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Date: | Sat, 4 Apr 2020 18:04:49 +0000 |
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This disease is serious stuff and the US (as well as most other countries) has screwed up the response unbelievably badly. On March 26 when we had total US deaths of 1200 I did a total death projection by the end of April 7, 12 days later. I based the projection simply on the deaths that were obviously going to happen by April 7 from publicly available world wide data and what that data obviously said was going to happen in the US. I projected in that 12 day interval we would go from 1200 total deaths to 12,000 total deaths. Right now it looks to me like my projection was a bit low, but not wildly wrong.
I will do another projection on April 8 for what the death total will be 12 days later. I do not know what I will project, but think it will be between 50,000 and 100,000 total deaths by the end of that next 12 day period on April 20.
As infectious diseases go this one is bad. It is not as bad as small pox, but far worse than flu or even polio. In addition to deaths there are going to be a lot of people who survive the disease but suffer life long disabling effects due to lung, heart and brain damage. At this time there is no way to even estimate the size of the permanently walking wounded but, it might rival the death rate. Or it might not if the disease over whelms our health care system and a bunch die that could have been saved.
If we simply allow every one to catch the disease we will see 3 million deaths in the US based on current data.
We are no place even remotely close to stopping this disease at this time and with the present measures. Ohio is hoping to see the daily case load peak in mid May. After that peak the daily case load will remain pretty constant for weeks or months. Warm weather may slow it, but that simply moves the disease back to next fall.
I feel it is fine if you take care of your bees. But, do not pick up a friend to help you. Do not even consider allowing anyone not living in your house to get in your car. Wear gloves and a half face respirator any time you go into a store. Better yet do not go into a store. For sure do not go into a store to buy sugar for your bees. Yes, they might benefit from feeding. Keeping you healthy is far more important than giving your bees a minor benefit. I have not been in a store for three weeks and doubt if I will be in one for the next six weeks. And because of my training I know how to go into a store and remain somewhat safe. Plus, I own safety equipment most of you do not own.
Be careful, the news in the next few weeks is going to be ugly. Do your mite control and your bees will stay alive and healthy. Right now that is perhaps the best you should hope for.
There are only two ways to end this epidemic. Allow everyone to get sick and risk seeing a few million deaths in the US or get a vaccine. The Chinese and Israelis both have a vaccine they individually developed and both say they will start public use of those vaccines in April. It did not take the Arabs long to develop a vaccine for MERS (another corona virus) for their camels so they could vaccinate the camels and not worry about catching MERS from the camels. In this country we have a vaccine for a corona virus in dogs your local Vet can use on your dog. Neither of those animal vaccines is going to protect against covid19 even slightly, but they do illustrate that we know how to make effective vaccines against corona type viruses. We are way too late in the US to do what has worked so very well in S Korea. We likely could not have done it if we had tried starting clear back in January when S Korea started due to our federal bureaucracy slowing things to a snails pace.
Dick
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