The numbers everyone has been using to forecast the end of the world were shown to be off. Not by a little... by orders of magnitude. We went from forecasting millions dead to a few10's of thousands overnight... weird right?
Stanford has posited that the disease has been here since the fall and that California may already have herd immunity.
It's somewhat sad that it took articles and studies like these to come out for me to feel comfortable sharing the story I'm about to, but it seems like the right time. This is an account from a recent pair of clients of mine so there's no link to share. Just passing along what they told me earlier this week...
I helped an older couple (W and J) from Washington buy a house here in Las Vegas at the end of this past August. I called them this week to caution them about forbearances being offered by lenders and their less publicized downsides. I didn't think they'd be in a position to need a forbearance, and thankfully it turns out they didn't. It was a good way to catch up with a recent client no less. Of course the conversation quickly turned to coronavirus and I asked how both of them were doing. Both are well now but that wasn't the case for the Mrs in January.
Turns out J was very sick in January with tremendous difficulty breathing. She never felt like she could get a deep breath, and at its worst she didn't seem to be able to get a breath at all. Said she felt like her lungs were full. Over the course of 3 weeks, W drove J to 4 different hospital emergency rooms. None could help her as their typical treatments failed. She continually tested negative for both the flu and pneumonia. The obvious leap is to assume coronavirus but what really opened my eyes was W's account of their experience at hospital #3. When they arrived, the emergency room was so full that they were treating people in the waiting area. Mind you this was the 3rd week of January. No news stories that I can recall about Las Vegas hospitals being overwhelmed at that time. I have no reason not to believe him, it simply didn't make the news and I think there's a perfectly good explanation for it. Hospitals do see waves and spikes in the winter months every few years in particularly bad flu seasons. And that's exactly what that hospital told W and J they thought they had on their hands.
After some basic temperature taking in the waiting room, a nurse came to W and J and told them they finally had space in a treatment room. As they were being led to said room, W recalled to me how the hall was littered with beds and patients propped in the upright position on machines helping them with their breathing. It didn't make sense to W or J that the hospital thought they all these cases of the flu, when they were encountering so many people with breathing issues. Nonetheless, patients were indicating breathing troubles so the doctors and nurses were trying to provide the assistance the situation required. When they reached the room where J was to be treated for her breathing troubles, they found a room with 9 other patients all hooked to breathing apparatuses. Apparently there were numerous rooms like this populated 10 per room. The nurse told them that the average amount of time spent on these machines for the people who were put on them was 48 hours. That's when W and J opted to again try and battle whatever J had at home.
When the time came for emergency room visit #4 at hospital #4, J finally got quicker, better care but still went home feeling awful. It wasn't until days later at home after taking CBD oil at the recommendation of her son that J finally got better. In fact the morning after taking CBD oil, J was finally back on her feet and was quite shocked at how quickly she felt better.
I'm not sharing this story to say CBD oil is what did the trick, even though they're convinced it did. J battled this for 3 weeks, she may finally have gotten better simply due to time or by distancing herself from ineffective treatments. I'm relaying this story because I've always been convinced this ran rampant in various parts of this country long before March. It's never made any sense to have the doomsday numbers sharers tell us how many cases we're set to see going forward because of how contagious this virus is, yet somehow not account for how many cases we would've had here if this first appeared in China in November. It can't be this insanely contagious and then not arrive here by December.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's not plenty of danger of future spread. I'm saying there's a very good chance that many places have already had their unaccounted spread, as the Stanford study suggests. And with that, it means our numbers fueling current decisions are way, way off. They'd be way off about how many have had this. They'd be way off about how deadly the virus is. And they'd be way off about the projected danger going forward. And this story is a small piece of insight of how just because something didn't make the news in January, it doesn't mean the problem didn't exist. It appears as though in Las Vegas, coronavirus may well have overrun hospitals in January. But since it was assumed to be a surge in the flu, it just didn't spark a news story.
Antibody testing and creative mass testing like analyzing sewage to show just how widespread this already has been can't come soon enough.