Coronavirus Day 145 — Math

James is always heckling me when I read my news feed in the evening.  He believes it to be a source of endless chaos and negative emotions.  I’m sure he’s right.  But, I protest, “I’m a princess on a mountaintop!  I must know what is happening out in the world!”

So while I was enjoy my gluten-free pizza while flying a fancy pirate ship kite at the beach, my brother said he’s thinking this whole pandemic is just the equivalent of two bad flu seasons rolled into one.  I was curious.  Is this true?  Should I be thinking about it this way?  I started by reading several articles estimating the Corona virus to be 7-10 times deadlier than the flu.  Hmmm.  This could explain why scientists and health experts are concerned.  And so the princess embarked on a bit of math.

According to the official flu death statistics on the CDC website, over the past nine annual flu seasons, the range of estimated deaths has been 12,000 on the low end, to 61,000 at the high end.  Running the average, that’s 37,462 deaths from the flu.  The median is 38,000.  For round numbers sake, let’s use 38,000.  As of today, based on CDC data, we’re reporting 156,311 deaths from COVID-19 in the US.  Some more basic math and that appears to be 4 times greater than a typical flu season.  It’s the beginning of August, so we still have the better part of five months in order to compare a full season to a full season.

Now of course this is just back of the blog napkin math.  It doesn’t take into consideration population growth, confidence intervals, regression testing, that the flu season usually straddles the winter months of calendar years, or that the seasonal flu appears to be much less contagious than this Corona.  This is a Mommy blog people.

And so I’ve come to two conclusions:

  1. This is not just two bad flu seasons rolled into one, Bro.  Looks like it’s more like four entire flu years compressed into the last five months, with five more months to go.  And…
  2. Despite being sequestered on a mountaintop with Zoom as her only connection to the outside world, the princess can still do basic math.

Pass me another piece of that gluten-free pizza.  And my mask, please.

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