Venturing out

I had an eventful Monday.  I actually went places.

The credit union's lobby was closed due to the virus, but they had the drive-through tellers going.  The connection was choppy--like a stream over poor bandwidth--but I got my Trump Bux check deposited.  Lol...

The post office was open as usual.  Most people there were in masks.  I also wore a mask and gloves which I discarded on my way out.  The gloves, not the mask.  I kept the mask.

Home Depot was open, but they were controlling the number of people in the store at any one time.  The entrance was roped off like a line at an amusement park.  No one was in line, though, so I guess I beat the crowd.  About half the folks there were in masks.  Maybe less.  The checkout lines had taped-off areas of the floor telling us where to stand and whatnot, though there were few enough people so that it didn't really matter.

I didn't see any corona zombies.  No riots or fights for toilet paper.  No crazed scolds whining about people being out.  It was an eventful day just due to the fact that I was out and around strangers, but it was uneventful by pre-plague standards.

Oh, by the way... I watched the movie Contagion the other day for the first time.  The parallels are a bit eerie.

Already a difference

My toe abscess sidelined me for about six weeks.  As a result of being more sedentary than usual, my legs atrophied a bit.

About a week ago, I went for my first walk around the block since before the abscess.  After the first minute or so, I was breathing hard and my legs felt tight.  A few minutes later, though, my breathing settled down and my legs loosened up.

I've gone for a couple more walks around the block since then.  I already feel stronger and looser.  It doesn't take much exercise to make a noticeable difference.

My hope is that I can finish 2020 in better shape than that in which I began it.

Adventures in plumbing

I cleaned out my sink pipes today.  The sink was draining slowly, so it was time.  I have to do this every once in a blue moon.  For whatever reason, the sludge builds up.  That's all it is, too: sludge.  There's almost no hair.  I make an effort to keep hair and beard trimmings out of the sink.

It's disgusting, but at least the sink drains a little better now.  Still not as fast as it should.  But that's life, I guess.

In other news, no Trump bucks for me yet.  I talked to my accountant, and she said I'd be getting a check in the mail.  So we'll see.

Finally wore real shoes again

I wore real shoes again today for the first time in about a month and a half.  Ever since I realized my toe was infected, I've been either going barefoot or sticking to slippers or flip-flops.  My abscess, though still discolored and slightly swollen, hasn't officially been infected for a while now, and it seems to be gradually getting back to normal.  I'm cautiously declaring it "healed," at least for practical purposes.

When all you've been wearing for the past several weeks is stuff with hard flat soles, you notice the change when you put tennis shoes on and walk around a little.  It's like walking on cushions.  It felt great.

I did some yard work, and that felt even better.  I've been cooped up and somewhat immobile, and I finally got to do something productive and physical.  When I finished, I came inside feeling like a million bucks.

Now I just need to polish off this first draft of a short story I'm working on.  I've got a little more gas in my tank, so maybe I can knock this thing out quickly.

Migraine blues

I was laid up all day today with a migraine headache.  Worst one of 2020 so far.  I vomited a number of times, but nothing came up other than water and stomach acid.

It's been over 24 hours since I had any solid food--because I obviously can't eat when my body just wants to vomit everything back up--and I'm not even hungry.  I'm sipping a Sprite right now.  That will be my calories for the day.  lol

The good news is that my body has finished its digestive throes, so I'm more-or-less good now.

But man, these things suck.  Adding Metamucil to my diet shortly after Christmas has definitely helped reduce the frequency and severity of my headaches--seriously, it's great stuff--but today was a setback.

Windows...

I swear Windows 10 does this stuff on purpose.  It loves trolling me.  That's why it gives me notifications for the most inane things but not for the important things.  It's why it says it can't finish downloading my update, but when I click on the thing to do it manually, it doesn't download.  Or it does, but it doesn't tell me it's doing it, so I think it's not.

And if something ever goes really wrong, good luck trying to diagnose it, because Windows surely isn't going to tell you.  Vista was superior in this regard.  It gave you all sorts of info.  Not 10, though.  It's a cagey rascal.  Everything is hidden, and nothing is found easily.

It's been rumored that Microsoft eventually wants to go to a paid subscription model for the operating system.  I don't know if there's any truth to that or not.  If there is, though, then that would be sufficient motivation for me to switch to Linux.  I'm not paying a monthly fee forever just to use my computer.  Windows 10 is annoying enough already.

So I made my own model

There's been a lot of mention of computer models concerning Covid-19.  The models predict total deaths in various countries as well as total cases.  These models have varied widely.  And by "varied widely," I mean they have fluctuated to the point of being essentially useless.  Also, there hasn't been full disclosure.  If I can't see all the code and all the input data, then I can't judge a model on its merits.  This isn't science.  It's digital card tricks in the dark.

So I made my own model.

Now, it's admittedly a simplistic model.  Also, I'm not going to claim my model is any better than anyone else's.  That remains to be seen.  But I will claim this: all is revealed.  No secrets.  I'm going to lay out the whole methodology so that the logic and data can be properly judged.  I'm not going to demand that people put their faith in it as if it's the programming version of the Gospel or something.

So let's begin...

My focus is American deaths only.  My model predicts about 102,000 of them.  That's total over the course of the plague.

I didn't arrive at this figure by extrapolating from other countries' data.  That's apples-to-oranges stuff.  Different cultures, different gene pool, different climates, different laws, etc.  If I'm going to extrapolate, then I'm going to do it America-to-America.  I'm going to compare the current outbreak to the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Of course, the country was a very different place back then.  Differences in sanitation, nutrition, transportation, medicine, etc.  Lots of variables.

In addition, severity of the current infection varies by ethnicity, age, location, underlying health factors, and so on and so forth.  Every new variable introduces an additional margin of error.  Many variables means many margins of error, and those quickly add up to the point where the whole exercise is rendered meaningless. 

What we need is a single conversion factor that acts as a reasonable proxy for all those other variables.

I've chosen infant mortality as my conversion factor.

Infants don't smoke or drink or engage in reckless behavior, so their mortality rate is somewhat standardized, or at least it's as standardized as humans get.  It encompasses nutrition, sanitation, medicine, etc.  Comparing the infant mortality rate in 1917--the year before the Spanish Flu hit--to the rate in 2017--the latest for which I could find numbers--should act as a reasonable proxy for all the differences between 1917 America and 2017 America.

The infant mortality rate in 1917 was somewhere between 100 and 109, depending on which source you use.  I decided to split the difference and go with 105.  That's 105 deaths per thousand live births.

The rate in 2017 was 5.8.  Dividing the latter by the former gives us a conversion factor of 0.05523810.  That means an infant was almost twenty times more likely to die in 1917 than in 2017.  Obviously, we've come a long way.  People who compare the current virus to the 1918 one without adjusting for the last century's worth of improvements in general health are doing it all wrong.

The Spanish Flu, according to the Wikipedia page, killed somewhere between 0.48% and 0.64% of the population.  Again, I'll split the difference and go with 0.56%.

We now multiply that percentage by our conversion factor in order to estimate what percentage of the people the Spanish Flu would kill if it happened today.  That gives us 0.030933%.

We'll assume that Covid-19 is just as powerful as the Spanish Flu.  This may or may not be a good assumption, but we'll go with it as a "worst case" scenario.  That means we can expect Covid-19 to kill off 0.030933% of the population.  In a nation of 330 million, that means 102,080 deaths.

So there you go.  It's a simplistic model, and I've probably missed some obvious-in-hindsight logical error, but I doubt it's any worse than any of the other models out there.  And I've fully disclosed my inputs, assumptions, and methodology, so I'm not just engaging in digital magic tricks.  All my cards are on the table.

Time will tell if this model is worth a hill of beans or not.

In the meantime, it's something else to discuss.  If it makes someone pause and think a little, then that's enough for me.  Because this thing has become a mania, and we could stand to do a lot more thinking and a lot less knee-jerk reacting.

Stay safe, folks, and take reasonable precautions, but stay calm, too.  Panicking doesn't help anyone, and the odds of survival are highly in your favor.  We'll make it through this so long as we don't murder each other and burn the whole economy down along the way.

Shipping times

I made a purchase on Amazon today.  Not something everyone else is buying, so no "shortage" issue.  I chose free shipping as I always do.  My order is estimated to arrive at the end of April.

It'll be interesting to see how long it takes.  I know Amazon is swamped right now, but they have a way of surprising me on the up side.  I'll bet my order arrives in three weeks or less.