Since I do quite a bit of statistical analysis at work I have been reviewing the numbers related to COVID-19. It seems like the media reports everything as doom and gloom and have found that many people are going along with that. However if you look at the numbers in a different way there is a much more positive outlook on things, at least in my opinion. In general it appears that most of the projections provided by government sources to justify the national wide lockdown were nowhere close to being accurate....regardless of what your opinion is on the government actions that should be a positive.
Let's start with the U.S. overall statistics on COVID-19. Again, I'm not attempting to minimize the deaths and health issues this has caused but just providing some numbers to put everything in perspective.
The U.S. is often portrayed as the deadliest country in the world for COVID-19 with the the highest number of reported cases and deaths by far. However when you look at the numbers in relation to the population of the country the U.S. only ranks 7th out of the top 10 countries that are rated as being most affected by the virus. Countries such as Spain, Italy, U.K., France, etc... all have 2-4 times the case and mortality rate as the U.S.
Currently the U.S. is reporting just under 50,000 deaths in the country. While that is a lot of total people, it is also only 0.015% of the population. Basically you have a 0.015% chance of death from COVID-19 at this point. In perspective most studies will say you have over a 1% chance to die in an car accident, so 67 times more likely for that to happen. The CDC estimates that up to 57,000 people died from the common flu last year, and an estimated 88,000 people die from an alcohol related event (which is the 3rd highest "preventable" death reason).
Now let's look at Ohio's numbers with first reviewing the projections that were published at the beginning of this. It was stated that if Ohio took no precautions there would be a peak of 60,000+ cases per DAY with over 500,000 cases by the end. The projection if we did the quarantine originally showed a peak of 10,000 cases per DAY (as we would have already reached that peak). Than the projection was changed to only a peak of 1,600 cases per DAY. With that number in mind it has been 67 days since the first reported case in Ohio and there are under 15,000 TOTAL reported cases. If you take away two days the highest true single day reported cases has been under 500. Some explanation of that number if you have been paying attention to DeWine's daily updates....the "24 hour case change", or increase, he reports every day is not just from confirmed cases from one single day. Due to delay in reporting each day they are adding additional cases from previous dates all the way back into March and February. You can verify this by looking at the graph on the website for the Ohio COVID-19 Dashboard. The two days mentioned above are from the Marion Correctional Institute adding 2,000+ cases over a two day span. It should be noted that almost 30% (4,000+) of the total confirmed cases in Ohio are coming from the correctional institutes, and they are reporting only 10 deaths.
Hospitals in Ohio are definitely not being overrun with COVID-19 patients. I know of one of the larger hospitals in Ohio was told to have 1,200 beds available for the surge of patients and they literally have a few dozen patients. They converted other buildings to temporary hospitals that are sitting empty. A neighbor is a nurse at hospital in a different city and in the 18 room ward she works on that was converted to handle virus patients they have 5. Another guy's daughter is an ICU nurse that is being furloughed.
In the end, all of the above should be considered a good thing.
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