Yeah, I know, I ask a LOT of questions. Blame my parents.

Anyway….

So New York City claims 20,000 new infections of Coronavirus.

So far, it appears that the virus causes few symptoms in most people, at most 15-20% of them need ANY sort of care.

NY also claims that the “Hospitals are overwhelmed”.

Really? They can’t handle a load of 4000 coronavirus patients? Remember, they’ve already cancelled most elective surgery, and they have recalled as many retired health care folks as they can find….

The numbers just don’t add up. Around 7% of people need some sort of care when they get Covid-19 on average. If the group of people that get it is older than normal, that number can double. At most, 20% of them might need some sort of skilled care.

so 20% of 20,000 is….4000 people. Probably less than half that will really need some care from hospital staff.

Four thousand people MIGHT need a bed and some care. Might. likely (at a max) 5% will need intensive care. (1000 people). Maybe. If these numbers hit the high end of the statistics we already have seen and collected for this disease.

Even if it is four thousand…..You gonna tell me that NY can’t handle four thousand people?

Are their hospitals that poorly staffed? Are there that few hospitals per population?

Something doesn’t make sense. 

I know math is hard. It is for me too.

1570 visits yesterday to this blog. Let’s assume that each person in the US is exposed to the Coronavirus.

Approximately 15 people known to have the virus were reported in comments (at least one death, sadly)

So the anecdotal data shows about 1 in 100 people from 1570 responses.

Now let us use some numbers and some math.

For a number, lets say that each person responding knows….50 people in the parameters that I set. I don’t know that that is a valid number, but it should work to give us a picture. 50 times 1500 gives us a sample size of  75,000

15 cases out of 1570 responses. Lets round that down to 1500 just to make the numbers neat.

15/1500= 0.01….1 percent…….1 percent of the people reading this blog knew of a death or a case of coronavirus in their circle of friends and/or acquaintances and chose to comment. 

So far, most have or are recovering. 1 out 15. So of the confirmed (ish) cases, we have a current death rate of  (1/15)….or 6.6666% Six percent of the cases died. Let’s round that number to .07….seven percent.

So (so far!) we have 7 percent of 1% as a rate of death. 0.01 times 0.07 equals .0007. Do it in percentages……07%.

Is it gonna be a big number when extrapolated out to the 375 Million people in the US? Let us see….

0.0007 times 375,000,000 equals 262,500. Which is pretty close to the death total for Swine Flu. (and we all remember the dead piled up like cordwood outside of the hospitals in 2009-2010, right?).

This is more serious than the  “Normal” flu (about 55,000 dead each year) but it isn’t gonna end up killing us all. Even if this is low by a factor of TEN, it still isn’t gonna end us all. 

Now, please understand, this isn’t a valid survey, it isn’t really terribly good data (lots of assumptions made, and a poor sample, and it isn’t corrected for location nor age of the sample or a lot of other things), and it isn’t, in fact, designed to prove anything one way or the other. But as  a sample, it does match the currently REPORTED cases vs deaths at least somewhat. The picture looks something like what I present here.

This is based on some pretty sketchy data and it is a snapshot, not total cases…., so take these numbers with a grain of salt…maybe the whole shaker….

Try to stay healthy. Do the Distancing Thing. Be smart about this.

Wash your goddamned hands. Often.

On our cites.

Have you noticed that many “High End” shops that are closed are also boarded up? Windows and door covered in plywood?
They are afraid that “Yoots” will  smash the widows and grab the stock. And the police are too busy to patrol enough to keep this from happening. Boarded up to prevent looting and vandalism.

Best thing the city governments could do, both from a public order standpoint and to prevent the transmission of disease would be to shut down Public Transportation.

A sad commentary on both the state of our civilization and on the progress of Dr. King’s dream. 

So it looks like LOTS of cases in New York. (No surprise there).

Yet I can’t help but notice that the City Government has not yet shut down the busses and Subways.

One would think that this would help prevent the spread of the disease by keeping people farther apart when they walk instead of ride, and even more by keeping people closer to home.

I dunno. 

Today I finished sorting the gravel in my driveway by size, shape and color.

And not just because it says (better than I have!) what I have been trying to point out all along:

The numbers just don’t add up as to why we have destroyed our economy and essentially shut down. 


You can look up actual WORLDWIDE cases here, sorted by country. Cases/deaths/recovered.  This is Johns Hopkins data, so I would expect it to be pretty reliable.

(as of 18:30 local time here in the Midwest) there have been WORLDWIDE:

375,458 CASES. IE tested for and found to have the virus. (Probably more that were asymptomatic and did not bother to get tested though). Please note that the world population is approximately 7,690.000.

16, 371 deaths. Please note that the “normal” flu killed more people this year just here in the US than the CoronaVirus has killed worldwide.

100,958 have recovered.

Notice how low these numbers really are?

And for this we have essentially shut down the WORLD economies?

One wonders what, exactly is going on here. (unless these governments know something about this illness that they aren’t sharing, this is a massive overreaction)

Go, READ this article. It is longer than 20 sentences, but it is worth reading and no skipping.

From CBS:

CBS: “A week ago there were no cases reported in New Orleans, now there are HUNDREDS!”

Of course, a week ago, no one had been tested for Covid-19, either.

Now, since we are testing everyone with any symptoms that are in any way flu-like, the number of cases is, of course, exploding.

Prior to that, of course, folks were assumed to have the FLU (one of many) and were sent home.

Now, of course, they are tested for CV-19.

So yeah, the number of cases is skyrocketing.

(There is a lot of speculation that this disease has been here since early January, that it took a long time for us to notice).

Also, the Media is starting to try to panic everyone with the “there are no medical supplies!!!” “People are gonna be triaged and some will be left outside to die!!” .

Again, if they choose to continue to use masks only once before disposal, then yeah, that might happen. In other countries, they use ’em for hours. I haven’t yet seen the bodies stacked like cordwood, nor have I seen old people refused treatment (or left on an ice floe)…at least not yet here is the US.

As to the rest? I dunno. I do know that the Media like death and blood and panic. At this point they are beyond crying “wolf”.

There are times I am thinking this is a giant Social Experiment in control of the populace.

T the number of people, especially women, who think somehow that the only way to cleanse your hands is to use “Hand Sanitizer”…..that simple handwashing with soap won’t do it, that using a small spray bottle with Isopropyl (or ethyl, for that matter) alcohol and vigorous wiping won’t do it.

They gotta have hand sanitizer or they gonna die. No other way to cleanse your hands.

Sometimes people’s ignorance amazes me.