April 6, 2021: Metaphorically Stuck in the Suez

Even though the great big ship Ever Given is no longer stuck, I think we should cherish it as a metaphor for a while longer, as Sergio Pecanha does here, in his delightful set of cartoons, “Why the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal is like the long journey to a covid shot.”

In case this isn’t one of WaPo’s free COVID articles, I’ll just give you my favorite cartoon of the lot:

On April 19^th, anybody over 16 can sign up to be vaccinated, and I don’t know if there’s going to be a mad, system-breaking, canal-clogging rush, but just in case, this would be a good time for your dilatory older friends-‘n-relations to sign up, before the youngsters take over. If those older folks are afraid, that’s one problem, but if they are just dithering, maybe a nudge would work.

I fell into a math hole this morning, because the OHA daily email update, trying to demonstrate that the vaccine is safer than the virus, wrote that the case fatality rate for people 80 and over is 20%. I hadn’t realized that. People in Oregon? Twenty per cent?

I was also pondering a CDC stat a friend broadcast last week: the case fatality rate for people 65 and over is 9%. My question was: Once you subtract all those folks over 80 - once you get them out of the equation because they sure do pull up the average - then what is the CFR for younger-old folks only? (This report is a bear to wade through, but if you dive in, just know that “Planning Scenario 5” is “plan for things to be exactly as they have been.”)

My quest led me to about a dozen websites. It was a festival of research, grade-school math and Excel, because not every site gave me all the data in one place. (Gorgeous day out, should have waited until later, but I wanted to KNOW.)

The Case Fatality Ratio is just the number of deaths per confirmed cases. “Confirmed cases,” are defined as confirmed by testing, which only happens if tests are available. The WHO has an explainer about potential bias in detection of cases and deaths that is easy to read, and leaves you feeling smarter than when you started it. And Our World in Data has another good explainer about keeping the CFR in context – in places where the standard of care has evolved, where there are enough beds and ventilators and some mitigating treatments, where patients are proned successfully, deaths per case go down.

We know that older people die from COVID more frequently than young people do, so the CFR for countries like Italy (with an older population) will be high. The National Library of Medicine’s PubMed has a chart showing the CFR for nine countries, and what the CFR WOULD have been if those countries had each others’ average aged population. It’s pretty mind-blowing. 

But what I wanted, specifically, was Case Fatality Ratio by age. I found some numbers by decade. What percentage of 60 to 69 year olds with a confirmed case of COVID died? What percentage of 70 to 79 year olds? What percentage of people 80 and up?

I ended up making a little Excel chart for Italy, Oregon, and New York. (Yes, for fun. Because I am retired, and I can do anything I want, and that’s what I wanted to do. Sue me.) The numbers for older people are sobering. They really don’t want to get this disease. They want to get vaccinated.

Speaking of pastimes, and of the recently-blocked Suez Canal, I don’t know if you saw the articles about how one of the ships that couldn’t get through the traffic jam was full of sex toys bound for the Netherlands. If you did not read these articles, more’s the pity, because you missed some truly exquisite journalism.

(“Sex Toys Bound for the Netherlands” would be a GREAT title for a collection of essays. Or an album.)

This is going to tie in. People in lockdown have had time to kill, and a Dutch company lost tons of money because 20 containers of sex toys couldn’t get through the Suez Canal. I, on the other hand, had time to kill, and I made Excel spreadsheets. Right? But what if I were fully vaccinated and could go out into the world, instead of making Excel spreadsheets in my guest room? What would I do with that freedom?

[Flashback. I went to a hippie summer camp for several summers when I was a teenager: macramé, goats, Kumbaya - I swear - around the campfire. Best part of it was a three-day silent camping trip. At the end, you could talk, ONCE you got on the bus. Hiking back to the bus, every time, I would promise myself that I would speak more judiciously from then on. I would not blather. I would be a woman of a few well-chosen words. And my FIRST utterance would be DEEP. And it never was. It was always something like, “I have lots of sand in this shoe.”]

So what worthwhile thing will I do, when I can go back out into the world? Will I go to the opera first, or the art museum, or the library, assuming any of those are open? I will, but not first. First, I’m going to a friend’s house, where I have invited myself to dinner. It’ll be great.