Morbid Stats: COVID19 Episode 1
As a data scientist, my creative outlet during these times of uncertainty is to crunch Corona* numbers. Out of curiosity, I wondered what would happen to the leadership of our esteemed democracy if they were to fall ill with the corona sensation sweeping the nation. This is purely a speculative exercise, and I suppose I should also insert the standard reminder that statistics are not predictions, but it sure is fun to speculate with math.
Up first, the Executive Branch
Trump’s Cabinet skews somewhat younger than the Senate, with an average age of 60 rather than 63. Nonetheless, many of them are in the most vulnerable populations by age group. The sample size, however, of 24 persons including the president makes it impossible to estimate how many infections or deaths might occur in the cabinet, so let’s see what it could look like.
Let’s assume, for the sake of the math, that we have close to a 100% spread rate in most of government because pretty much everything has been too little, too late. (This in no way indicates my desire to see the executive branch all sickened by the very virus they* first said was a hoax.)
Using the U.S. rates of hospitalization by age group, and U.S. ICU and death rates thus far, I estimate that eight members of the fully infected cabinet would require hospitalization. I broke them into the standard hospitalization age groups of <45, 45–54, 55–64, 65–74, 75–84, >85. Here’s what those numbers look like with a sample size that looks like the President’s cabinet* (*this is, again, a purely speculative exercise, since these individuals would be much better represented with population-wide analytics for the region they inhabit).
Just for fun, I applied the likely hospitalizations to the oldest eligible individuals in each age group since we know that being older increases the odds of having a severe case with the disease. Well, except for the 45–54 group, where I picked Alex Azar, given that he’s the most likely person to come into contact with the virus as a hazard of his position. Otherwise, we would also see Mike Pence, Betsy de Vos, and Gina Haspel hospitalized for the 55–64’s. This would also put Robert Lighthizer, Trump himself, and Sonny Purdue (Secretary of Agriculture y’all) in the hospitalized camp for their age bracket. Finally, as the only representative of the over 75’s, Wilbur Ross Jr. is also up to bat for that likely hospitalization in his age range. I take no pleasure, friends, in this list of possible coronavirus hospitalizations in the cabinet.
Luckily for everyone in the executive branch, this sample size is too small to kill off any of them. Unluckily for them, my numbers do not dictate what actually happens irl.
However, three of them would be likely to need an ICU bed. And folks, if those ICU beds have all been previously filled up and no room can be made for these VIPs patients, we could lose all three of them. Imagine if these three folks simply could not access ventilators because 30,000 people need them and there are only 400?! Well, without that artificial breathing-for-you-because-your-lungs-are-already-dead machine, they’d likely die.
That would be 2 of the 3 people in the Trump age demographic that were hospitalized, and one of the younger set. Y’all, if there is any poetic justice (also known as wypipo “karma”) in the world, this would give us President Nancy Pelosi.
Humor in the time of plague can only be black. So, take most of this as being written with tongue firmly planted in definitely-untouched-cheek. It is worth pausing to ponder, however, what exactly would happen to the systems of government in the event that something like this befalls federal leadership. If the pandemic spreads as widely as is expected, infecting up to 70% of people worldwide, what happens in a location in which either the leadership or the populace simply don’t believe it can happen to them? What are the rates of infection likely to be then? And what does the world look like as a result?
Over the coming weeks, it behooves us all to begin to think about what a post-corona world will look like, and what that means for the way we want to continue living on this planet together.
