Written and published on 17 March 2020

Dear Ones,

As you may know, the Chinese province of Hubei, which was the first part of the world to suffer the COVID-19 pandemic, has a population of 58.5 million people. Of those infected, the death toll according to the World Health Organization is 3,085 people.

There are about 39.6 million people in California. All things being equal (which may be far from the case) we might expect a coronavirus death toll in California of 2,088 people.

That is calculated thus: 3,085 Hubei province deaths, divided by 58.5M Hubei population, multiplied by 39.6M California population = 2,088 predicted State of California deaths.

As a percentage of the State of California population, that would be a mortality rate of 0.005 percent of the population; which is to say, a mortality rate of about five people in 10,000.

While far from ideal, those are pretty…