Despite Doc Barristers gentle efforts to talk me off the 'what do I do????' ledge, I have been watching serious TV channels and surfing the internet because as far as I can tell our federal government is planning to progressively shut down our economy. Did anyone else hear Bill Ackmans rant on CNBC today? Even Cramer was using his air time to advocate for a solution that is way WAY to the left of his usual positioning.
Here's what I have gathered:
There are more people at risk than I had imagined. Back when I studied economics, the population of people over 65 (with fragile immuno defenses due to age) was rather small. Now it's like 15% of the population.
45 million or so?
1.2 million people are living with AIDS/HIV but have compromised immune systems.
17 million households (how many people?) are vulnerable because of inadequate diets. The malnourished.
2 million or so getting chemotherapy.
Maybe 3 million of the 20 to 50 million people taking immuno-suppresive drugs are vulnerable.
So, like roughly 65 to 70 million people are looking at at least a hospital visit with a ventilator if they catch this. There aren't 70 million hospital rooms or ventilators. There aren't ONE million properly staffed hospital rooms with ventilators!!
THAT'S the problem. Solutions?
We don't have a vaccine. A biological wall that protects all those treated is a year away if we're lucky.
Our generous inventory of antibiotics is useless against a virus. Even I knew that. But our portfolio of antivirals has proven impotent.
There is an antimalarial drug that has shown promise, but the inventory is slender and the manufacturing can't ramp up easily. Plus it's approved as an anti-malarial.
A few aggressive labs have treatments that should work on paper, but pharmaceuticals don't go from 'on paper' to 'adequate supply' in less than a couple of dozen months. (FDA has promised to expedite.......12 months?)
So there are 50 million people that have WAY worse than the 95% survival rate that include healthy folks like us. They're people in circulation, and circulation infects people. Eventually.
I haven't been able to get data on the survival rate, or the hospitalization term for ImmunoCompromised survivors. But we have at least 50 million fellow citizens who come into this spitshow with no functional defenses. We can hospitalize 20% and ventilate 5% if we kick everyone else out of hospitals but if they all get infected at once and soon, we'll lose some significant percentage of some significant percentage.
NOW I get it. 
