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Saturday 25 April 2020

Day 40 of self-isolation - In New York State, they did a test.

We got another delivery; frozen meals from Cook. That was the highlight of the day.

In New York State, they did a test. They used antibody testing (which tells you if someone has had the virus), and randomly tested 3000 people at grocery stores and shopping locations. This is a good size of sample. The idea was to find out how many people have been infected.

The result was for New York State, 13.9% infected.

We can extrapolate that 13.9% to the whole population of New York State, of 19.5 million, giving 2.7 million infected.  As of today, there are  21,283 deaths, which is 7.89 deaths per thousand, a death rate of just under 0.8%. For comparison, influenza is about 0.1%, so Covid-19 is 8 times as deadly as flu. Also, each year we have a flu shot that gives some protection, and if you had flu once before, then that might also confer some small amount of resistance. But, even ignoring that, Covid-19 is eight times as deadly as flu.

But remember, some of the people currently in hospital, will die. So that 0.8% is a very low estimate. 

There are 225835 current cases. If 0.8% of those die, that's another 1800 deaths. But the ones in hospital, are the bad cases - the ones who got infected and just had light symptoms, didn't go to hospital. So that 0.8% would, realistically, be a lot bigger.

But let's stay with that 0.8% figure. If we assume that 70% of people get infected (a low number, because this virus is very infective), then that's 13.7 million infections of New Yorkers, and 0.8% of that is 110,000 (the current number in New York is 21,283).

Scale that up to the whole of the USA, and that's 1.9 million deaths (assuming 70% spread). The current number is 50,988.

So that's the battlefield. Two million dead people. In the UK, that would be 380,000 dead people.

That's why we're taking this very seriously, very seriously indeed.

And, by the way - do NOT drink disinfectant, do NOT drink medical disinfecting alcohol, do NOT irradiate yourself with ultraviolet-C, and do NOT inject yourself with anything except with the specific prescription of a medically qualified doctor.

Disinfectant is for cleaning kitchen, bathroom and other surfaces. 

Wash hands, wear masks, social distance.

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