Some Thoughts on the Covid Pandemic

Most people missed this article from The Lancet on the prevalence of Covid antibodies in the U.S. population. I would have missed it myself, in all likelihood, but for one of my students.

Some quick numbers summarize its content:

According to the article — for those who aren't familiar with The Lancet, it's widely regarded as the world's top medical journal — at the end of July, 9% of the U.S. adult population had Covid antibodies. Meaning they had come into contact with the virus.

At that time, approximately 150,000 Americans had died of Covid-19.

These two numbers let us do some straightforward math. I'm going to round these numbers to keep this simple.

Let's assume — reasonably — that if 9% of adults had encountered the virus, that same number of the total population, more or less, had encountered the virus.

9% of 330,000,000 = 29,700,000.

That's far more than the number of confirmed cases at the end of July, needless to say.

Of those 29,700,000, 150,000 had died.

150,000,000 of 29,700,000 = .005

So Covid's death rate (again, rounding) is likely around one half of 1% — five times influenza's death rate.

In other words, Covid's death rate (.005) relative to influenza (.001) appears to match the difference that Donald Trump communicated to Bob Woodward when they spoke about the virus on February 7. He said, "This is more deadly. This is five per- you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know? So, this is deadly stuff." He correctly noted that Covid-19 is five times more deadly than the flu — but his percentages were off.

So, for simplicity's sake — noting, too, that treatments are improving — let's turn that 9% of the population into 10%. Therefore: we reasonably estimate that for every 10% of the population that gets infected with the virus, about 150,000 people will die.

Again, this is essentially what we saw over the first half of 2020, and what we are still, almost certainly, seeing today.

It would follow, then, that if every American encountered the virus, 1.5 million of us would die — more Americans than have died in all of our wars combined.

That won't happen, however, thanks to "herd immunity," which begins to kick in when around 70% of the a population has been infected. Infection rates would then decrease dramatically; the virus, even with no vaccine, would never reach every American.

Nonetheless, with a 70% infection rate, approaching herd immunity, 1,050,000 Americans would die.

That, in short, is the number we're trying to avoid: one million Americans dead.

Back to the present. As of today, the number killed by the virus amounts to 100 Pearl Harbors, 80 September 11s, two WWIs. By the time Donald Trump leaves office, the total dead will have approached, if not surpassed, the number of Americans who died in WWII.

The virus is an invading enemy, killing Americans at an unprecedented pace. To defeat this enemy, we must mobilize as a nation and agree to make difficult sacrifices. If we refuse, basic epidemiological math tells us that over 1 million Americans will die, many of them avoidably.

In the past, when our country has faced a similar horror — a national catastrophe and many Americans dead — it has asked us to sacrifice our children to eliminate that threat.

I live a few miles from Golden Gate National Cemetery:

There are 137,000 American soldiers buried in that cemetery. That is the history of this country's response to a mortal danger. That is the kind of sacrifice our country has, in the past, asked of us.

In 2020, the nation — local, state, and federal government — is not asking me to sacrifice my sons to fight this lethal threat.

It is asking me to socially distance, avoid large gatherings, and wear a mask. It is asking all of us to endure a period of economic and psychological hardship — in many cases, great hardship. But, let's not forget: our sons and daughters stay home. The nation is not asking us to risk sending our children to an early grave to fight off a threat to American lives. 

In short, the sacrifices that we're being asked to make today in response to a national threat is not comparable to the sacrifices of earlier generations.

Yet many of my fellow Americans are reacting with disheartening outrage when called upon to sacrifice for the common good. Their response does not compare favorably the responses of our fellow Americans to earlier crises.

A vaccine is coming. Until then: socially distance, avoid large gatherings, wear a mask. If the government authorities that we elected, after listening to experts in epidemiology, ask use to stay home, stay home. Doing so will likely save over 500,000 American lives — four Golden Gate National Cemeteries of Americans.

Prior generations sacrificed far more. It's our turn to be patriots.