Day 23: Saturday. Better data.
Saturday is my rest day, but I felt energetic enough to walk downtown and back, once I had actually got up (not a quick process). Since it was later in the morning, I saw far more people than usual. I carried a disinfectant wipe with me, and used it on the exit door at the Post Office after checking the contents of a PO box.
Returning home, I did perhaps the riskiest thing I have yet done during this epidemic: I invited my son to cut my hair. Yes, I needed it. No, he wasn't enthusiastic, but given my simple needs (short sides, short back, and there isn't enough on top to matter), he did well enough. I wonder when I'll see a real hairdresser again. We' are close to running out of fresh vegetables, but I'm fairly sure we have some frozen ones, and the Farmers' Market is tomorrow morning. I'll play it safe and use the plastic bags the vendors provide -- normally I bring my own, but that is deemed risky. Given the improvement in growth rates (see below), and of course my own age, I'm trying to avoid even small risks.
California now publishes the numbers of hospital CoViD-19 cases, known and suspected, and the numbers of each in the Expensive Care Units. The total of cases in hospital is curiously stable, and is a tiny fraction of the number of beds; the total of cases in the ICU seems to be growing by 7-8% a day. In this county, the number of known cases has taken eight days to double, while the number of deaths is hard to infer from the chart. But the Worldometer and NYT charts show that infections and deaths in California are growing more slowly; the death rate in the US is also decelerating, though not quite to a four-day doubling time yet. The UK is still doubling deaths every three days (the NYT chart is in error), but cases only every five.
I was quite unduly pessimistic about Italy some time back. A hundred thousand deaths now seem very unlikely.
There are published data showing that two thirds of male patients who are put on ventilators do not recover. So the present clamour for more ventilators may, frankly, be a bit of a red herring. The same money would buy (subject to availability) plenty of badly needed PPE, and perhaps many doses of Actemra or other immunosuppressive drugs that may be useful. Still, the problem these days is not so much money (of which vast amounts are being printed anyway) as productive capacity, which is not interchangeable between pills and machines. So let's be glad we're going to get more, and perhaps better designed, ventilators; also that some pointless regulations have been suspended, perhaps forever.
Returning home, I did perhaps the riskiest thing I have yet done during this epidemic: I invited my son to cut my hair. Yes, I needed it. No, he wasn't enthusiastic, but given my simple needs (short sides, short back, and there isn't enough on top to matter), he did well enough. I wonder when I'll see a real hairdresser again. We' are close to running out of fresh vegetables, but I'm fairly sure we have some frozen ones, and the Farmers' Market is tomorrow morning. I'll play it safe and use the plastic bags the vendors provide -- normally I bring my own, but that is deemed risky. Given the improvement in growth rates (see below), and of course my own age, I'm trying to avoid even small risks.
California now publishes the numbers of hospital CoViD-19 cases, known and suspected, and the numbers of each in the Expensive Care Units. The total of cases in hospital is curiously stable, and is a tiny fraction of the number of beds; the total of cases in the ICU seems to be growing by 7-8% a day. In this county, the number of known cases has taken eight days to double, while the number of deaths is hard to infer from the chart. But the Worldometer and NYT charts show that infections and deaths in California are growing more slowly; the death rate in the US is also decelerating, though not quite to a four-day doubling time yet. The UK is still doubling deaths every three days (the NYT chart is in error), but cases only every five.
I was quite unduly pessimistic about Italy some time back. A hundred thousand deaths now seem very unlikely.
There are published data showing that two thirds of male patients who are put on ventilators do not recover. So the present clamour for more ventilators may, frankly, be a bit of a red herring. The same money would buy (subject to availability) plenty of badly needed PPE, and perhaps many doses of Actemra or other immunosuppressive drugs that may be useful. Still, the problem these days is not so much money (of which vast amounts are being printed anyway) as productive capacity, which is not interchangeable between pills and machines. So let's be glad we're going to get more, and perhaps better designed, ventilators; also that some pointless regulations have been suspended, perhaps forever.
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