Covid Math: Revisited

I first posted "Covid Math" on April 13th of 2020. These were using the statistics known at the time to determine the potential severity of #Coronavirus / #CoVid19 / Sars-CoV-2 / China-Virus, or whatever you want to call it. I am returning to this post in September, after five months, to see how things have held up as predictions. Feel free to read the previous posts and the comparative backgrounds of influenza and H1N1, as I won't be rehashing that data here.

"Finally, what we know of Coronavirus so far"

Again, we are going to use the same data point, but update it with what we know now. So, we still don't know the assumed cases, but we might be able to estimate it better. We have really accurate confirmed cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Note: There are still questions about the number of deaths. Some are saying many deaths are not attributable to Covid. Recently, the CDC made a statement that only 6% of recorded Covid deaths were strictly caused by Covid, and the other 94% had comorbidities. I will NOT be separating these at this time. My rationale is that we don't know with any high degree of certainty that those comorbidities would have killed the person if they had not contracted Covid. If they would have lived six months or six years with those other issues, then Covid hastened their demise, and I will not try to parse which issue was the ultimate cause of their death. For instance: an obese person with diabetes and heart issues is likely to die early. If they contract Covid and die, was it the Covid, the diabetes, or the heart issue? If they didn't have those other issues, would they have survived Covid? These are questions we are unable to answer at this time, and we likely will never have an answer. Deaths = deaths.

Covid-19 numbers (as of 9/9/2020):

Medical visits (confirmed tests) - 6,334,158

Hospitalizations - 379,866

Deaths - 189,972

Population (est.) - 318,000,000

In the previous post, I extrapolated out the hospitalizations for a year to be about 374,524. Yet here we are at only 8 months and we have already exceeded that estimate. If we (again) do a simple (linear) extrapolation to one year, we will have had 569,799 hospitalizations. That is nearly twice my original estimate.

If we had extrapolated, again simply (linear), the previous deaths of 22,154 would have been 88,616 deaths, which we are FAR past that number. So we see that the numbers we had early on had not proceeded in a linear fashion, which is to be expected with a virus with a Rate of Infection (R0) of greater than 1.0.

If we compare these numbers back to the H1N1 and seasonal flu, we need to compare the death rates:

Known cases:

Seasonal flu - 38,230 deaths / 29,220,523 cases = 0.13%

H1N1 - 12,469 deaths / 60,800,000 cases = 0.02%%

Covid - 189,972 / 6,334,158= 3.0%

Hospitalized deaths:

Seasonal flu - 38,230 deaths / 496,912 hospitalizations = 7.69%

H1N1 - 12,469 deaths / 274,304 hospitalizations = 4.55%

Covid - 189,972 / 379,866 = 50%

To compare this to the previous post's estimates, the Covid case mortality was previously calculated at 1.98%, and it is now at 3.0%. An additional one-percent morality is pretty serious.

If we continue to assume that cases will continue to increase for the remainder of the year (or until a widely accepted vaccine is available), then we will have to make an assumption of total cases. Again, I will use simple (linear) extrapolation, even though it has been shown to be inaccurate. The reason for this is because new cases appear to be trending downward, so hopefully the estimate will turn out to be higher than what we end up with. I hope.

Extrapolated 1-year total cases: 9,501,237

Extrapolated 1-year hospitalizations: 569,799

Extrapolated 1-year deaths: 284,958

This is FAR below the worst-case estimates of the April post. We will have far fewer than the 80 million cases predicted. It will be far below the H1N1 60 million cases. It will be fewer than the 29 million cases of seasonal influenza. But because the death rate is higher than anticipated, the case fatality rate will be higher than the original extrapolation, yet lower than the worst-case estimates.

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source:

https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_coronavirus_hospitalizations

You can kiss my ass - A study in music, theater, and history

 Mozart.

That's right. We're starting with Mozart. There is no better place to begin a story like this than with Mozart.

Anyone with a name like "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" is bound for greatness. Anyone christened with the name "Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart" will then rightfully change his name, if only for brevity's sake. For it's not the destiny of "Johannes Mozart" to become great.  No, it's the destiny of one who chooses "Wolfgang", adds to it "Amadeus" (love God), to become great. And part of that destiny is to be extremely non-conformist.

And when this person writes music, because of course he'll write music, he will write some of the greatest masterpieces known to mankind. Music the likes of:

• Serenade No. 13 - "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (A Little Night Music)
• Symphony No. 41 - "Jupiter"
• Clarinet Concerto
• The Magic Flute
• Requiem
• "Leck Mich Im Arsch" (Lick me in the ass)

There's no need to read that again. You absolutely read that last one correctly. As catchy titles go, that's pretty good. I doubt you'll forget that any time soon. You might even be looking it up online to hear how baudy, even raunchy, that tune might be. Well, I'm sorry, but you may be disappointed. Unless you speak German, it's your standard Mozart fare.

But even if you don't speak German fluently, you might catch words and phrases that make you wonder what it's all about. As if you weren't wondering already.

Leck mich im arsch! Goethe, Goethe! Götz von Berlichingen! Zweiter Akt.

Well, we know the title of the song. But what does Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German writer who is most well known for his celebrated drama about the devil, Faust, have to do with Mozart and the licking of hindquarters? Well, it has nothing to do with the fact that each of them have the name "Wolfgang" as part of their name, but that's a wonderful coincidence.

No, it has to do with a successful 1773 drama by Goethe about an adventurer-poet named Gottfried. He was known as Götz of the Iron Hand. This drama was based on a real-life military man named Götz von Berlichingen. Thus, we have divined the source of the other name and it's connection to Goethe. But who was Götz ?

Götz was a German Imperial Knight from the 1500's who had an iron hand. I don't mean this figuratively or metaphorically. He lost his hand in battle when he was only 24 and a cannon shot forced his own sword against him. He continued going to battle with the help of a iron prosthetic that allowed him to grip a shield or his horse's reins. He retired from battle 40 years later and died at age 81. He was married twice and had seven sons and three daughters. Apparently losing an arm did not hinder him in any way.

Needless to say, Götz was a bad-ass and more of a man than any of us reading this today.

To put a finer point on the bad-assery of Götz, we must understand a part of Goethe's drama about him, to which Mozart references. Mozart proclaims, "Zweiter Akt!", which means, "the Second Act", again referring to Goethe's drama about Götz of the Iron Hand. While Mozart was mistaken, and the important dialogue takes place in the Third Act, we are quite sure about, without any doubt, which portion he is referring us to.

Götz, in the drama, is under siege by the Imperial Army. He is caught inside his castle and surrounded by the enemy. The captain of the army comes to Götz, who is at a window looking down on the multitude. The captain looks up and asks him to surrender. Götz of the Iron Hand replies as only a man with an iron hand (and possibly brass balls) could. The line goes something like this:

"Me, surrender! At mercy! Whom do you speak with? Am I a robber! Tell your captain that for His Imperial Majesty, I have, as always, due respect. But he, tell him that, he can lick me in the arse!"

Now, we have no way of knowing if this ever happened, or if it is simply a fantasy of Goethe. But in 1525, Götz fought in the German Peasants' War against the Ecclesiastical Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, during which time he returned to his castle. The Holy Roman Empire won the war, and Götz was called to account for his actions and imprisoned. I doubt there was such a siege on his castle, but there may very well been a frank conversation occur, nonetheless.

Götz wrote an autobiography which wasn't published for over one hundred and seventy years, until 1731. The Biography of Sir Götz von Berlichingen was the basis for Goethe's 1773 play, and the subsequent lyrics for Mozart's lesser known, but equally important, songs.

So that is the story behind the music, the theater, and the history of Götz of the Iron Hand. And if you didn't like it, you can "leck mich im arsch!"

Sorry To Ruin A Good Story

OH SHIT. BLM isn't going to like what I just found out.

I used ONLY publicly available information; including census data, arrest records, federal resources, and independent sources to find this out.

White people and black people have fatal police shootings at the SAME RATE as each other compared to their arrests. That means, if you get arrested, you have an equal chance of being shot by police, REGARDLESS of being black or white.

You read that right.

If you get arrested and WHITE, you have an 11.33 per 100,000 arrests of being shot by the police.
If you get arrested and BLACK, you have a 10.75 per 100,000 arrests of being shot by the police.
You are equivalently equal (if not slightly less) likely; black or white.

These numbers are averaged over 2015 through 2018. Data is incomplete for 2019, and 2020 isn't over.

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source:
Demographics of the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

US Census
http://data.census.gov

FBI – Uniform Crime Reporting
Arrests by Race and Ethnicity, 2018
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/tables/table-43

Bureau of Justice Statistics
Contacts Between Police and the Public, 2015
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp15.pdf

Fatal Encounters Dot Org
Downloaded 2020-06-12
https://fatalencounters.org/spreadsheets/

Mapping Police Violence
Downloaded 2020-06-12
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/s/MPVDatasetDownload.xlsx

Washington Post database of fatal shootings by a police officer; 2015-2020
Downloaded 2020-06-17
https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings