I will be very brief. I am not an epidemiologist nor do I play one on Tee Vee. I have, however, dabbled in the bedside care of persons sick with various communicable diseases for more than forty years. If I gave you the whole diagnostic list of infectious organisms I have dealt with by delivering up-close-and-personal nursing care, you would never invite me to dinner. I have survived though — because from Day One I have diligently washed my hands and I never touch my face.
In the early 1980s, I worked at a small hospital in rural Maine ( 92 beds). We knew that AIDS was a “thing” and I vividly recall chatting with the surgeon who served as Medical Director of the hospital. Maine got it’s first case of AIDS and we dutifully conducted a medical education session devoted to AIDS.
The surgeon said “I don’t see what the problem is. If we have anybody who needs hospitalization we will just send them down to Portland or be taken care of by the specialists there.”
My reply? “Easy to say when we have had no cases. But what will we do when the problem becomes as frequent as, say, appendicitis. If we need to send every person with appendicitis to Portland, would that work?”
He frowned and had to admit the answer was no.
Even back in those days, there was a slow-motion quality to the AIDS epidemic in areas of the USA other than the big cities. It caused massive denial. The slow motion phase lasted through most of the Reagan administration.
Statistics Overload
I spent time this morning scanning the reams of data now available on covid19, and my main contribution is an attempt to boil it down to one key statistic.
(edited at 08:17 for clarity after comment below; I originally confused the number of tests with the number of positive samples) According to the CDC We now have 25,000,000 people who have been tested, and about ten per cent tested positive. We now have 125,000 people who have died. That is .005 of the total of tested persons. (due to the decimal points it seems small but it’s five times worse than the flu, and we have no vaccine.) We have some of the people diligently using masks but we have massive denial in large parts of the country.
Hey Kenneth Copeland! Satan is not who you think he is!
The population of the country is 330,000,000. That is about thirteen times the number presently infected. They say you get to herd immunity when 85% of a population gets infected; 85% of 330,000,000 is 280,500,000.
The Grand Total
.005 x 280,500,000 = 1,400,000.
Barring a vaccine, and if we keep up not doing what we ought to be doing, this simple calculation says 1,400,000 will die before all is said and done.
125,000 over 1,400,000 is about 9 per cent.
We aren’t even at ten percent of our way through the first wave.
This idea that somehow we are now in the second wave? utter bullshit.
Test, trace and Isolate
The only way out is to test, trace and isolate. I admit, I spent the spring waiting for #IMPOTUS announce a plan to do just that. Obviously, he did nothing, and has no plans to do anything.
Better planners than me have promoted the idea of testing, tracing and isolating. Andy Slavitt comes to mind:
It’s not rocket science
None of the above addresses the concept of a possible second wave. As for my main statistic, which is very simple? Prove me wrong.