The Stats of Covid-19 and What They Really Mean

I have been watching the numbers of covid-19 over the past few weeks. I check the numbers for Travis County, TX, where I live, on a daily basis. My hope was that I could predict what the public policies would be for my area based upon the trend of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. My assumption was that public policy was based on these numbers. I assumed wrong.

I am writing this post to show you why the economic shut down and attack on civil liberties that we are all experiencing has nothing to do with dangers to public health. I am going to use the statistics for my area, but I encourage you to do the same work for your area. Then post your results all over social media.

Spread the word as much as you can. You won’t reach everyone. Some people are too deep into their fear that they won’t listen to reason. That isn’t your audience. The people you are trying to reach are those who aren’t afraid, they just aren’t informed. Some people are too distracted by their own lives to sit down and do this kind of work.

For those of you who do not know, Travis County is in central Texas and is the home to the City of Austin, TX, the state capitol. With that said, here are some statistics for Travis County, TX US as of April 14, 2020:

Population of Travis County: 1,273,954

Confirmed cases: 856

Doubling rate (the amount of time for cases to double): 10 days

Deaths: 11

Recovered: 144

Hospitalizations: 93 (49 ICU, 23 on ventilators)*

Hospital beds available in TX: 28,633

ICU beds available in TX: 2,259

Ventilators available in TX: 577

Numbers without context are meaningless facts. So, let’s break some of this down. In order to determine the infection rate of covid-19, we take the number of confirmed cases (856) and divide by the population (1,273,954), which tells us that 0.06% of Travis County is infected with covid-19. But, wait! Some folks have died (11) and many more have recovered (144). So, if we remove those people then we find how many active cases are in Travis County, which is 0.05%.

But, wait! We know that many people who get covid-19 have few, if any, symptoms and never go get tested. So, the infection rate might be higher? How high? Well, no one really knows because we have just started testing people for antibodies to find out how many people have had it and recovered. But, if there are 10x as many people then that means 0.6% of Travis county is infected. That’s still a very, very low number. And one has to ask if a disease is so mild that people recover without ever having had any symptoms, then is it really that bad?

But what about flattening the curve? Remember, that was the justification for shutting down the economy and restricting people’s movements. We didn’t want to overwhelm our healthcare system with so many sick people.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the numbers of beds and ventilators for Travis County, but when you look at the numbers for the State of Texas and consider that Austin, TX is a major metropolitan area, then I think we can assume that our hospital system is not going to be overwhelmed by 93 people in the hospital. In fact, admissions are so low that many hospitals are furloughing healthcare workers because they can’t afford to pay them. And, there are plenty of viral videos showing healthcare workers creating dance routines in the hospital, so one has to wonder about how overworked they really are.

And, these numbers don’t really give us the full picture. Are these people who have died or were hospitalized BECAUSE OF covid-19 or WITH covid-19? This is an important distinction. Some of these folks were going to go to the hospital anyway due to other health issues such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory problems. Perhaps covid-19 has exacerbated these problems. Perhaps it has had little impact on them. Hell, for all we know, they got the virus while they were in the hospital and would have not been infected otherwise.

Also, on the deaths, Dr Birx during a news conference stated that that they were ‘being liberal’ in their definition of a covid-19 death. They are directing doctors to categorize a death as a covid-19 death if someone dies and the doctor suspects that they have covid-19 regardless of any other health condition. No test is required to verify that the patient had the virus and no consideration is given to the severity of the other health conditions. A patient could go into the ER with a heart attack, cough a few times, and the doctor could call it a covid-19 death.

Due to this very liberal definition of a covid-19 death and the low number of covid-19 deaths in Travis County (11), I believe it is safe to say that we don’t know if ANYONE has actually died from covid-19.

So, from these numbers, I can say that very people have covid-19 in Travis County, the number of cases are rising, but the rate of infections has been slowing over the past couple of weeks. Very few people are hospitalized or died due to covid-19 even if you believe in the most liberal definition of deaths and hospitalizations. We are far from risking overwhelming our healthcare system.

Also, all of these numbers don’t take into a few factors. First, the number of ventilators is certainly outdated as the federal government has been directing companies to make more ventilators along with personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers. But most importantly, these numbers do not factor in the use of treatments, particularly hydroxychloroquine, which can reduce a patient’s hospitalization from ten days to just 3-4 and helps keep people out of the ICU.

Due to these changes, the IHME, the group that has created many of the models predicting the number of cases and the resources needed to treat them, has greatly reduced the number of covid-19 deaths. They currently project that 60,000 people in the US will die by the end of August. To give you a frame of reference, that is roughly how many people will die from drug overdoes or suicides. The number of people who die from cancer is around 600,000 people a year. For some reason, overdoses, suicides, nor cancer overwhelm our healthcare system, but covid-19 might.

I think the numbers for Travis County speak for themselves, covid-19 is not as bad as we expected. Why the models were so far off is another discussion and I imagine we will be making many investigations into why over the next few years. But my concern is that as we are adjusting the models why aren’t we adjusting the policies?

Currently, Austin, TX is under shelter-in-place orders along with the rest of the state. These orders were set to expire on April 30. Yesterday (April 13), the City of Austin announced that they were going to extend these orders until May 8 and even include a fine for anyone not wearing a mask while engaging in ‘essential activities’.

First, I’m not sure where the city gets the power to determine what business is essential or non-essential. I have yet to see that power listed in any local, county, state, or even federal law. I am also not sure by what power the city can tell people what they are required to wear in public. This smacks of parts of the Middle East where women are forced to wear clothing that completely covers them.

But, libertarian arguments aside, I think the more important question is, “Why now?” Why extend the orders at all when the numbers show that covid-19 is not a threat to Travis County? Why extend the orders when it is obvious that the rate of infection is going down significantly? Why force people to wear masks now after weeks of telling people that masks were not useful?

People are suffering and it’s not because of a virus. People are suffering because of the policies that have been put in place that have forced businesses to close and driven people into unemployment. Many small businesses and some large businesses may never recover. The repercussions of the overreaction of politicians will be felt for years. Considering that suicide, drug abuse, and other health factors are made worse during economic recessions, I think it is reasonable to assume that more people will die from the draconian policies of politicians than will die from covid-19.

Please replicate this work with your own city or state. Please pass it around. We need to get people to call on their ‘leaders’ to start opening the economy up again and let people get back to work. They will only act when they realize that their constituents hate their policies more than they fear covid-19.

*For some reason this number is the sum of all hospitalizations across five counties: Travis, Bastrop, Williamson, Caldwell, and Hays

References:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/traviscountytexas/PST045218

http://austintexas.gov/covid19

https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-dr-birx-we-have-very-liberal-recording-of-covid-deaths-if-they-test-positive-we-are-counting-that