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No symptoms, no test. Tests are still hard to come by, so I don't want to contribute to overloading the system when I have nothing to make me feel I need it. I'm holding on, which is what most should be doing now.
I think it is important to not magnify the mental or emotional burden unnecessarily. The protocols we need to follow are pretty simple and are well-known.
I'm in it for the long haul, have necessities laid in and won't be going out except to walk the dog or to resupply until it's over.
People have made it through much harder times before this.
You have to do your part, and once you are doing it then you have nothing else to do. If my number comes up, it comes up, but I will do what I can in the meantime, which pretty much simply means not to be part of the problem, by staying out of circulation and by social distancing and washing hands. This is my part in this. Others have a bigger job, and I salute them.
I hope everyone stays safe.
Bob.
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Edited to make sure it's clear that I do not have a positive test, nor any symptoms. Anyone who does will, I am sure, follow medical advice about what to do next.
This is a very serious situation world-wide, and I hope everyone takes it seriously and contributes to the solution, not to the problem.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
So far, so good in the woods, no symptoms and no tests on any of us... pretty much following the same protocol as @bobwest, although we are due to restock sometime next week which should be interesting.
Basically we've been laying low and keeping exposure to a minimum. As far as business is concerned, I still get parts deliveries here to the shop but have had a few get delayed. I also have work lined up thru April, but the schedule has been volatile. Everyone is waiting to see what shakes loose before they commit to a date, I've had to shuffle a lot of things but at least still have work to do.
So that's our course, slow and steady. Glad to hear you guys are hanging in there and doing well.
The first case, the unrestrained one, went by too fast for me to see the percentage of deaths, but after watching it a few times I think it was over 10% of the population. The other cases, where there were more restrictions, got better and better, depending on how much restriction was imposed. The full-on lockdown was very low, for instance, and I remember one of the intermediate cases was in the 2.5 percentage range. (I hate it when people make images for their graphic appeal, but don't include text that stays put so I can think about it....)
The current US population is around 330 million. Multiply that by any percentage that you want, and the number gets mind-boggling.
This is only a mathematical simulation based on some simple assumptions, so it is artificial to a degree. But that is how you figure out possible outcomes: make assumptions, the simpler the better, and run them out to see what they imply. Then you have to see how well you can match it to observed reality.
This kind of thing is very important because it just lays out some consequences to think about. It is true, as many are saying, that the harm to the economy of businesses being closed and of people staying out is enormous, and this fact does make it seem more reasonable to just open things back up to save the economy, and, if necessary, accept the medical consequences, on the theory that the economy could sustain them better than it can manage people simply withdrawing from most economic activity.
Multiply 330 million by 2 percent and see how reasonable a risk it is. I get 6.6 million. If you take the 2.5% result, I get 8.25 million. Add in the fact that normal medical care (for heart disease, stroke, accidents, regular flu, etc.) would essentially be unavailable as the medical system collapses, and things get really bad.
(a) Can the economy survive anything like that? Hell no.
(b) If something like this started to happen, would people stay at work and soldier on, as they saw their co-workers and customers and relatives thinning out like that? Same answer: hell no.
I don't believe the worst-case scenarios are going to happen. For one thing, people are just not going to be so foolish that they don't change their behavior as they see it is not working, and leaders won't be that foolish either. For another, these simplified assumptions only give hypothetical outlines of the possible result. Reality will be different. But reality is already pretty bad in a lot of places.