Coronavirus Long Term Guessing and Day To Day Practice

We have a president who wants to meddle in decisions by healthcare professionals, who also completely disregarded our health and even our insurance for 3 years. Now he meddles like an amateur. The only thing I have to note there is that GOVERNMENT, the one he and libertarians want to whittle down to nothing, is the only thing that is helping you at the moment. It could also have been involved in vaccines (yes, we could have had one after SARS already, and this new one would be a variant of it) and quarantine much earlier.

In the case of Trump himself, he gets tested every day, and people he meets are all tested first. So he is fine example of elitism, even when he tells meat packers to go back to work.

But let us put that aside for the moment, as we do have a pandemic to deal with, and we are doing as well as we can at the state level. Yet, there are problems, still. The bump may have been there already for many states, but because of our social distancing, it is going down very slowly because in many states the infected are still only at the 1-2% of the population level.

WHAT IS THE THREAT TO YOU? TO ME?

Suppose you want to go to work, and just get on with it. You might work in a food processing plant and up to half of you there might get it. Then it would be easier from that point on, as some will recover and come back to work and keep the place running. The problem would come if new temporary workers are brought in. They would get sick, as the whole group has  very few, maybe 1%, that already had it without knowing it. They will all get sick now. Say you have 500 people in your plant and you are all 45-65 years of age. Five of you will die. The rest may have complicated recovery, but a year from now 90% of you would still be at your job.

WHAT ABOUT ME?

I may well have those 500 workers or even more living in my city, as we have those plants, at least nearby. Suppose you all have the illness, and there are 2000 of you. You pass it to all family members and there are now 10 000 sick in my city. That seems a lot, but if you know to stay home, there might only be 1000 of you at stores and outdoors, sick but not aware of it yet. Some may recover soon and never see a doctor. That puts another 1000 on our streets and stores. If I meet one of those people, I am in trouble. My age group has 2-3% deaths in those that get the disease. Not a fun thought. But still only maybe 3 times worse than the working age group. If I minimize my shopping to food, car care, essential things, I do not need to have contact with other people. I can cut my hair for a year if I have to. My contact with outsiders can be as little as 1-2 hours a week inside stores. That is my greatest risk. Outdoors, the risk is something much less, maybe ten times less.

RISKS WITH TRAVEL

For you and me, the retiree, travel is a risk. If you can drive a day and stay with friends at the destination, you are OK. Hotels, airports, airplanes, not so good.

WORLDWIDE

Worldwide, a million or more people will die. it will be a big challenge to healthcare, and a cost. They will try to save as many as they can, otherwise several million will die. Each year some 500 000 die of flu. Much of that could have been prevented by vaccine, but there are other issues with old people, such as pneumonia.  One reason is reduced lung capacity, but also the immune system does not work as well with older people.

The medical fields have done a great job with some viruses, but these viruses such as coronavirus and flu, where there is mixing between species, are always going to be a problem. The disease is then called zoonotic. There is a pool of animals out there ready to deliver a virus back to us after the viruses from animals mix parts and get a variety that then jumps back to humans. Other diseases, such as polio, do not have a pool of virus in animals, so it can be controlled in humans better.

MASKS

There is no excuse for the governments not to have started production of n95 masks. They are not that hard to make.