Monday, November 23, 2020

Pic Unrelated


Woman commenting on Facebook: "99.8% of people who come down with Covid-19 survive!"

I'm not sure what her point was.  I'm sure that 99.8% of people who run red lights survive - sometimes there's not even a collision, and other times, both parties can walk away from the collision.  Should we do away with traffic signals, or at least enforcement of traffic laws?

Also, she's wrong.  To date, a distressing 12,400,000 Americans and counting have contracted the covids.  Computer modelling by the University of Washington indicates there may be a total of 20 million cases by the time Joe Biden takes office in late January.  As of this evening, 257,117 of the infected have died.  

Quick math - 257,117 divided by 12,400,000 equals 0.0207, or 2.1%.  

2.1% of Americans who've contracted the covids have died.  97.1%, not 99.8%, survived.

Still, 97.1% doesn't sound too bad.  But consider this, those survivors continue to shed the virus and infect other people, so the total number of infections will increase, as will the total number of deaths.  Many survivors have reported lingering respiratory issues even after they test negative for the virus, and since it's still so new, a "novel" coronavirus, we still don't know all of the long-term effects.  And finally, over a quarter million dead Americans from the disease is something to be taken more seriously than a rounding error in some actuarial calculation.

But the worst part is it's largely preventable.  We know how to limit it's spread - social isolation, strict quarantine and contact tracing for positive cases, wearing face masks in public, washing hands, etc.  Pleases where this was done (e.g., New Zealand, several American states before they gave up on the effort) saw complete to partial abatement of the virus.  No one has to suffer, no one had to die. You just need to act like an adult and wear a face mask and try to avoid sharing air with other people until the vaccine arrives.

No comments: