockdowns, not the virus.
6. Social
distancing was invented by a high-school kid and politicians, not scientists.
Let’s do a hypothetical. Suppose a population like the rest
of the country (without NY or NJ), with less population density, much less mass
transit. And let’s say we looked at the data early enough to recognize the need
to protect the elderly. Such a population may have wanted to take some
precautions, but we never needed to lock down. We didn’t need to close schools
or parks.
Maybe some adjustments were needed for restaurants and other
places where we spend time close together. Maybe it was wise to shut down large
events until we learned what we were dealing with. I’m not willing to use too
much 20/20 hindsight and say we should have known never to shut down. But this
has taught us a couple of very important things:
· Don’t trust someone else’s experts; do your own
homework in your search for truth.
· Don’t trust a politician who takes away your liberties,
calls it keeping you safe, and ignores the data when it says we’re safe enough making
our own risk decisions.
My concern is that this crying wolf scenario we’ve lived
through will keep us from ever trusting anyone who cries wolf again. Once in a
while there is a wolf. But then, we can probably figure out how to handle a
wolf without being forced to cower in our caves. And now we’ve had a clear view
of the leaders who’ve said, “Stay afraid; let us keep you safe by controlling
you.” Those aren’t leaders; they’re tyrants.
So, we’re starting to break out of our confinement.
Mr. Spherical Model, whose ankle has healed enough that he
can drive now, has had two trips for physical therapy this week. And a haircut
(they worked around a required facemask). And he went to lunch with a friend
for the first time since early March. The guys sat at an actual table to eat wings
at a little place that deserved their patronage.
A new report says that—all that worry about groceries,
packages, and mail bringing viral contamination into our homes has been unwarranted.
That’s a great relief to me. I’ve been kind of paranoid since watching this video (well-meaning, I’m sure) on how to decontaminate your groceries
and food orders as you bring them into your home.
Also, playground equipment, out there in the sunshine, has
been safe all along. And gyms, while sweaty and icky all the time, would
probably never have been viral hot spots. It really does take mainly direct
contact, and probably prolonged contact (several minutes of an infected person
breathing in your face, or talking with some spittle emission, or coughing on
you). There needs to be some minimum amount of viral particles that get inside
you, or else your body just does its normal protective thing.
My rational side says not to fear—and has said that all
along. My naturally worried side will have to work through the anxiety for a
while. But seeing family in person is going to help with that. I think breaking
out is long overdue.
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