How bad is it? Bad, really bad - Part 10.5

Our previous post, labeled "How bad is it? Bad, really bad - Part 10" noted that current estimates - apparently being used by the governor - have a target of reaching "herd immunity" which is equated to immunity in the general population of 70%.* Of course, the 70% number is itself uncertain. But absent a vaccine, how far are we from 70%?

For LA County, confirmed cases as percent of the population are on the order of 0.1%. For California as a whole as a whole, the percentage is lower (since it includes rural areas where folks don't live cheek by jowl). For the U.S., the number is around 0.2% (because it includes the New York City metropolitan area which is the American version of Wuhan).

As many have pointed out, the numbers are probably too low because we don't have sufficient tests available. There may be lots of cases out there that are not being counted. But even if the numbers are off by a factor of, say, ten, we would be talking about a state number of under 2%. The point is that we are a very long way from 70%, which appears to be the governor's number. The only way to get to 70% fast would be a vaccine which we keep being told is a year to eighteen months away.

Yesterday, the governor unveiled a committee to be headed by Tom Steyer of a very large number of prominent people from business, labor, politics, etc., to plan for reviving the state economy.*** Let's put aside the fact that a huge committee really can't do anything but be a symbol. We already have a large committee: the legislature. When you cut through the noise, the current strategy of partial reopenings and partial shutdowns until we are at 70% means economic disruption for a prolonged period of a year to eighteen months (with a vaccine in that interval), longer if developing a vaccine takes longer than projected.

Our prior post focused on the number of deaths getting to 70% implied (absent a vaccine). But the economic disruption entailed will have a major negative impact on the state budget and therefore the UC budget. It means potential disruption of basic public services at the state and local level unless the federal government enacts some kind of bailout for the public sector.****
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-bad-is-it-bad-really-bad-part-10.html.
**One Stanford study of Santa Clara County suggested that the uncounted cases could be 50 to 85 times the recorded cases. Even so, the gap between .1 x 85 = 8.5% and 70% is huge. See https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-17/coronavirus-antibodies-study-santa-clara-county.
***https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Task-Force-on-Business-and-Jobs-Recovery.pdf.
****Yours truly lives in Santa Monica - a city with a triple-A bond rating - where the city manager just quit rather than deal with the unpleasant task of taking a hatchet to chop local spending.
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You can see the governor announce his economic revival committee at the link below:

or direct to https://archive.org/details/newsom-4-17-20