Minus scientists, I knew Covid-19 would inevitably spread before anyone, including the president, but I had no one to listen to me.
by Kara Machowski
I typically spend my days writing, editing, querying my fictional novel, but that day I pulled out my tiny grocery store notebook (all of my journals are full) and I began working out a mathematical map of growth of deaths from the virus, ignoring the amount infected, I found a mean pattern, a rise of 1.2% in deaths every 48 hours. I multiplied and divided until I mapped out the next four months of estimated deaths from the virus. I ignored the amount of positive confirmed cases only because I wasn’t convinced that the numbers were completely accurate.
I filled up my Harriet the Spy tiny notebook with numbers, some numbers were totaling 3 million, and when I reached 1 billion deaths, I knew I had to stop, knowing that there was no way that many people would die, but also I knew it would be a long time before we reacted enough to reach a tipping point. After 10 hours of math, graphing and research I poured a large glass of wine around 6 o’clock and felt completely flabbergasted. Let me remind you, this was only February 8th, and while it was a month and half ago, it feels like three months have passed. When my husband came home from a long day of graphic design, I began to spew numbers and facts at him. At one point I paused; “I’ll put the numbers up on the mirror and you can see it clearer,” as he squinted at my 1” by 2” notepad. We were out of dry erase markers so I continued explaining my multiplication, which to him appeared as imaginary floating numbers between the two of us. I felt completely overwhelmed and frustrated that he didn’t see my graph as clearly as I did.
For the next few days I continued to track the virus that was spreading overseas while preparing for our long planned trip to Disneyland. So much so that I barely felt that I should go on vacation, but I knew that the spread was only dipping its toes in America and this would most likely be our last hurrah before life would change. So February 13th we trekked across Arizona to Anaheim, California and checked in to our hotel. That night we celebrated my birthday at dinner and decided to stop by the hotel bar on the way back to our room. I was tipsy and began to force the conversation back to coronavirus. My husband had asked me to let it go during our trip, still not fully believing my predictions, perhaps trying to palliate his own fear. Finally he asked me why I didn’t spread the word about what I predicted may come. “Well, scientists have to know what I know at this point, I’m not a mathematician or even that good at math,” I answered. I felt myself shrinking, wondering if I should at least warn family and friends, but feared they wouldn’t trust me either.
We finished up our trip on February 18th, where deaths from the disease was totaling 2,000, nearly five-hundred over my estimate. Of course the curve slowly grew in the beginning, 81 people dying EOD turned into an estimated 97, then 109, and in one month I estimated that nearly 900 people would be dying every other day due to Covid-19 and a total of about 6,000 deaths. Of course there are unforeseen factors that affects the estimate, such as treatment and most importantly, quarantine. Due to Wuhan’s quarantining their city, the growth factor slowed down at one point, because of those factors but the concerning factor is that it has ramped back up and it’s beginning to grow at a rate close to my estimate. For the next few weeks my husband and I didn’t see friends because of work and since I was fully consumed in my research, I neglected calling family, keeping my thoughts to mostly myself, but still updating my husband.
On March 1st, America discovered its first death related to coronavirus, which meant we were near China’s “day 1” of deaths from the disease, Janurary 9th. After 13 days, January 22nd, there was a reported 17 coronavirus deaths. On March 14th, (13 days after the first U.S. reported death) the U.S. reported 58 deaths. I had already began to stock up on food, not in bulk, but here and there. I would buy an extra meat or two each trip to toss in the freezer and within the 5 days the rest of America began hoarding materials like sanitizer and toilet paper. I told my husband preparing for this would be like preparing for a hurricane, you’ll survive, but it’s about being comfortable. Two days later the news was relaying the same information for Americans. Within a few days of that, other grocery items began to become limited. It was around March 3rd that my husband recommended purchasing hand sanitizer, something that I hadn’t even considered, but it was too late. Everywhere I went, they were sold out. There were so many facets regarding the publics reactions that I hadn’t considered. I knew people would begin to hoard food, but no way did I consider toilet paper, I mean, I’m a Floridian who is used to hurricane prep, but so many reactions I couldn’t predict because I was so focused on the numbers.
It became overwhelming trying to relate all of my information to my husband, who still doesn’t completely see the virus as I did. When he was offered a free bottle of hand sanitizer this past week, he turned it down. Until the last three days, since he’s been instructed to work from home, he didn’t even consider taking washing his hands seriously. We don’t always see eye to eye, and the truth is we don’t particularly fight anymore. We’ll tell each other our feelings, sometimes raising our voices in passion, but within an hour we’re typically back to talking and joking with each other. So while we never really fought over my beliefs and predictions, it was tiring to be so passionate in my beliefs and not have someone I’m trying to protect be so flippant to not only my feelings, but the facts.
I know many of you are dealing with the same situations with your loved ones. You beg for them to stay home, take the disease more seriously, and yet, they don’t listen. This is why for so long I kept my known facts a secret. Now, looking back, I wish I had done more. I wish I had stood on a soapbox and screamed, then perhaps my family might have taken me more seriously when the virus began to spread around them. Maybe I could have converted some non-believers, or saved a few from infection by recommending distancing earlier, preparing earlier rather than waiting until everyone else is stockpiling. So far, my graph has taken many dips and many rises, mainly due to factors that couldn’t mathematically be foreseen or factored in. I estimated that on March 17th the world will have seen 10,000 deaths from the coronavirus, we were just a few days short of that, March 19th we reached 10,009 coronavirus related deaths.
Unfortunately, we know that there will be a large increase in deaths very soon since mortality due to Covid-19 takes 6 to 41 days after symptoms arise. I currently refer to my chart every few days, and by the end of March I’ve estimated a total of 56,000 will have died world wide, and at 22,000 and a heavily growing rate, we won’t be far off from that. One answer I had for my husband when he asked me why I didn’t try to spread the word was, “If you knew the world was going to end, would you tell people or let them live their lives as normal?” That has stuck with me through out this more than anything. What would you do?
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