Evanston: some numbers

Too much is being written and said about this virus.  I hesitate to add more and had decided not to post this, but obviously changed my mind.

I wrote this morning to a friend largely facetiously:  Be more zen-like like me, who as I have noted am not, but I do seem calmer than most.  Kipling’s: ‘if you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs’.  The conclusion is that I may be a man, my son.

There is of course an alternative ending:  if you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs, perhaps you don’t understand the situation.

I prefer the original.

I am not interested in speculation or opinion or feel good or be terrorized stories.  I seek facts and numbers.

Above are two screen shots, one from the NY TIMES, the other the BBC, which if studied have some interesting facts, including death rates except in a few states of less than 2 per 100,000, which are pretty good odds, and that the death rate from the virus parallels normal death rates.  10% of the population over 80 in the UK die every year, and yesterday I checked normal deaths in the US, which number about 3,000,000 a year.  That is a little less than 1% of the total population.  More than a half million of those deaths come from heart disease and cancer each. 

Here is a link to the full BBC article

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51979654

I am not suggesting that this pandemic is not serious.  I take it seriously.  I adamantly do not want to be in a hospital.  But as I have noted before this is not the Black Death which in the fourteenth century reduced Europe’s population by 30%-60%.

So I am going to listen to some music, read Evelyn Waugh and a few poems.  Do my exercises.  Today resistance bands.  As well, of course, stairs and maybe a walk.  And this evening have a good bottle of wine with Carol.

Be strong.  Be well.  Be calm.