We all have it and we are all going to die. The end.
A Slate article argues this is completely not the case. Instead the article suggests the true death rate of the disease is farm more complicated. The author goes on to suggest that the cruise ship provided a quite accidental test study given that only one patient boarded the ship with Covid-19 out of the 3711 on the ship and of that group 705 tested positive for the virus and 6 died. That is actually only a .85 rate of death, which is much lower than the 2-3% number bandied about thus far.
This is good news. This is news that people infected with the disease or fearful of infection will likely not rationally see as good news, because it is not a 0% mortality rate. Any chance of death will be sensationalized, because the media engine runs on fear, like the power grid in Monsters Inc (Man, that was a deep movie).
So what? So, chill. I recently came to terms with the fact that I could easily be a carrier for Covid-19. I’ve been sick with flu symptoms since mid-February. I spend half my week less than 100 yards from the ASU Health Center where the one case was diagnosed. I have not been tested. Nobody I know has been tested–including kids who’ve gone to the doctor for sickness. I am willing to argue that most Americans have not been tested, and have come into direct contact with other ill people who have not been tested for this specific virus. This is why cases keep popping up in random places in the US. People are getting tested. Yet we know from these cases that testing happens so far removed from the point of infection that backtracing the route of infection is impossible. If this were a slow incubation disease with a higher rate of mortality (say 10%), we would be reaching a critical mass of infection by now and not even know it.
In sum, we are very bad at containing infectious diseases early enough for it to matter. Everything we are doing now feels a lot like playing catch up in a race against Usain Bolt. We probably never had a chance with a head start, so we might as well shift focus to finding a vaccine.
Some Thoughts:
- 23 days out I have not had any real conversation about the numbering system for the blog. It matters. Each iteration of the numbers have held a special meaning to me that does not correspond with the start of the new year but instead the start of a life year for myself. How then do I move forward with that?