I was talking to my therapist earlier today about this. Aside from a small scare last week where I appear to have misinterpreted a test strip, I’m done. Most of my coworkers have either had Omicron and recovered (including the vaccine hesitant coworker I had a tussle with back in early November) or everyone in their household except them has had it (which makes their baseline risk similar to mine, as someone who lives alone).
I feel like there’s going to be an inevitable awkward period where a lot of us will be able to say, quite accurately, that we’re done. I wore N95′s and hunkered down exactly when it was necessary; I’m back to cloth masks now—I haven’t seen anything to suggest that they’re not adequate for source control. The issue seems to be largely a matter of taste and etiquette. It’s proper that some of us get to be “done”. The etiquette issue comes with the fact that there are two very different reasons that one could be done—either (a) you and/or everyone else in your household has recently recovered (b) you’re boosted and cases have already plummeted. It’s the second category that’s socially awkward. If you’re in that category, you can be done at your discretion, but you should probably keep it under your hat.
Regarding your friend’s child who caught it despite extreme precautions, something I’ve been tossing around in my head for a few days: if a whole bunch of people spread out a million “microcovids” over the same period of time, only about 63% of them (1-(1/e)) will actually get it. I’m calling this number the Universal Unfairness Constant.
Regarding your friend’s child who caught it despite extreme precautions, something I’ve been tossing around in my head for a few days: if a whole bunch of people spread out a million “microcovids” over the same period of time, only about 63% of them (1-(1/e)) will actually get it. I’m calling this number the Universal Unfairness Constant.
Sure!(1−(1/n))n tends to 1/e as n tends to infinity. That’s the probability of remaining Covid-free (think of it as the probability of never rolling a 19 when rolling a million sided die a million times). Thus the probability of getting Covid during that period is 1−(1/e)
Hm. I can see that being a lower bound, for people getting covid, but I don’t think the 1/n and the power of n are suitably connected for it to be a very accurate estimate.
Though overtime, the number of times to get exposed is going up, and viewing the risk of getting it as going down (as we learn how to mitigate covid risks better) seems to paint a picture with very broad strokes that’s somewhat accurate overall.
If a bunch of people spread out a million microcovids over a year, about 63% will get covid. People assume “wouldn’t they all get it by then?” But to get over 99% it would actually take about 4.6 million microcovids!
In my model, it made sense take precautions to buy time to get vaccines and treatments. We have those now, so the cost-benefit calculation changes. Further wearing a mask is not going to help people avail themselves of them, or encourage institutions to approve existing treatments or accelerate new ones.
I’m grappling with the NNT numbers mentioned above. It’s very much worth it to me to pay $10 for fluvoxamine to say cut the duration of omicron (and perhaps probability of long covid, however small it is) by, say, ~30% (that’s my estimate). It’s even worth it for me at that price to buy enough to not have to watch friends and family suffer longer if they choose to avail themselves.
I was talking to my therapist earlier today about this. Aside from a small scare last week where I appear to have misinterpreted a test strip, I’m done. Most of my coworkers have either had Omicron and recovered (including the vaccine hesitant coworker I had a tussle with back in early November) or everyone in their household except them has had it (which makes their baseline risk similar to mine, as someone who lives alone).
I feel like there’s going to be an inevitable awkward period where a lot of us will be able to say, quite accurately, that we’re done. I wore N95′s and hunkered down exactly when it was necessary; I’m back to cloth masks now—I haven’t seen anything to suggest that they’re not adequate for source control. The issue seems to be largely a matter of taste and etiquette. It’s proper that some of us get to be “done”. The etiquette issue comes with the fact that there are two very different reasons that one could be done—either (a) you and/or everyone else in your household has recently recovered (b) you’re boosted and cases have already plummeted. It’s the second category that’s socially awkward. If you’re in that category, you can be done at your discretion, but you should probably keep it under your hat.
Regarding your friend’s child who caught it despite extreme precautions, something I’ve been tossing around in my head for a few days: if a whole bunch of people spread out a million “microcovids” over the same period of time, only about 63% of them (1-(1/e)) will actually get it. I’m calling this number the Universal Unfairness Constant.
Can you explain the math behind this?
Sure!(1−(1/n))n tends to 1/e as n tends to infinity. That’s the probability of remaining Covid-free (think of it as the probability of never rolling a 19 when rolling a million sided die a million times). Thus the probability of getting Covid during that period is 1−(1/e)
Hm. I can see that being a lower bound, for people getting covid, but I don’t think the 1/n and the power of n are suitably connected for it to be a very accurate estimate.
Though overtime, the number of times to get exposed is going up, and viewing the risk of getting it as going down (as we learn how to mitigate covid risks better) seems to paint a picture with very broad strokes that’s somewhat accurate overall.
If a bunch of people spread out a million microcovids over a year, about 63% will get covid. People assume “wouldn’t they all get it by then?” But to get over 99% it would actually take about 4.6 million microcovids!
In my model, it made sense take precautions to buy time to get vaccines and treatments. We have those now, so the cost-benefit calculation changes. Further wearing a mask is not going to help people avail themselves of them, or encourage institutions to approve existing treatments or accelerate new ones.
I’m grappling with the NNT numbers mentioned above. It’s very much worth it to me to pay $10 for fluvoxamine to say cut the duration of omicron (and perhaps probability of long covid, however small it is) by, say, ~30% (that’s my estimate). It’s even worth it for me at that price to buy enough to not have to watch friends and family suffer longer if they choose to avail themselves.