Notes From All Over -- Part 3 -- October 6, 2020

First things first: Sir Roger Penrose -- one of three to be jointly awarded Nobel Prize in Physics -- for work to understand black holes. Penrose has been around "forever." First time Nobel Prize? I believe so. Penrose: University of Oxford: Ghez; UCLA; fourth woman to win the physics prize; Genzel: Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, German, and professor at UC-Berkely.

NYC second wave begins about .... right ... now ...

Long way to go. Quick! Pop quiz:

• population of New York state: ?
• number of New Yorkers who have tested positive for the Chinese flu: ?
• most conservative number expected to test positive by end of this pandemic (as a ratio or percent): ?

Answers:

• 20 million (population of New York state)
  
• 500,415 (number of New Yorkers who have tested positive so far)
  
• one-third or 33.3% (most conservative number based on Spanish flu pandemic of 1918
  

Doing the math:

• one-third of 20 million = 7 million

I believe herd immunity is about 65% (+/- with vaccine) -- let's check -- Mayo Clinic-- wow, not bad for a wag: 70% according to the Mayo Clinic.

• 500,415/9 months = 55,000 / month
• 2 million / 55,000 / month = 36 months -- and that's just 10% of the population
• and 10% comes nowhere near "herd immunity"

• Let's say, just 10% test positive, that's still two million. A long way to go. 

By the way, I did the same calculations for California a couple of days ago and got almost the same exact number: 40 months to get to 10% of the population to be infected at current rate. Law of big numbers.