Besieged. /bəˈsējd/ adjective

(of a place) surrounded by armed forces aiming to capture it or force surrender. “the besieged city”

Ena asked how I was doing, how I felt. “Besieged” was the answer to came to mind first. I feel like the packages on the front step are little armies waiting to invade. The groceries I’m try to sanitize and unpack have tiny assassins hidden within. When I go for a walk, the people on the street are secret agents for the enemy empire.

She is recovering from surgery – still on crutches – and doing well. Our GP called to say that she looked at Ena’s chemical stress test (cardiac test) and that the results looked normal to her. We talk with the cardiologist tomorrow afternoon (by phone). In the mean time, she is lounging with her leg up, helping where she can, and plowing through novels otherwise.

Our very lovely and fun neighbor, Maggie, sewed face masks for us. It is awesome to have great neighbors. I have promised that when this is over, we will gather at our house and I will open some lovely Blanc de Blanc and we will breathe a great deep breathe.

All that said, besieged is how I feel. Watching over Ena’s recovery, and running the house, while trying to keep SARS-CoV-2 at bay, while managing my anxiety is making me a bit nutty (at best). So I look for some external rational help.

I look at the numbers for Washington and we are doing well. I take solace in that. We have had 338 deaths (at the time of this writing). If the fatality rate is 1% (1% of people who get the virus die), then we have had a total of 33,800 infections overall. If the fatality rate is 2%, then that number is about 17,000. We have had about 8,000 positive test results which, if you take that 50% of people who get COVID-19 don’t show any symptoms, lines up with 17K total cases.

All that means that there aren’t actually that many people out there in the whole population of Washington who are contagious at any moment in time. On Saturday (April 4th) 28 people died. That means (following the math above for 1% and 2% fatality rate) there were 1,400 to 2,400 infected people on Saturday. Washington state has 4.8Million people. That is pretty low odds of running into an infected person. If I am thinking about this right.

The other interesting number is the number of positive tests out of total tests. Given that we are testing only people with COVID-19 symptoms, the positive rate is less than 10% (just over 91,000 tests administered, just under 8,000 positive). Chance are good that if you have flu like symptoms, you have the flu.

With all this said, I hope for summer-time slowing of the disease and quick development cycle for a vaccine.

We did a brilliant thing with a whole chicken. Maybe I’ll write about that next time. Until then, stay well.

P.s. I love this from Das Frank. It is available on their site.