Well...unless we are willing to shut down for the next 20-30 years, we have no choice but to venture back out into public. The vast majority of people under age 50 will not die. Only 1% of people aged 50-65 will die. "Only." I mean, if someone tells me I have a 1% chance of getting hit by a speeding car if I step outside, I will nope right out of that one.
So, I spent my day yesterday making arrangements with my workplace for next year. I guess I will be pretty much quarantined until December. Thing is, the sooner I get this, the more likely I am to survive. I guess I can try and lose more weight (have lost 10 pounds in quarantine).
I am feeling rather depressed today at the prospect of never going anywhere again. Theoretically, a place could eliminate the virus from their immediate area (like South Korea) and just take the hit in tourism and other travel related commerce. But I live in California and we have like 40 million visitors from out of state...each year. So there will constantly be the chance of catching it until we reach herd immunity.
To do that, we need to expose 28 million Californians (or more) to CV19, with a predicted number of deaths at around 800,000. How fast do we want to do that? We obviously cannot have 28 million people sick all at once (hospitalizations would be around 1.6 million).
So we wait. More isolated counties (like Kern County) with lower rates are sort of open already and will probably slide into "regular behavior" this week. But the overall population of that area is fairly small and while they will surely see a big increase in cases/deaths, it is about 900,000 total population, so they should be able to put together resources for their new "wave." Still, we could expect a mortality rate of as many as 4500 people.
My own estimate is that the overall morality rate is closer to 0.04-0.07.
I think I'll be willing to risk going camping in the mountains, we know some obscure places we love.
