The Many Faces Of COVID19-5
Part 5 of a 7 part series…
5) If I had to hazard a guess I would believe that like the flu that used to be devastating to the human race and is now mildly dangerous, the SARS-covid-2 virus will continue to adapt so that it too can survive. It is counterproductive for the virus to kill people. It does not aid in the primary mission of a virus which is propagation. In the long run I would guess that this virus will become more similar to the flu and stick around in order to survive. Not all viruses do this but this one seems to be heading in that direction according to my understanding. Again, I could be wrong but after carefully considering this I would be more apt to believe that then the alternative of it getting more dangerous and deadly. At the moment it seems to be heading into the less dangerous and deadly category relative to the vast amount of people who are contracting the disease and the death rates appearing to be falling.
Right now, according to the John’s Hopkins site, the U.S. contracted case rate stands at 11,190,161 of reported cases. We know factually the actual number is much much higher than this. How much is hard to say but I think the most conservative estimates are 5x. The death rate at the moment stands at 247,116 deaths. This is about 2% which is much much lower than it used to be. Is it tragic? Yes for sure. Do we want anyone to die? No, of course not. Those are not the issues. The only real issue is how to navigate through it all. We know that the actual population that has contracted the disease is at least 55 million but probably closer to 100-150 million people in our country. At the lower number the actual death rate is fairly small at .4%. That means out of 1,000 people who actually contract the disease (remember this is at the rate of 5x more than we have actually tested which is likely not even correct) 4 would die. If we use the 10x number it would be 2 out of every thousand. Right now when you compare confirmed cases/day (approximate-using round numbers) and confirmed deaths/day (approximate-using round numbers), the death rate is about 7 of every 1,000. This is confirmed cases and confirmed deaths. If we multiple this by 5 then it drops to 1 out of every 1,000. This is not helpful for those who have lost loved ones but it ought to help us gain some perspective.
But there is more. And this is controversial and problematic for some but it must be stated. Hospitals get paid a fair amount of money for each COVID patient and especially those that end up on a ventilator. We are assured that this has not been abused by nearly every news agency and politician and hospital administrator. Are we not talking about human nature here though? Is it not reasonable to assume that the numbers are at least slightly elevated (perhaps only slightly so as not to draw any extra attention) to aid in the hospital’s bottom line? After all, it is expensive to run a hospital and if the money is available…well why not? At least that type of thinking is seemingly much more common today than it used to be…at least openly.
It seems akin to the current election. The more opportunity you give for cheating the more it will happen. It is a simple and accurate equation based upon human nature. It will happen every time and so just as the election needs to be looked into because there was a vast array of opportunities for cheating, so we ought to look into the actual numbers that hospitals report. Perhaps it is not much and that is probably true but we have to admit, I think, that it would make the numbers even more skewed and put the death rate even a bit lower than it already is. Unless, of course, it is offset by non reported deaths. But this wouldn’t make sense in the United States. I’m sure in other parts of the world this happens but not likely in our country.