I’ve heard people say that achieving herd immunity to COVID-19 is the key… with that we can get back to normal.  Protesters are saying without some risk, we cannot be free.  I really wonder if they have any idea what they are talking about.  I’ve done some analysis, to help illustrate the impact of achieving herd immunity.  Personally, I believe the cost is too high and that we should extend and continue to apply social distancing (hate that phrase by the way… should be physical distancing, or simply stay away from me!) until there is a vaccine, or therapeutic treatment that would reduce the severity and death rate to something more like 0.1%, comparable to the flu.

Anyway… here is the math for herd immunity impact.

Starting point:
US Population = 330,000,000
Cases reported = 1,176,239 as of 5 May 2020
Deaths reported = 68,105 as of 5 May 2020 – 5.79% death rate
Assume death rate is over-stated due to inadequate testing by 3 times = 1.93% Death rate

Achieving 70% herd immunity point
Cases = 231,000,000
Deaths = 4,458,350 … this is 1.4% of the US Population

At this level, everyone will know someone that dies from this disease as most people know well over 100 people, so at 1.4 deaths per 100 people, you will know someone or two, or many more that will pass from this COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity

Now let’s also look at the cost of such devastation.  If we assume just $2,500 per case for the cost of drugs, care, away from work (I think this is conservative) and we assume $150,000 is the cost of each death, for drugs, care, and impact to families (three weeks in a hospital must be much more than this)… then the cost of achieving herd immunity is more than $1.2T in direct costs, this is in addition to the rescue/stimulus funding that has been allocated and will be allocated in subsequent phases.  Total cost to economy is likely to be $5 to 6T.

When someone talks about achieving herd immunity, you now have at least an idea of what they are implying in number of deaths, and potential costs.

It would be far less expensive and less deadly to give every man, woman, and child $10,000 for supplies and incentive to have them stay in absolute quarantine for 4 weeks to eradicate this virus (at least in the USA).

A continuation in my attempt to channel Mark Twain into today’s world…

If self-promotion was an Olympic sport, Mr. Trump would sweep Gold, Silver and Bronze.

I hear capitalism makes for the best healthcare system, I suppose it is true if you have money or are famous, or a good job. Maybe the rest of us will just try to avoid the Trump virus.

Seems like a whole lot of people are discovering during the lock down what it’s like to be retired without an income and too little savings, might just be a much-needed wake-up call about retirement savings when we get back to work.

When we are done with lock-down, don’t say you don’t know, when I ask you where should we go to dinner.

I cannot understand why anyone would think of a pandemic as a partisan opportunity, the virus doesn’t know about politics, but it has an uncanny knack for highlighting politic divides.

We wanted a strong federal response to the pandemic, until we get one.

How is it that the wealthiest country in the world has the longest food lines ever?  Guess wealth means something different these days.

Nothing like homeschooling to bring about an appreciation for teachers that occupy our children for 6 or 7 blessed hours each day.

Now that sports are sidelined, maybe poetry and art will take their rightful place in the attention of mankind.   ESPN, was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, maybe becomes the Poetry and Arts Programming Network (PAPN).

The GOP leader I admired most in my time, said in his second inaugural address for Americans to “bind up the nation’s wounds” “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.”  While our current leader seems inclined toward malice toward everyone, charity to only those that praise him before God as right and mighty.  Then he still says he gets worse press than a president that had half-a-country pissed at him in Civil War.

In my day, we thought if women got the vote, they’d force all us men to be nicer and look after the world better.  We were wrong, they have the vote, and we are no nicer than before.

If women agreed, then we’d have change.

I think you can be nice to half the people half the time and get half way there with half of them.

Mark Twain (imagined)

Strange night, I dreamt I was blind (must’ve had my eyes closed) and on the streets of a city in Italy, maybe Portofino, I don’t know, I couldn’t see it.  Birds fought for scraps in the street, children begged parents for a treat,  old boats bobbed and slapped in the waves, the wind whistled lightly past discount sale signs, and banners and awnings, flowers smelled fragrant and spaghetti carbonara wafted in the wind  as coffee was poured and cups tingled with spoon applied, and a man on a phone, because no one talks like that in person, complains in Italian, at least I think it’s complaining, I hear the word stupido. I am grief stricken, at thought I cannot see, but then I start to see with my ears  and with scent and I fill in the blanks the boats look colorful, the birds are white with orange beaks, the paint with pastel colors is peeling, and the man on the phone must have an apron to match the sounds of flapping, and the coffee smells oh so good…  oh well, I woke up and can see just fine… and I’m happy for this small miracle.

Logic and War

Much lately is made about the desire and plans to pull troops out of Afghanistan, and although any troop reduction is objectively good for the troops that go home and their families.  It is objectively more dangerous for those that remain.  It seems that it would be sensible to re-examine why we are there and if we have accomplished our mission.  Eighteen years ago, this month, we were viciously attacked and 2,996 people were killed, over 6000 wounded, and some 1200 or more are dealing with cancer as a result of exposure to toxins released in the attacks.  Additionally, another 3500 US and Coalition Forces have been killed and many times this number of injured due to actions in Afghanistan.  Tragically,  31,000 or more civilians were also killed in Afghanistan.

Nearly 40,000 people died, because of a war started by Al-Qaeda, which attacked potent symbols of American and Western civilization, including the financial center of New York, vis-a-vis the people that worked in the World Trade Center; the military power symbol and the people in the Pentagon, and the democratic freedoms, represented by the Capitol or the White House (the target of United Flight 93).  The passenger heroes of Flight 93 were the first to fight back.   The targets clearly represented the Western world financial strength, military strength and political freedoms.   The Taliban, gave Al-Qaeda the space and support to launch these attacks, and operated in violent support of their philosophies, and actions.  They cheered the ability of Al-Qaeda to extend attacks to the West and America in this dramatic way.  This day of 11 September 2001, America and indeed the West’s civilization, freedoms and strength were attacked by a 14^th Century philosophy and mindset.

We went to war against the perpetrators of this horror, not as a police action to punish criminals, but ostensibly to disable their ability to bring their war and terrorist actions to our shores.   We took away their ability to operate, train, and finance, and pushed them into a defensive existence.  More than 120,000 of them have died, and yet they fight on, under a flag of Taliban, or ISIS or remnants of Al-Qaeda, but they fight on.

War is the result of failed diplomacy.  It is an extension of power.  It is a necessary capability of nations that choose to live in freedom and to protect their national interests.  It is horrible but a necessary and logical extension of capability to ensure the existence of our country, our beliefs, and hard-earned freedoms.

I propose that this war was a justified and logical response to the 9-11 attacks.  The subsequent sacrifices of American’s, and those of our coalition partners have been tragic, but necessary and logical.  Ending our engagement in Afghanistan should happen only when we are certain that the philosophies that survived, and the remnants of terrorist cells have no further room, or fight in them to raise up and attack us again.  However attacks continue and even have intensified by the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan, in the last few weeks:

• Civilians were attacked – a bomber at a wedding kills 63 in Kabul two weeks ago
• City of Kunduz was attacked for third time yesterday,  with 30 government soldiers killed
• 3 US service members were killed in August

Logically we should be there as long as there is a credible threat. Presuming it is impossible to eradicate the threat, our mission should then be to contain this threat in the most efficient means possible.  We are negotiating, which is good. But are we successfully ensuring our safety?  Seems to me that attacks are ongoing, and there is no intent by our enemy to restrain themselves.   Logic suggests to me, as we pull our troops out, we are not ending the war.  We are instead giving a victory to the side that continues on the attack.  And do you really believe they’ll be content to rule and ruin their own piece of Afghanistan?

The Climb

A friend just starting training
To climb Denali next summer
That’s twenty thousand feet plus
So much work to get there
He says, he can sleep when he’s dead
I’m thinking,
This is when you stop drinking
And eating chocolate…
But thriving to find one’s mountain top is who we are
Adventure, experience, challenging ourselves
And still making time for a couple of good scotches
I say we should have all that we can
Do all that we can
Be all that we can
Find for ourselves the mountains we want to climb
No matter how low mine might be
But stop to enjoy the meadows of summer flowers along the way
Enjoy the mysteries of the imagination
Of art, of prose, science and history along the way
As we apply our energies toward enjoying God’s gift of life
And along the way, give some help to others on their own climb
In life!

Underwater Gorilla

A talking gorilla in an underwater school
With boy and girl guppies!
I forgot how incongruent cartoons could be
As I say “underwater gorillas don’t work for me”
The reply from little man is
“Like me sleeping in a nest”
Means its ok to imagine, and pretend
The deck is a ship and the grass is the water
There are positive messages in the toons
Talking buses, sleuthing cats
But not many Wiley E. Coyotes
To teach us teamwork is dreamwork
And transformer dogs with tools save the day
Without a boulder landing on poor Wiley
So, steer the boat safely if you can
Directing from captain’s chair
As the crew fights off invading pirates and watch for underwater gorillas!

I read an article that describes how mankind has evolved to instinctively recognize from mannerisms as simple as a wave, the gait of a person’s walk that they are from another “tribe”.  That is nation or ethnic group, which may cause a natural anxiety.  Our ability to overcome anxiety with reason allows for us to come together as nations, of many tribes, many dialects, and many characteristic markers.  However that instinct is ever present.

Instinct

Instantly we know, he’s not one of us, but we ignore
Because it’s not sensible, logical
to assume something bad may be in store
Hair follicles tell us there’s something different here
Nothing we can discern in prefrontal cortex
but something much more primitive, fear
Inherited by the survival of ancestors now long-dead
Nothing we can explain, nor really want to
but we give over to wary reason instead

by George Bernard Shaw

Youth have so much energy, stress, future opportunity, and accomplishment.

Youth is wasted on the young… they know not how wonderful and great this life is and how wonderful they are.

Only with tired wisdom can we marvel at youth, and wish for them to be someday tired and wise.