@gardenman wrote:
@Drythe wrote:
@jonbon wrote:
@gardenman wrote:
The virus is clearly not as easily spread as initially feared. If the virus was easily spread and each infected person spread it to just one other person each day, in 34-35 days the whole world would have it. Day one, one person has it. Day two, two people have it and spread it to two others. Day three, four people then have it and spread it to four others. Day four, eight people now have it and spread it to eight others. Day five sixteen people have it and spread it to sixteen others. Keep doing the math and when you hit day 34-35, over eight billion people have it.
At this point about one in five hundred people have been infected that we know of in the US and probably half of them are no longer infectious which makes the odds of you even coming into contact with someone with the active virus one in about a thousand. What are the odds that you'd then catch the virus from them? Pretty slim if you're wearing a mask, washing your hands, not touching your face, avoiding unnecessary social gatherings, etc. Even if you did, nationally about 95% of the people recover.
The hardest-hit area is New York City where we cram 8.398 million people into just 302.6 square miles for a population density of 27,755.3 per square mile. Then we add in a few million commuters and tourists each day just to spice things up a bit. And don't forget that 7.6 million New Yorkers (and visitors) ride the subway each day where they're essentially packed in like sardines in a can, touching the same surfaces and breathing the same air. Workers tend to spend their days not in open fields with fresh air and sunshine, but in office buildings with recycled air and shared facilities.
Now, New York State (not just NYC) has a total of just 236,732 confirmed cases despite all of that. If this was as infectious as many like to think, that number would be much, much higher. NYC on a daily basis probably has over ten million people (commuters and residents) crammed into those 302.6 square miles.
Some will argue that we don't really know how many people were infected because we haven't tested everyone. That's true. But we do know the number of people who have died or been in the hospital. If the number of infected is higher than we know then the severity or risk posed by the virus is lower. New York's 236,732 confirmed cases with 17,671 dead is a death rate of 7.4% for those with confirmed infections. If the number of infected is ten times higher, the death rate drops by ten times to 0.74%. That's a much better number. If the number of infected is a hundred times higher then the death rate drops to 0.074%. Not too scary a number. Give me a 99.926% survival rate any old day and I'll be pretty happy.
Talk to any epidemiologist in the world and they'll tell you that the more people you cram into a tighter space the more likely the spread of disease is. That's what we're seeing in NYC. Despite cramming people in like sardines in a can, the number of infected and the death rate is not nearly as bad as many had presumed it would be. It's not good, but it could be, maybe should be, a lot worse. The fact that it isn't, indicates that either the virus isn't nearly as easily spread as many had presumed, or that the virus isn't nearly as deadly as many had presumed. If it's spread is wider, then the death and complications rate is lower. The two numbers are linked.
Assuming no one's hiding tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dead and hospitalized patients, the numbers right now are kind of encouraging. People are still going to get sick and people are still going to die, but if you take the right precautions and aren't horribly unlucky, you should come through this just fine. The numbers right now, when put into perspective, aren't so bad. Do the right things, take care of yourself, and you should be fine. This really isn't the Mother of all Pandemics that many had forecast. It's bad, but not nearly as bad as it had looked like it might be.
No offense, but I would like a fact check on the conclusions in this post.
@jonbon
I agree, like to see verification myself.
Require facts, and creditable sources.
The numbers used are all readily available. The math is very easy to perform. If you doubt the population of NYC, it's a very easy thing to check. The same with the number of commuters, subway users, etc. The number of infected and the number of deaths were accurate when I posted it, but they're an ever-evolving number. This is all pretty simple basic math I used. Feel free to repeat it. You'll get the same answers.
If each infected person infected just one other person a day on day one there would be one infected person. Day two you'd have two, Day three there would be four. (Each of the two infected one other person.) Day five, eight. Day six there would be sixteen. Day seven there would be 32. Day eight there would be 64. Day nine there would be 128. Day ten the number would be 256. Day eleven the number would be 512. Day twelve the number would be 1024. Day thirteen the number would be 2048. Day fourteen the number would be 4096. Day fifteen the number would be 8,192. Day sixteen it would be 16,384. Day seventeen it would be 32,768. Day eighteen it would be 65,536. Day nineteen it would be 131,072. Day twenty it would be 262,144. Day twenty-one it would be 524,288. Day twenty-two it would be 1,048,576. Day twenty-three it would be 2,097,152. Day twenty-four it would be 4,194,304. Day twenty-five it would be 8,388,608. Day twenty-six it would be 16,777,216. Day twenty-seven it would be 33,554,432. Day twenty-eight it would be 67,108,864. Day twenty-nine it would be 134,217,728, Day thirty it would be 268,435,456. Day thirty-one it would be 536,870,912. Day thirty-two it would be 1,073,721,824. Day thirty-three it would be 2,147,483,648. Day thirty-four it would be 4,294,967,296. And finally, on day thirty-five we'd crack the eight billion mark which would be more people than are on the planet. That's if each infected person infected one other person per day.
The death rate is calculated by taking the number of deaths, dividing it by the number of infected, and multiplying it by 100. If there are ten dead and 100 infected the ten divided by 100 is 0.10. Multiply that by a hundred and you get a death rate of 10%. If there are 23 dead out of 200 then the 23/200=0.115X100 would give you a death rate of 11.5%. If there are 23 dead out of 500 the death rate is 4.6%. As the number of infected increases, relative to the number of dead, the rate of death drops. We know the number of dead. I'm pretty sure no state is hiding tens of thousands of deaths. The official number of infected is likely an underestimate at this point, so the death rate we see now is arguably a worst-case scenario.
People say we don't know the number of infected due to not everyone being tested. But if the number of infected goes up ten-fold the death rate drops ten-fold. Let's go back to the original example of 100 infected and ten dead. Let's say the number of infected is off by a factor of ten and there are actually 1,000 people infected. There are still the same ten dead. 10/1000=.001 and when you multiply that by 100 you now get a death rate of 1% instead of the earlier ten percent. This is basic math. If we start testing lots more people and find lots more people are infected, we get a much lower rate of death and rate of serious complications. If we're off by a hundred-fold in the number of infected the rate of death drops a hundred-fold. It's pretty basic math.
Feel free to find your own numbers and do the calculations yourself. You'll get the same results.
First of all, @gardenman, you have changed your emphasis here from your prior post. Second, I find both posts to eerily sound like mansplaining. We're not clueless here, and we do like facts when they are available. But speaking for myself, I do question conclusions when I think that they're not organic, that they are one view of some purported facts.
~Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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