The coming Trump rally covid spike

[jp1]

So, I did a little back of the envelope math. Tulsa county Oklahoma has 500 current covid cases. And as of now that number is doubling weekly. With a population of 651,000 that means that roughly 1 in every 1300 people who live in the county has it, 1 in 650 will have it a week from now, etc. The place where the rally is going to occur holds 19,000 people with an overflow space of 40,000. Even if everyone with symptoms stays home the presymptomatic population at the time of the rally will likely be 1 in 1300 people since six days is the average time from infection to showing symptoms. Simple math indicates that 14 infectious people will be at the rally and 30 infectious people will likely be at the overflow site. (those numbers might be a bit high since covid affects minorities at a higher rate and obviously there won't be many minorities at the rally.) If cases spike like they did with 1 infectious person at a church service in South Korea recently there will be 2900 new cases per infectious person attending the rally. And that's probably a reasonable expectation because no one will be wearing masks or attempting to socially distance. And there will be lots of yelling and cheering spreading people's saliva droplets freely all over the place.

Looking at my crystal ball that calculates out to 127,600 new cases in the 2-4 weeks after the rally. I'm putting this here because it will be interesting to look back at the end of July to see how close or far off I was. Admittedly this won't be quite as clean of a prediction since undoubtedly not all the people attending the rally will be from Tulsa County, so the number of infectious people at the rally may be different, and the resulting infections will also be diffused beyond Tulsa to all the surrounding areas where rally attendees come from.

Yay freedom?

[happystuff]

Nice job. Definitely something to check back on.

[Teacher Terry]

We can only hope that the moron that’s holding this rally gets it.

[Tybee]

I hope everyone stays healthy, everywhere. Not a good thing to gloat about disease and death.

[frugal-one]

I hope everyone stays healthy, everywhere. Not a good thing to gloat about disease and death.

People are being stupid putting themselves at risk in that atmosphere. Wait, they say this is just like getting the flu! Did you ever hear of having to sign a waiver in case you get the flu? It will be hard to feel sorry for these people. I feel sorry for the medical people who will be required to look after their dumb -----!

[Tybee]

That's your right, and I feel sorry for anyone who gets this disease. And I feel repulsed by the gloating that goes on when people talk about "stupid" people getting sick.

[jp1]

Pointing out that people are senselessly putting themselves and others at risk isn't gloating. It's just pointing out that people are senselessly putting themselves and others at risk. They're either stupid or selfish. The people I will feel sorry for are all the people they come into contact with afterwards, the hotel workers, restaurant workers, grocery store workers, etc in their hometowns, who will be at risk of covid because of these people and the president's stupidity and selfishness.

[Tybee]

There seems to be an air of Schadenfreude at the prospect of a bunch of MAGA hat wearers falling sick.

[frugal-one]

There seems to be an air of Schadenfreude at the prospect of a bunch of MAGA hat wearers falling sick.

If it were church goers, golfers, or any group of people.... I would feel the same. As jp1 stated so succinctly, they are senselessly putting themselves and others who they come into contact with at risk.

[bae]

There seems to be an air of Schadenfreude at the prospect of a bunch of MAGA hat wearers falling sick.

I wouldn't wish this thing on anyone.