3 thoughts on “The California Herd”

1. From what I’ve seen, the data is simply unreliable. We can confirm cases but mostly for symptomatic patients, yet 2 studies in which testing was wide spread, it is about 50/50 of symptomatic to asymptomatic patients. So number of Active cases is suspect. Deaths are a bit easier to confirm but includes various forms of death in which the patient tested positive for COVID-19. Still those numbers are a bit more reliable unless we are talking about China, which seems to be hiding numbers, and perhaps places harder hit like Italy and Spain trying to keep up with a bad situation.

   Then there is recovered. I know my own county is reporting higher number of recovered than what appears in aggregates like John Hopkins tracker. And how do you track recovered? Most patients are not treated in the hospital, as the disease is mostly treated with OTC remedies until it runs it course. You have then follow up with these patients to determine recovery. In hardest hit areas, the resources are limited in doing stuff like recovery follow ups.

   With this bad data going in, I don’t care what the model is. Garbage is what comes out. Still, people want to model, and that brings in stuff like 1-2%. 1-2% of what? The total population, total infected, mortality rate? These numbers are all over the place.

   With this preamble, here are my own thoughts. I think this is worse than previous seasonal respiratory diseases. I’m not sure it is more contagious (as many have noted), but the drastic measures may be working in stopping the spread. However, it does seem to stress the body more than other diseases. It is not a death sentence like rabies, a near certain horrible death like ebola, and it doesn’t appear to be as dangerous as Spanish flu. Still, I think it is more than say H1N1.

   I think this, because it allows me to accept the current situation. If I didn’t believe this at all; then I would think the measures absurd and would be rallying with others I could find a stop this economic madness. Yet here I am.

   That said, I do push back on anyone that publishes numbers of death in the millions. I don’t know how you get there from where we are. Worldwide, we had 3,400 deaths yesterday (certainly China could be lying by orders of magnitude, in which case, we could be f&%K@d). That’s a lot, and if we tripled this; it would still take 90 days to reach 1,000,000 deaths worldwide. Yet, with the exception or more widespread testing boosting US numbers, we are seeing a general slowing trend worldwide. I don’t see a sustainment over the next 90 days and neither do most experts. So I see the million(s) death prognosticators as sowing panic, and I push back.

   On the other side, I think we will be good to see something like 50,000 deaths in the US. I think that warrants what has been done to date. First, it would represent something lower than had we done nothing. Second, as much as those numbers seem like a “normal to high” flu season; these deaths essentially represent additions to the near ending 2019-2020 flu season. It’s a doubling of a bad season, and that’s doubly bad. Finally, the numbers of death to active cases is alarming. I expect them to come down, but so far they seem to be holding steady. So 50,000 seems optimistic to me. I hope the governments numbers of 100,0000 to 200,000 are pessimistic, but I want more, better, data before I feel that is the case.

   1. Given that people have been shown to be asymptomatic but contagious, that leaves a big unknown in the equation, another one is related, and that’s how many who were never symptomatic have recovered and show antibodies? And why is it taking so long to get the antibody tests approved here when they’re being used in places like South Korea and the UK?

2. So how well does herd immunity work if you keep one third of your cows penned stalls in the barn, one third in the barnyard (with a few of those cows allowed in and out of the barn), and the remaining third loose on the range?

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