Probably not what you are expecting.

Most people are talking about how they are afraid of dying from the virus or losing somebody important in their lives to the virus. Some are misguidedly talking about how everybody is way too panicked about this whole thing, because the odds of death for most people are in the thousandths place. Still others are talking about unknown long-term effects on the body, which have shown hints at possibly being extremely negative, but also may not exist at all. I try not to worry too much about things that have a very significant chance not to exist.

I am a very young father. I just had a baby at 32, and this would make me young, but I already have an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old. My first worry was, of course, “Could this kill my children?!” The 0% mortality rate for their age cohort was the closest thing to “No, it cannot,” that I could possibly have found, so that is not something over which I am concerned. I consider it about equally as dangerous as vaccinating them, which has a similarly minuscule mortality rate.

Next, “Could it kill their mother?!” In this case, the mortality rate for a 32-year-old is officially 1 in 500 but expected to fall with better testing data to as low as 1 in 5,000 . However, that is aggregate. Two thirds of those 32-year-olds are men! Thus, “true” mortality rate for a 32 year old woman is likely 1 in 7,500. Not something I’m going to worry about.

Wait, two thirds of deaths are for men? “Could it kill me!?” That weighting towards the death rate for men turns 0.02% into a terrifying 0.0267%! Okay, actually, not really terrifying at all. My “true” chance of death is probably around 1 in 3,750. Meh.

Let’s look at the total chance that any of my nuclear family might die. To find this, we will calculate the probability that each of us will not die, and multiply all of those together, using the official rate and the projected “true” tenth of that rate.

My family demographics are 32M, 32F, 8F, 6M, 0M.

At worst case, with the official mortality rates, that gives us:

(99.74%)(99.87%)(100%)(100%)(100%)= 99.61% chance that we would all survive. That is, only 1 in 256 families like mine would see a death. A little bit scary, but meh.

Best case, with projected “true” mortality rates would be:

(99.974%)(99.987%)(100%)(100%)(100%) = 99.961% chance that we would all survive. Only 1 in 2,564 families like mine would see a death. “Woohoo!” <tears off face mask and runs to nearest beach> … or not.

Literally literally [sic] me on my once-per-two-weeks grocery store run. Nobody said you have to look sterile!

So other than the color coordination, why do I wear a mask and gloves? My concern is that I could spread the virus while asymptomatic, starting a chain of infections long enough that somebody is killed.

Although the mortality rates are quite low for my family age brackets, they are exponentially higher for older groups, such that the overall raw case mortality rate officially stands at 6.65%. Even assuming 90% of cases are undetected, that’s still a 0.665% overall mortality rate!

Let’s examine worst and best case scenarios. Suppose I spread the virus in a chain that ultimately infects X people. What is the probability that my actions would not result in anybody dying?

Worst case scenario, this gives us 1-(99.34%)^X

Best case scenario, this gives us 1-(99.934)^X

You spread to 10 people, 6.45% chance you killed one. 1000 people, guaranteed you killed at least one.

Yikes! Worst case scenario, you spread to 10 people and it’s a coin toss whether you killed anybody! Even the rosiest projected threat level is very substantial. But wait, how likely is it, really, that I could cause such a large chain of infections?

This brings us to a discussion of how contagious COVID-19 is. The measure that we like to try to estimate is the average number of times an infection will spread per infected individual. This measure is called R, and it has a base, uninhibited value referred to as “R naught,” or “R0.”

Once you know R and the length of the contagion cycle, you can estimate the growth of an infected population. For instance, if R is 3 and the contagion cycle lasts 4 weeks, then you would expect the infected population to triple every four weeks. R values can be very low or very high, and they can be reduced by things like social distancing measures. For instance, measles has an insanely high “R naught” value of 18, meaning the AVERAGE person will spread it to that many others, but the present adjusted R value has been cut almost to 0 by a near-universal vaccination program.

COVID-19 has a fairly low R0 value, somewhere around 2.0 to 2.5, producing the following estimated chart of the spread from a single individual:

The difference between 2.0 and 2.5 is actually huge. Exponential growth is way overpowered.

The contagion cycle for this disease appears to be in the range of 1–2 weeks. So, if the disease is allowed to transmit, unchecked, it should take somewhere on the order of seven to twenty weeks for the average person to start a chain that infects 1,000 people. Recall, if your infection leads to 1,000 other infections, you killed somebody, guaranteed. Do you want to kill somebody because you were too lazy to do the right things while going for groceries? Of course not. But you will if you are not careful!

Now, remember, this graph is based on average R, but each individual will be different. Some bodies will keep an infection mostly under control, and not leak out a lot of germs. Other bodies will be full of germs, but will not excrete them at high rates. Some bodies will be severely affected, and hospitalized and isolated soon after becoming symptomatic. Some bodies, called “super spreaders,” will produce huge quantities of the virus but remain functionally healthy, and spread germs widely throughout their entire symptomatic period because, for example, they sneeze a lot.

Your general health level and genetic predispositions and probably some random chance will determine your body’s response to the virus. You can maintain good hygiene and strong general immunity, but otherwise you cannot control whether your body could be a super spreader, and you will not know if you are one.

You must therefore assume that you are an asymptomatic super spreader.

You can control what happens if you are a potential super spreader, simply by keeping all of your germs to yourself. The simplest way to achieve this is not to leave your home at all! Of course, that might not be practical, but you can still limit others’ exposure to you as much as possible without starving.

When you do go out, it is important that you make sure you are not distributing COVID germs everywhere. The only way to ensure this is to make sure that you aren’t distributing any germs of any kind everywhere. Luckily, this is pretty easy. Although a low filter face mask will not protect you very much from stray particles, it will keep most of your own stray particles on your person, reducing the chance that they may reach anyone else. Just as sneezing into your elbow limits the spread without stopping it entirely, so does even a cotton sock over your face. Upgrade once as high as you are able, without infringing on medical quality supplies; remember, you can wash and reuse the same masks and still be protecting others.

Gloves will help ensure that you keep your coronavirus-ridden hands to yourself, and discourage you from picking up COVID germs from your eyes, nose, and mouth to place as booby traps on doorknobs and grocery store food items. It is likely that you will still pick up germs even when you use gloves, but your goal is simply not to spread your own germs, so that doesn’t actually matter. Anyway, though imperfect, gloves will protect you somewhat, and much more if used perfectly (which takes concentration).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now, it is not quite fair to take responsibility for the whole chain of infections that occur as a result of one’s own negligence. After all, each person after you could have reduced the spread by acting more responsibly than you, and, anyway, perhaps people in your chain would have gotten it from another source even without you. However, you cannot know that. You can, however, see and acknowledge your own contribution to a chain that passed through you to somebody who was killed.

Before we conclude, just another bit of analysis regarding R. You’ll notice, of course, that the exponential growth of a virus depends on its being greater than 1. That is, if R is 1, then each contagion cycle will just result on 1 new infection per sick person, creating an endless chain of 1 person being sick at a time. The number of people sick at any time would never change! If you started with one case, after 324 million cycles, such a virus could reach every American!

In order for a virus to be eradicated, the effective R value needs to fall below 1, such that the average person infects less than one new person, for a sustained period of contagion cycles. Even with very low rates for R, it will take some number of cycles to bring the number down to 0. As of this writing, there are 644,000 active cases in the U.S. Thus, here is how that can be reduced with various R values:

As you can see, modest reductions in R can result in gigantic reductions in future cases, but even very extreme measures (cutting R naught by a factor of 10!) would still take multiple cycles to suppress the virus.

It is incumbent upon all of us to make sure that we are, at a very minimum reducing the “natural” rate of spread of this virus by at least half. Really to guarantee suppression, we need to cut the natural spread by two thirds or more. You can’t know if you are spreading it, so you must always act as though you could be!

You and your neighbors are a phalanx in the battle against the ‘Rona. Your mask and your distancing are a shield that protect you and the people on your flanks. If you do not hold the line, many depending upon you may perish!

Worse than it looks! Anyone struck by a COVID arrow becomes a COVID archer!

That part about perishing is not metaphorical.

Wear your mask and your gloves with pride, honor, and commitment! We stand or fall together!