Notes From All Over -- Part 1 -- March 14, 2020

Coronavirus: overheard at Starbucks this morning -- the next phase -- folks like me will avoid testing at all costs. I still have a life. The last thing I want to do is be confined to my little hovel for a month. So, unless I'm in the emergency room with seasonal flu symptoms and difficulty breathing, I'm not going to the doctor to see if my fever, back pains, and general malaise is due to coronavirus. The dumbest thing Tom Hanks and his wife Rita did was get tested. They are now under house arrest with minimal symptoms (she minimal; he, none) and their lives are on hold.

Hey, there's no cure for the disease once you get it. You will either get through it on your own or require medical intervention/life support. If the latter, then they will test you. But other than that, stay away from testing. If your employer is really, really generous, sure, get tested. Stay away from work and get paid for the month you are at home. But if your boss is not that generous, think twice about seeing a doctor, getting tested. Eighty percent of folks won't even know they had the virus; nineteen percent will have fever, back pain, and general malaise but not severe enough to require medical attention. One percent will require medical attention and of those one percent a handful will require hospitalization. I don't know if that's true but that's the buzz in the almost empty Starbucks, although it's starting to fill up.

Starbucks: I mentioned just a few days ago that I don't go to Starbucks any more. My place of work is now McDonalds. There are exceptions, such as days like this when I'm up at oh-dark-thirty to take a granddaughter to SAT testing and then have four hours of bliss. McDonalds is good for 2.5 hours, but four hours? Starbucks. Thank you very much.

That didn't take long: I just saw a mainstream media headline -- why have so many Americans not yet been tested for coronavirus? LOL. I did not read the story, but go back to the first note above. 

Math: prevalence of coronavirus in the US --

• seasonal flu: 59 / 100,000 -- fifty-nine per one hundred thousand;
• corona virus: 7 / 1,000,000 -- seven per one million [NYT: that would be like seven times worse in dog lives]

By the way, getting back to that first paragraph above -- is anyone talking about "false negatives"? No test is perfect. My hunch is that five to ten percent of folks with flu symptoms who have coronavirus and get tested will test negative. That's called a "false negative." They have the coronavirus, they have the disease, COVID-19, and they test negative. And so they are reassured, and go back into work, school, or whatever.

Back to Tom Hanks: I bet they've already broken their house arrest. Unless they ended up in the hospital -- apparently which happened, but not because they were sick enough to be hospitalized, but for quarantine. Whatever. When I was in training, we quickly learned that the last place you want to be if you do not need to be there: the hospital. Can you spell "nosocomial"? And where is the highest concentration of drug-resistant bacteria? Three guesses and the first two don't count. Something my dad always said.

Wow, this is incredible: the streets are "empty"; the parking lots are "empty"; and, no long lines for coffee and a donut at QT. Combine spring break with cornavirus panic and that's what you get. A wonderful, wonderful day for those still with a life (literally and figuratively).