My Courageous Battle, Day 18, Plus: my Prediction Holds Up!

Try not to praise me as I force myself to face the keyboard yet again, in the midst of the pestilence. I know I’m an inspiration, but let’s not glorify me too much.

Yesterday, paper towels disappeared from local stores. As luck would not have it, I was running out. I have one 90% roll in the kitchen and maybe the equivalent of two whole rolls in the shop and upstairs man room. Last night, I decided to find out how bad things were. I went online and checked Amazon and Ebay.

Is it okay for a Christian to say “scum of the earth”? I am not sure, but I will risk it. I am amazed at the sliminess and selfishness of the American people. Hoarding is everywhere, and people are trying to sell paper towels for $15 per roll online. Amazon and Ebay permit it, and that’s even more amazing.

I got sneaky. I checked the Office Depot website. They had a six-roll package at the normal price! I pounced. I ordered ONE package for pickup. I know I should have ordered all they had and then started a business, but I guess I lack the entrepreneurial spirit.

Office Depot texted me and said there was “a problem” with my order. Yeah, either an employee snagged the towels, or the inventory was wrong.

I kept looking, and I saw they had their weird recycled store-brand towels listed as available. I had to order a 15-roll package. Now they say they’re waiting for pickup. Wonder if it will happen. Maybe a dirtbag will come in and offer them more money.

I do not need 15 rolls of paper towels. Looks like I have no choice, however.

I went to the grocery yesterday and saw a fresh new pallet of purified water. I loaded up! To the tune of one case. Come on. They’re not going to turn the water off, especially in a county where many people have wells. There is no point in hoarding water.

I drink purified water because I have had kidney stones. My well’s water is full of calcium. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t want the water.

I told a friend I was going to post a photo of the water on a dating site and try to land a gold digger.

Yesterday, I ordered some .308 ammunition. I already have tons of it, but I needed some match-grade ammo for target shooting. I ordered a measly 200 rounds. Today the store called me and said their policy was to limit purchases. They said I could have 100. I told them to forget it. For target use, 100 rounds won’t get the job done. There is no point in buying fewer than 200, and 200 would not be much.

Panic nuts are loading up on ammo, so the rest of us suffer.

This stuff is going on while I happened to be upgrading my gun collection. Yesterday, I thought about reversing my anti-AR-15 position. I don’t particularly like the AR-15. I was reconsidering. I thought they were accurate, and I like low recoil. I thought it might be good to pick one up.

I found out AR-15’s are not accurate at all. If you get 2 MOA, you’re doing great. Forget that. I don’t understand it, because the AR-15 is based on the AR-10, which is crazy accurate if you buy a reputable brand. My AR-15 idea is now on hold.

While I was thinking about it, I went online, and I saw that people are buying up AR-15’s. What on earth are they thinking? You can’t shoot a disease.

Guess I’ll wait a month before shopping for ammo again. Unless I see a good deal.

Today I got up and checked my epidemic prediction equation. The actual total is considerably higher than my best prediction, although it’s still really tiny compared to a real plague. Not even close to being close.

Now I have to tickle the equation.

Is the equation itself fundamentally wrong? I don’t think it’s that bad. It ought to work fairly well. If it’s within an order of magnitude, it will be a victory, albeit not an impressive one.

It should not work for the very start of an epidemic, the late middle, or the end, but it ought to be pretty good for the early middle. My guess is that my first constant was too low. Will I ever be able to get the right constant? I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get good data for the number of actual infections.

Another problem is that people who get over the disease eventually stop shedding viruses, so they drop out of the pool of individuals who can transmit the disease.

Whatever.

If you think about it, I’m not really predicting the number of infections. I’m actually predicting the number that will be recorded on the Johns Hopkins site, since that’s where the data comes from. But I consider it good enough for my hand-waving purposes. Lives do not depend on my blog.

Here’s what I have today. My new constant is 0.0643, and the initial value for infections is 90,000, on March 5. You can plug these figures in and play around if you want.

3/19: 214,585
3/20: 228,325
4/4: 579,249

My April 4 figure is up from 494,013.

What did my original equation predict for today? Let’s see. It’s 188,332.

You know what? That’s not bad at all. I’m off by less than 10% of the actual figure. That’s over two weeks, not two days. It’s very good. Dang! I didn’t realize the results were that accurate. I’m a genius! For now. Time to bow and run off the stage.

This is astonishing. I thought I was doing badly, but getting within 10% is better than the professionals. If it holds up, I’m going to look pretty good. I would have been thrilled with 30%.

The thing is, anyone with a math degree could do this. As much as I would like to be feted as a savant, there are probably 500,000 people in the United States who could have done what I’ve done. The C students could do it, no problem. An active math major at a minor university, in the middle of his class, could do a much better job. I hope, because those people end up designing bridges and elevators.

Today I looked at equations professionals use during epidemics, and they are not much different from mine. That was nice to see. They are a little more complicated, because they try to capture entire epidemics, including the inevitable plateaus and declines. I’m not interested in any of that. I just want to know how the disease will act while it’s ramping up.

Sooner or later, the disease will plateau. All of the susceptible people will have been infected, and the bug won’t be able to find new hosts. This is an important thing to think about. If you take my equation, or any equation describing a phenomenon that increases with time, and you don’t include a cap, it will go infinite. Obviously, coronavirus will not infect an infinite number of people. Even if my equation is perfected, it will only work for a few weeks or months.

I redid the math using a new constant: 0.0621. We’ll see how it works. I’ll show you some new predictions.

3/19: 214,585
3/20: 228,325
4/4: 579,249

If it’s way off for the next two days, I’ll have to go back over it.

One obvious problem with changing the constant over time is that if you do it enough, you’re just forcing the math to make you look like you’re right. We have a lot of time, though, so it seems safe to fiddle with it for at least a month.

The thing to keep in mind is that the total number of flu cases every year is on the order of 10 to the 9th power. Coronavirus is currently more like 10 to the 5th power. This is not a minor difference. It’s gigantic. And coronavirus has had ample time to mature into an epidemic. The flu only takes 100 days to peak, plateau, and end.

Of course, the mild nature of coronavirus is also very important.

The low infection total and the mildness of the disease are not going to be comforting to the outliers who get extremely sick or die, but they should be extremely soothing to the rest of us.

I suppose people will get angry with me for being lighthearted about the epidemic, but we joke about much worse things every day. We call cigarettes, which kill millions every year, “coffin nails.” Lighten up, Francis.

I guess I should get to Office Depot before they auction off my paper towels. It will be embarrassing to leave with 15 rolls. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll have a smaller package when I get there.