This is the new mantra being spewed by the none believers now that the infection rate has destroyed their earlier argument that the virus is not a problem in the USA. Here is the full story as to why our mortality rate is trending so low right now…
EARLY in the spread, relatively few need medical care at this time. What happens with these pandemics is the medical care is overrun because too many get infected too fast and out of those infected, the numbers needing medical attention override the care available. Once this is the trend, the mortality rate will begin to increase sharply, just as we have seen in Italy.
When looking at data sets we have this thing in occupational safety and health called the 95th Confidence Interval. In simple terms, this means we are 95% confident that our data/sampling was done over enough shifts and production variations that our data analysis is 95% confident. So going out into the plant and doing our sound level survey on the 4th of July when the plant is not running and taking one set of readings which will tell us we do not have a noise concern is very misleading. That first sampling is more like a 5% confidence interval and we need MORE RELIABLE DATA.
So early on with the infection rate, when it is at a level we can manage we will have a chance to control the mortality rate; however, if the infection rate ramps up, that will inevitably cause more hospitalizations and therefore the probability of an increase in the mortality rate will increase. So just like process safety… PREVENT – PROTECT – MITIGATE!
Right now we are still in the PREVENTION phase.