355 one plus one equals freedom


We got our first jabs yesterday. We drove to BFE to get them, but it turns out we could have probably scored in Oakland. Doesn't matter, we're on freedom road.

Unless, of course, the variants...

Still, in the spirit of hoping we're almost done with Covid-19, how about some math?

Remember way back when, that German study that found a 0.37% death rate? After the summer surge, supposedly we got better at fighting the disease, but what do our numbers say?

Well, here in the city, 4 deaths in a day and 42 in two weeks are about as high numbers as I've heard. If we had that number of deaths all along, we'd be at 2000 total, not 440. I wonder what happened? My guess is this is still the result of the Thanksgiving and Xmas surge.

Doing the math, here in the city, with 33k cases and 440 deaths, that's about a 1.3% death rate. That's, I think, 13 times worse than the typical seasonal flu, or maybe 130x worse, I'm not sure. Also, if we go with that old .37 number, it could be an indicator that about 2/3rds of cases never got diagnosed.

 

Nationally, with 30m cases and 500k deaths, that works out to 1.6% death rate. Not that far off of San Francisco's number.

And again, to compare it to the .37 number, it could mean we really had about 120m infections nationally, or about 1/3 of all people living here, or tragically, formerly living here. That jives with the numbers above, estimating we could be as high as 40% immunity, combining infections and vaccinations.

So what exactly is going to fill all these buildings?

Somebody is paying near very top-end home prices for commercial real estate in the city.

(The most expensive home in our neighborhood recently sold for $2k per square foot... Adding up to $17million.)

So I'm sure web 4.0 is just around the corner, with VR or AR or whatever, but what makes real estate speculators so sure those new companies won't be a virtual office, too?

I guess it's been pretty hard to go wrong investing in SF real estate. It sure seems like the condo next door to us was bought as an investment, a safe place to park cash. (Because two months later, they still haven't parked any furniture.)

Still, something hopeful inside me is whispering "housing."

Deb says her arm is sore. I barely noticed the jab (our practioner was damn smooth) and would say the flu shot I had in the fall made me more sore. We'll see, they say number two is the tough one.

People are starting to plan parties for June.

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