Goldenhawk
Well-Known Member
Here's why I think "per capita" is more important than a pure body count.I'd call it playing the ' per capita ' game ....... like quoting more blacks are killed by police than whites ' per capita '
give me the total body counts thanks
- According to the CDC, the ratio of tested to actual infections appears to be 10:1. Let's use that number; some think it's even higher, but it's easy enough for now.
- According to the St Mary's Health Department, there are currently 274 active cases (total cases minus recovered and released cases).
- According to the Census Bureau, there are about 114,000 people in St Mary's County.
Putting those numbers together, there are likely about 2740 actual cases, of which 9/10ths are not "known", meaning about 2500 people are infected but THINK they're healthy. Given the 114K people, that means there is approximately one person in every group of about 45 people.
So if you go into Walmart or Lowes with a 200 other people, there's probably 4 of them that are infected and spreading their germs around to everything they touch or breathe upon.
We also know that the virus lingers in the air for quite a while after people cough or speak, and on surfaces for even longer. So it's not just those 4 people, it's the 4 plus whoever also was in the store in the last couple hours (air) or more (surfaces). So it might be effectively two or three times as many sick people were there in a short enough time frame to potentially get you sick.
This is all just simple math. The mere fact that there are approximately X sick people is far less interesting than putting it into a risk calculation, helping you make decisions about what size of gathering you might want to avoid, or which situations really would benefit from masks.