Dispatch from Coronaville

My friend Heather posted this meme and I just had to steal it. It was just the perfect intro to this post.

This was  originally going to be just a quick Facebook post, but then I thought that with the unbelievable changes that have consumed the world as we know it thanks to a mindlessly replicating virus, I might want this in my blog officially, for the Record.

A couple of miscellaneous thoughts a week after our life suddenly turned upside down:

First some numbers.  I'm just a middle school math teacher--not a statistician, not an epidemiologist, but I decided to play around with some numbers using some of the concepts I'd just been teaching my 7th grade class:
In the past four days we've seen a 163% increase in the number of people infected with the coronavirus.  If the number of cases increase at a constant rate we should be be at 26,300 cases by Sunday.  Likewise there should 433 deaths by Sunday. Of course the increase has been exponential not constant so far, so this should be conservative projection.  I will revisit these numbers on Sunday to see how far off I was.  Right now, it feels like nah, there's no way those numbers will be that high by Sunday. Could be I live in Denial, Ohio. We'll see.

Second a few thoughts on the the argument that these extreme measures to flatten the curve aren't worth the damage to the economy given the relatively few number of people that will die as percentage of the population as a whole. I don't find that argument compelling when it's predicated on the assumption that won't be me or anyone I love.  It would be a more intellectually compelling argument to say "even if it's me--I mean statistically it's not likely--but even if it's me that contract the virus and dies from it, the nation is better off as a whole and I'm willing to take one for the team.  Or: "Even if it's my mother-highly unlikely but still--I'm willing to sacrifice her because the vast majority of Americans will be fine."  Perhaps Rush Limbaugh could lead this charge--he is after all immunocompromised himself--so he'd make a great poster boy for this national movement of self-sacrifice for the sake of our great nation.  But of course that won't happen.  We always think it won't happen to us. And we are almost always right.  Except for when we are not.

I am worried about the economy. I can't imagine what it must be like to watch your income just evaporate overnight like that. And that is the story for so many people in this country.  I mean can we really just stop the economy like this? I just don't see how it's sustainable, and I suspect the fallout will be far greater than we imagine.

I would like to know more about the swine flu pandemic of 2009.  Why is this so different? Apparently a lot of people died--I guess it was a big deal--but it's barely a blip on my radar and certainly there was no world wide lock down. I suspect it's because the curve was "flatter" that people got infected over a longer period of time, allowing the medical system to cope more or less. But I really don't know.  If anyone has some good information on this shoot me a link (and don't send me any conspiracy theories. I don't believe in them. The reasons for that are for another blog entry).  I think when something "obvious" to me isn't obvious to the the experts I think it's a mistake to assume that they are the ones who are wrong.

Just a few thoughts from Coronaville.