Where are we?

The Four Scenarios

I continue to suspect that the danger from the COVID-19 virus is overblown, that it's no worse than the seasonal flu that happens every year. But I might be wrong. It's kind of hard to tell. All kinds of numbers appear in various reports, but I suspect (I'm a suspicious kind of guy) that most of those numbers come from outfits with that are promoting a political agenda of some sort, so I don't trust any of those numbers.

The number of deaths is particularly fraught. Roughly one thousand people die every day in the USA in normal circumstances. That's roughly 400,000 people per year. How many of those deaths are caused by the flu in a normal year? Maybe as few as 10,000, perhaps as many as 80,000. Telling me that X number of people died from COVID-19 yesterday, or last week, doesn't really mean anything to me unless you can compare it to some baseline, and what's the baseline for a new disease? There isn't one.

We don't know how infectious this disease is and we don't know deadly it is and we won't really know until it has run it's course and some unbiased people have had a chance to review the statistics. (Unbiased people? Where are you going to find any of those?)

Meanwhile, where are we headed? Mark Weber has posted a power point presentation that looks at four possible scenarios of what the future might bring. The slide at the top of this post is number ten. The presentation is aimed at business leaders, but everyone could benefit by considering these possiblities.

Via Cool Tools