Every media media source seems to spout different numbers. I am reminded what my father drummed into me. Figures never lie, but liars figure.
COVID-19 Statistics Tracker
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There is nothing to disagree on what you posted. However it is a micro view. This tells how an individual (the micro) can reduce the risk, and how the pathogen behaves at a micro level.
Then there is the macro view. After everything there is a residual factor by which it will spread. It is not additive. It is multiplicative, geometric, exponential. And exponential numbers grow very fast.
How exponential numbers grow.
1. A 9% compound interest doubles your money every 8 years. That’s about the average return you will get in a well invested stock portfolio
2. Spread of pandemic diseases
3. Towers of Hanoi example
4. My lotus example
Then there is the macro view. After everything there is a residual factor by which it will spread. It is not additive. It is multiplicative, geometric, exponential. And exponential numbers grow very fast.
How exponential numbers grow.
1. A 9% compound interest doubles your money every 8 years. That’s about the average return you will get in a well invested stock portfolio
2. Spread of pandemic diseases
3. Towers of Hanoi example
4. My lotus example
According to news reports today....
Us Brits are stocking up on toilet paper, the Dutch are stockpiling cannabis and in the US folks are stockpiling guns and ammo!
What does this tell us about people's priorities and the nature of modern society?
Worrying times indeed.
Regards,
Jay (who has plenty of loo roll, but no cannabis and no guns or ammo!).
Us Brits are stocking up on toilet paper, the Dutch are stockpiling cannabis and in the US folks are stockpiling guns and ammo!
What does this tell us about people's priorities and the nature of modern society?
Worrying times indeed.
Regards,
Jay (who has plenty of loo roll, but no cannabis and no guns or ammo!).
I'd rather go down with guns a blazin' and a dirty ass 
This has nothing to do with coronavirus, we've been doing it since we booted the Brits.
By the way, strain due to stress and fear and anxiety DO lower your immunity and make your fair game to all kinds of bugs. That is a medical statement and fact.
At least one Canadian should be stockpiling ale and gin, but I've very low income, so I've got what I could. Priorities, priorities.
Technically incorrect, at least in my area. You cant find a roll of TP for sale within 100 miles of my zip code...
Written at the dawn of the Cold War, C.S. Lewis’s 1948 book, On Living in an Atomic Age, is still relevant. Here’s a key excerpt:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
"In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
"This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
To reframe that last paragraph amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic:
“This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by a virus, let that virus when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, but with social distancing in the near term to slow it down — teaching remotely, reading, listening to music on our stereos, bathing the children, exercising at home, chatting to our friends over a video conference — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about viruses. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
"In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
"This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
To reframe that last paragraph amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic:
“This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by a virus, let that virus when it comes find us doing sensible and human things, but with social distancing in the near term to slow it down — teaching remotely, reading, listening to music on our stereos, bathing the children, exercising at home, chatting to our friends over a video conference — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about viruses. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
As someone who graduated H.S. in 1971, even nowadays I occasionally look up and all around me, and mentally declare something like "Well, they haven't killed us all yet with M.A.D." Given the (relatively) short flight time of ICBMs, such a war could be over before most of us hear that it has even started.
But it did dominate our minds. The bomb defined an era and a generation. And it took another generation to defuse it. The virus will do the same for ours.
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