{"id":8280,"date":"2020-05-13T23:42:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T06:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=8280"},"modified":"2020-05-13T23:41:08","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T06:41:08","slug":"pandemic-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2020\/05\/13\/pandemic-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I made a facebook post that sparked a good discussion:<\/p>\n

A family friend wrote an “open up America!” post. Here was my response:
\nIf we open up completely right now, figure 1\/4 of Americans will get COVID-19. It’s about 6% fatal. Here’s the math: 300,000,000 * .25 * 0.06 = 4.5 million dead. That seems a high price to pay for freedom. Thoughts?<\/p>\n

That said, I -hate- staying home and hiding from this thing and I know the loss of productivity is staggering. I’m watching my daughter’s development change for the worse and I hate it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My friend Tim posted an interesting article and I riffed on it here:<\/p>\n

And then, here’s some studies that says my estimates could be way off. I’m happy to be wrong. See Reason article 1<\/a> and Reason article 2<\/a><\/p>\n

“A hundred deaths out of 48,000-81,000 infections corresponds to an infection fatality rate of 0.12-0.2%,” they report.* That’s about the same infection fatality rate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates for seasonal influenza.”<\/p>\n

So maybe if we open up completely, the math looks like this: 300,000,000 * 0.25 * 0.002 = 150,000 dead total.
\nI wish we knew which way we were headed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here is today’s post in the form of a (very long form) question:<\/p>\n

So, how dangerous is COVID-19? Should we get back to our lives?
\nLooking to Sweden’s death toll may be useful to see what may happen in the US. Sweden didn’t shelter-in-place.<\/p>\n

This page (https:\/\/coronavirus.jhu.edu\/data\/mortality<\/a>) shows Sweden having 32 deaths per 100,000 people, (that is a mortality rate of 0.032%) which isn’t the highest mortality rate; why don’t they have a higher mortality rate with their open policies??
\nIf 0.032% mortality is what we can expect in total, and people actually recover, then there is a strong argument for us to just go back to work, yes?<\/p>\n

What am I missing? With a 0.032% mortality rate, the US would be expected to have a total of 102,400 deaths (calculated by 320 million people * 0.00032). That’s… honestly… not bad. That’s in the realm of a “really bad year with influenza”. There are lots of reports out there that say comparing COVID-19 to the flu isn’t reasonable. Why not? In all seriousness, why not?<\/p>\n

Let me try to enumerate the important factors of the pandemic. If we can figure out all the important factors and then address them, maybe we’ll get somewhere:
\n– Concern about a very high mortality rate among individuals that are older and have co-morbidities
\n– Concern that COVID-19 leaves people permanently injured
\n– Concern that people don’t build immunity… and subsequently, that the mortality rate will climb insidiously over time.
\n– Fear. Fear that there is a new disease that we can readily identify but cannot treat.
\n– what else? What, specifically, am I forgetting in this list?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I made a facebook post that sparked a good discussion: A family friend wrote an “open up America!” post. Here was my response: If we open up completely right now, figure 1\/4 of Americans will get COVID-19. It’s about 6% fatal. Here’s the math: 300,000,000 * .25 * 0.06 = 4.5 million dead. That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}