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| Dr. Anthony Fauci |
[Re-posted with corrections.]
After listening to Dr. Fauci the other day, I began to wonder if a 1% death rate from coronavirus was imaginable in America. Seems far-fetched, but the flu of 1918 killed somewhere between 700,000 and a million people in America – when the population was in the range of 103 million. Our population is approximately three times that today, so take 700,000 and multiply by 3 and you get 2.1 million. Factor in modern health care, modern communication, etc, and you maybe cut that number. But factor in a couple of screw-ups by the fed...imagine...and you could get to a 1% death rate.
To which I ask: What if?
Do you actually know 100 people? How big a deal would it be if one of them died? (As long as it wasn’t you; yes, I get that.) When I was involved in the whirl of DC, NYC, LA, etc, I knew several hundred. But now that my life is run by a 6-year-old tyrant, I know maybe 50 or so. I wouldn’t mind getting rid of half of them anyway (sort of kidding, maybe) so if corona kills one, does it really do anything other than make my life better? (As long as it isn’t me, yes, or those whom I know well and care about among the other 49 people.)
My little dead-end street is home to maybe 50 people. Add in neighbors at the back of my property, and I still have fewer than 100 neighbors. They are mostly old, so statistically speaking, at least one of them will probably die in the next year anyway, corona or not. Statistically speaking, if we assume a 1% death rate, corona may not get any of them: So does it matter? Given the unfortunate number of staunch, radical-right conservatives who live near me, I might actually prefer a 30% death rate.
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| Christopher Walken chances it in the 1978 film Deer Hunter |
Now, what if it were 99 chambers empty, 1 loaded? Would you bet your life against a million $$$? I would, hell yeah. Where do I sign up?
With the coronavirus right now, though, it’s 999 chambers empty, 1 loaded: It’s hardly a bet. Yet people are dying. And I’m being very careful, just in case.
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| Interpretive Art Lockdown Series, Quarantine Day 137: I AM SHEEPDOG! or unabomber, whatever. Quarantine isn’t getting to this guy at all, obviously. |
| Copyright © 2020 by Paul Clark |
Paul, you have to remember that Christopher Walken was shooting up bleach and thought he was safe.(that's a joke Morris) But here is a thought for you, if there is a second wave like the 1918 flu, the food chain will stop. Look what has happened with the first wave and the government or the business aren't preparing for it. Stay save!
ReplyDeleteEd, hoping the paranoid "preppers" don't turn out to be right after all, but have to admit we are adding a greenhouse to our modest homestead, just in case.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate what Paul wrote because the numbers are important and sad. We are distressed about reaching 100,000 deaths. As Paul points out this is a small fraction of the deaths per 100,000 people in the 1918 flu. Something like 1/20th.
ReplyDeleteI have a slightly different take on the numbers which I sent to our friend Judy:
All true, Judy and I appreciate your positive attitude. It's not the personal nuisance and anxiety that bothers me. I can live with that. We are very fortunate indeed.
What I worry about is the impact on small businesses going bankrupt, millions of people who are loosing their jobs, education, homes, cars, health insurance, can't pay their real estate taxes, in a word permanent damage to their lives and families. All this in a valiant, if poorly executed, effort to protect old folks like us. We have dropped the ball in terms of protecting our economically most vulnerable, while failing to protect the elderly in nursing homes.
Meanwhile, we independent retired folks are, as you say, only slightly inconvenienced. Our livelihood and financial situation is not threatened. We're not missing a meal or mortgage payment.
It ain't right.
We don't want to admit it but the nuanced and courageous response of Sweden has virtually the same statistics in terms of the deaths per 100,000 people as Pennsylvania. 39.65 per 100,000 for Sweden and 38.04 for PA, which has about 3 million more people.
The deaths per day in Sweden are currently .48 per 100,000 vs .88 in PA and .39 in the US. Sweden will have better overall stats than PA in a few days. Most importantly, much less damage to their citizens' livelihoods.
Hindsight is easy and I'm not pointing fingers. But what do we do if it starts to come back in the Fall? Shut down again and ruin millions more of our fellow citizens? Maybe we can learn from Sweden.
Thanks, Neil, for the thoughtful reminder that the lockdown effects far exceed the personal ones of independent people. As for Paul’s response, he texted me yesterday that, “Thanks to our rain & wind up here, had 3 trees fall. Looks like a bomb went off. Don't look for much online life from me for a while.”
DeleteNeil, while I appreciate your obviously well thought out observations, I see no reason for retirees--or any other age group--to be sacrificed for the benefit of other generations, much less for the economy. Corona is bad, no doubt, but our government's incoherent response, on the heels of an inexcusable trillion $$$ tax break that benefitted a select few, seem problems worth pointing fingers at. If this country didn't already have a mountain of debt due to ill-timed and unneeded tax breaks, and a 2008 recession that might be best described as contrived, then maybe our leadership would be less concerned about running up corona-related debt and more concerned with protecting the health of its citizens.
DeletePeople shouldn't have to die to save this country's economy; maintaining the economy is the job of our leadership. Since Bill Clinton left office in 2000, and left this country with a balanced budget, our leadership has failed miserably on just about all levels--especially fiscally. If you managed to survive all that and retire comfortably, good for you: Enjoy! For those of us less fortunate--the 2008 Bush recession cost me @ $500K, as an example--it is what it is. Until people realize their votes do matter, and they quit voting for the latest incarnation of the same political leadership that wrecked government finances in the 1980s and in the early 2000s, all age groups will suffer financially--corona or not.
Yes, I share your anger and frustration with our financial history and the corruption inherent in that history. That is why I voted for Bernie in 2016 and am pissed that I feel compelled to vote for Biden now. Reading John Adams letters to Abigail, I am persuaded it has always been so.
DeleteThe point I am trying to make, in this situation, is that what we retirees need to do to protect ourselves by severely limiting contact, did not require shutting down the economy to the extent which was done. If people are determined to put themselves at risk by behaving foolishly, as many did last weekend at beaches and resorts, there is nothing new there either. I'm not doing that regardless, nor am I going to the movies, church, a basketball game, crowded restaurant or concert.
The question is what do we do going forward? What does 'Normal' look like for at least the next year? How do we let as many get back to work and school as possible? How do we financially ruin as few people as possible?
I don't much trust the government to figure that out. I would look at the Swedish model.
A point to consider is that, whether the tax break was a good or bad idea (my view: unnecessary), it is far easier to reverse than reversing initiatives embarking on free college for all, eliminating existing student debt, shutting down the private healthcare industry, paying compensation for slavery, or guaranteeing income for each individual.
DeleteWe may easily be at the point in our history where the role of government will go through a redefinition more dramatic than FDR in providing an economic safety net (no matter how modest) and the 1950-1970s in civil rights. Perhaps the last time such a challenge was faced it took the Civil War to mark a change.
These 1930 and 1950-1970 initiatives were about rights and about insurance against events.
The 2010-2030 initiatives are about instructing how individuals and groups should live day to day and how much responsibility one should have for one’s course in life. The problem with Capitalism, Socialism, and other “isms" is that they work fine in the abstract. It is in implementation that humans and groups inject realities.
Perhaps the question is whether Democracy and representative government is better at shaping anyone of these “isms” better than shaping others. And under what conditions. Versions of democratic socialism, for example, seem to work well in small, relatively homogeneous groups with a strong sense of the roles of individuals and groups, relatively stable economies, common language and traditions. Nations in northern Europe are often cited. Maybe an example of that in the U.S. are the Mormon communities.
Huge divisions exist in our country over what constitutes education, who is responsible for what part of that, where new ideas and effort comes from for economic progress to sustain living standards (“sustaining” not “increasing”), how much of income should be provided regardless of one’s efforts, what should be dispensed for free (or with someone else paying for it), etc.
My vote depends on the degree to which Biden himself pushes for some of this, and to what extent he sets up the next President to do it.
Some of you so dislike the results today of what has transpired that you want to trash it all. You prefer to adopt an “ism” entirely different from the existing one. And that view is held by a large block of voters. I think you are going to win the conversion to the new “ism,” whatever it is called. I am just not an optimist over the results we will see in 2030-2050. Partly that is because I believe success across the whole society requires some level of homogeneousness and education. Today we seem to reinforce the differentiation and lack of education.