It's Saturday morning

It’s Saturday morning and I’m bored...so I got to thinking.....

 You don’t get immunity unless you catch a disease, survive, and your body builds anti-bodies. Or, a vaccine, causes your body to develop anti-bodies.

As more and more people become immune the disease has a tendency to die out because there are fewer and fewer “carriers” for it to infect and survive. As a result, people without the anti-bodies are not exposed to the disease. The “herd” is immune because some have died. Some have survived through treatment. Some just live through it without treatment. Or there is wide spread use of an effective vaccine. Thus “herd immunity.

The “herd” is never 100% immune. The unprotected, either because, they haven’t had the disease and developed anti-bodies or not received the vaccine or the vaccine just doesn’t work for them, remains vulnerable. And then there is the question of how long personal anti-bodies protect.  

The “Anti-Vac” folks have been tolerated because, more or less, their refusal to be inoculated for various communicable diseases impact just them, or their children. Given that Covid-19 is deadly for the elderly or people with underlying health conditions and no vaccine is 100%, I foresee some interesting situations. Remember Typhoid Mary was locked up and people who knowingly transmit AIDS are tried.

I have been watching Sweden because it is a modern country with excellent health facilities. Sweden has not closed at all. We have. Their death rate per million/population is 217. Ours is 158. That’s a difference of 59 per million, or 18,880 people dying.

Sweden’s death rate has been slowly climbing, just as ours has. Will their death rate peak and then drop as all the old and weak die? Maybe. Will they reach “herd immunity?” Perhaps. But will all the people who come into their country not carry the disease to infect those who haven’t been previously infected because the people around them aren’t carriers? I don’t know but I do know you can’t shut off travel between countries in today’s world.

Will ours? Who knows? Studies from NY, CA and now FL show that the disease was here last December, or earlier, as around 10% of the “tested” population have the antibodies. That’s interesting. It also means that the number of disease carriers, leaving the small number of asymptotic aside, is reduced. (Also true in Sweden.) That’s also why vaccines work. If I’m immune then I can’t catch the disease from you.  

With 20/20 hindsight it appears that we should have just banned large social gatherings, pushed frequent hand washing, increased the use of disinfectants, demanded people wear masks and just rode the wave.

Many old people have died. It’s what we do. (I’m 82.) But we wouldn’t have came this close to destroying the country and who knows, maybe a lot of old people would have survived just as they hope to now by avoiding large social gatherings, frequent hand washing, increased use of disinfectants, wearing masks and just riding the wave.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

Memories

Setting around the house with time on my hand brings back memories....

Back in the day, or in this case the fall of 1956, wannbe Aviation Technician Strikers went to Airman Prep school in Norman, OK before going on to “A” school at NATTC, Millington. (Memphis, TN.)

Outside of basic electricity, hand tools, safety and surviving the Navy’s attempt at drowning us while learning how to get out of a parachute harness when landing in the water;  we also learned how to play snooker and that  sailors had zero chance with the girls at the University of Oklahoma who were mostly looking for young men who drove convertibles and whose daddies owned oil wells.

So, we looked towards Oklahoma City.

There was a bus to ride to downtown and there were taxis. But we needed a car.  Lo and behold we found a 1936 Chevrolet that had been hand painted, with a brush, a beautiful British racing green. The body was in remarkably good shape, it started and ran well, but the brakes were so bad that stopping at a designated spot required a strong leg, depth perception and good planning. It didn’t have a muffler, but did have a straight pipe.  The owner wanted $50. He was graduating and doubted that it could make it to Millington, so a buddy and I formed a partnership and made an investment.

Liberty became an adventure. We had friends who would find a dollar or so towards gas and oil and discovered that part of the stopping sequence required down shifting was part of the braking process. Doing so also let the car, with the straight pipe muffler, emit a very satisfying loud rumble when downshifting or accelerating. It was so satisfying we developed a need to do this frequently, even when not needed to help us stop or start,  In fact, we would drive around the city enjoying ourselves.

Oklahoma City, unknown to us, had a noise ordinance.  Two weeks or so before graduation disaster struck. A local policeman pulled us over, determined that the registration had expired,  and the noise it made was unacceptable.

I don’t remember all the details but we were not arrested per se, but summoned immediately to court. The judge looked us over, mentioned that he was a veteran and didn’t want to fine us and that if we would promise to register the car and fix the muffler we could go in peace.

Yes sir, yes sir, yes sir. Just let us out of here.

We had good intentions. But we couldn’t get off base during the hours when state offices were open and the price to fix the muffler was beyond our modest financial resources.

Now an older and wiser pair would have left the car parked outside the base and stayed on base the weekend before following graduation day. We weren’t all that much older and we were not wiser. Dumb and dumber? Yes.

You can guess what happened. We were pulled over again, took back to the same court and in front of the same judge. And the judge was unhappy. He mentioned a large fine, which we couldn't pay, or we could spend some time in the local lock up. I was scared spitless. I could see my Navy career evaporating as I was prosecuted for missing movement and other assorted charges. Both of us explained to the judge about our forthcoming graduation and pledged to leave the state if he would just let us go.

So, he did.  He had us take the car to the city impound lot where we left it. And took the first bus back to Norman where we didn’t leave the base until we had our orders in our hands and a bus ticket to Memphis.

And I have never been back in 63 years and counting.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “

Are we being played??

Are we being played or what??

I confess that I don’t know. I also confess that I thought a quick shut down was a good thing. But I don’t think this phased start up will work. And I think the people who are pushing this are spouting statistics while we know that their first numbers were off by the millions and that failure trend follows.

Figures don’t lie but liars figure. Especially people who desperately want to be right because that is their claim to fame and key to power.

So, I started looking around.

Sweden, which has been roundly condemned, has never closed. You would think that their death rate would be at least equal to Italy, which is 376/per million/population, but its not. Or maybe Spain, which is 417. But it’s not. Okay, maybe twice what our rate is. But its not. Sweden’s death rate is 139 vs our 107.

Now I’m not down playing that 32 difference. With our population of around 320 million that’s 10240 (32 x 320) which is not a number to be sneezed at. With reported current deaths of 35500 the total would have been 45740 based on the Swedish model.

We have approximately 800,000 hospital beds, 2834 hospitals with a least 10 each acute care units and 1 ICU.  And, per John Hopkins on 4/1/20....“1 study estimated that US acute care hospitals own approximately 62,000 full-featured mechanical ventilators. Calculations suggest that about 28,883 of these ventilators (46.4%) can be used to ventilate pediatric and neonatal patients. The study also reported an additional 98,000 ventilators that are not full-featured but can still provide basic function in an emergency during crisis standards of care......... One study reported the clinical outcomes of 191 patients in Wuhan, China and found that 58 of 191 hospitalized patients (31%) required mechanical ventilation.”

When you consider that 99.999% of the  people who died,  did so in a hospital  then of the 35500, then about one/third, 11715, needed a ventilator if you use the Wuhan numbers.

When you use the Swedish numbers, 45740, the number becomes 15094.

Given that all of the need didn’t happen at the same time, the number drops to a much lower number. Much much much lower.

So, what happened? Again, from John Hopkins: “The study also reported an additional 98,000 ventilators that are not full-featured but can still provide basic function in an emergency during crisis standards of care. However, the need for ventilation services during a severe pandemic could quickly overwhelm these day-to-day operational capabilities.”

They panicked. And now they are unwilling to admit that their numbers are wrong. And instead of admitting that; we are knee deep in testing and phases. They are so wound up in the numbers they can’t see the forest.

And the fact is that in the forest there are, and will be, trees that the person tested clean this morning will be positive some days in the future and the cycle starts over.

https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/resources/COVID-19/COVID-19-fact-sheets/200214-VentilatorAvailability-factsheet.pdf

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine