R Naught We Getting Back To Work?

How do we get back to normal?

When do we get back to normal?

What will normal be?

I’m especially qualified to speak to this subject. I don’t know anything about virology, pathogens, health, or science. I do know something about people, fear, drama, healing, new normals, and … recruiting. Recruiting? Yes. I am a Network Marketer. We live and die by recruiting.

This is part satire, part tongue-in-cheek, part opinion, and part regurgitation of a bunch of stuff I have read that may or may not be factual. You be the judge if this perspective has any value.

Before the stay-at-home, lockdown, quarantine, COVID-19 was estimated, by “the experts,”to spread across the United States killing a few million people. These measures are designed to slow the spread of the virus easing the pressure on our health care system and reducing the number of deaths to perhaps 100,000 to 200,000.

These measures seem to be working. As long as people do not breathe on each other, touch each other, or touch anything that each other has touched we can flatten our curves like runny pancakes.

The price we are paying to slow the spread is a majority shut down of our economy … incomes vanishing, assets drying up, life savings and retirement funds dropping. The only things that are flourishing are coyotes, dolphins, and city birds. This is a wake-up call for people. People are, perhaps for the first time ever, not taking their jobs or businesses for granted. They are looking at their financial IQ and saying:

"Whoa, I need to bone up on assets, liquidity, cash flow, essential expenses, passive income, etc. Why? My primary income just got nuked with no warning."

(Photo by Gent SHKULLAKU / AFP) (Photo by GENT SHKULLAKU/AFP via Getty Images)

So, what do we do after we flatten the curve? We go back to work, right? The pressure to do so is deafening. We are like a river of pent up raging current about to bust the dam of reason and common stay-at-home sense. As soon as anyone can rationalize it, we will be ushered back to work. After all, we racked up trillions in new debt our taxes have to pay off. We will burst the dam as we rush back into income and all the life that comes with it.

But, what happens to the virus when we go back to work? Does it die a painful, deserving death? Does it move on to another planet? Does it migrate back to bats and leaves us alone?

Doubtful. Consider, it may be the new normal. Life and death with COVID-19.

There are 2 variables on the side of the virus that determines how big of a threat it is.

1. The R Naught or R0 Factor

R Naught: A mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease is. It's also referred to as the reproduction number. It's an estimate of how many others an infected person will infect or spread the disease to.

The R Naught of COVID-19 is currently estimated to be about 3. That will no doubt change with more evidence.

If the R Naught is less than 1, a virus will die out quickly and not reappear organically.

If the R Naught is more than 1, the virus will grow organically … until a cure or prevention is invented and used.

The Flu has an R Naught of 1.3 which is why it is and always will be with us … it is part of our norm. No one is freaking out about it even though it is killing 50,000 people a year. At the time I'm writing this, US COVID-19 deaths are approaching 20,000.

COVID-19’s secret R0 technique is that no one knows they have it for 10-14 days. They don’t go to the hospital. They don’t get treated. They don’t self-quarantine. They don’t even wash their hands.

80% of the people infected experience mild flu-like symptoms and likely will never get tested. That impacts the R0 factor given that most of the people infected don’t know they are infected … their data never hits the stats. The R0 may be much higher. And, we won’t know until testing is omnipresent, free, and fast.

I know something about R0 factors as a recruiter of recruiters. If I recruit someone and they don't recruit anyone their business dies a natural death. If they recruit 2 people who each recruit 2 more people it grows exponentially. If they recruit 4 who recruit 4 it explodes.

COVID-19 would be a 7 figure earner in Network Marketing.

2. The Mortality Rate

(Photo by Daniel SLIM / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images)

The percentage of infected people that will pass away. The mortality rate of the Flu is about 1 in 1,000 infected.

COVID-19’s lowest estimate is 1 out of 200 with some geographic examples up to 3.5 out of 100.

However, remember, given most people that have been infected never got tested the mortality rate is likely much lower. Still, it’s obvious that this is a deadly virus.

With an R0 of at least plus 1 COVID-19 is here to stay. IF the mortality rate is 0.4% the annual death toll in the US can be expected to be 200,000 a year. Maybe it will be far less.

200,000 deaths a year would rank it as the third-largest source of mortality in the US behind Heart Disease and Cancer.

One way we Network Marketers could look at the mortality rate is even if it is 5%, which it isn’t, that would mean that 95% of those that get it recover nicely. While in Network Marketing our mortality rate is just the opposite. 95% of those that get infected (inspired) to build a huge team, pass away (they don't make it).

I told you I know something about this.

Top 11 Causes of Death in the United States

1. 650,000 Heart Disease
2. 600,000 Cancer
3. 200,000 COVID-19 (early and unqualified estimate)
4. 170,000 Sudden Accidents
5. 160,000 Respiratory (Asthma, Bronchitis, Emphysema, COPD)
6. 146,000 Stroke
7. 121,000 Alzheimers
8. 83,000 Diabetes
9. 55,000 Influenza (Flu and Pneumonia)
10. 50,000 Kidney disease
11. 47,000 Suicide (This is a serious and preventable problem)

Deaths that are notable trivia mentions

1. 500 Commercial Air Travel
2. 25 Lightning Strikes
3. 1/2 Sharks (16 attacks a year with one death every other year.)

COVID-19 ranks up there with shark, lightning, and commercial airline fatalities in terms of the emotional drama attached to them. It took that kind of drama orchestrated by the media, health care establishment, and finally, our government to motivate us to take this seriously. They yelled SHARK at every beach in the country. Everyone except drunk spring breakers ran for the hills. The odds are better that you would get stuck my lightning twice in the same day than to die of a shark attack, but oh the FEAR! False Evidence Appearing REAL is very motivating

The odds are three times better that you will die of cancer and over three times higher that you will die of a heart attack than COVID-19 (based on these initial projections). Notice how you are not glued to the TV, freaked out about those causes of death. Why? Because they snuck up on us over many decades. They are normal. They are not a sudden intruder in our home. They live with us. We live with them.

(Photo by Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images)

How do we get back to normal?

• Get used to it.
• Ease out of fighting it.
• Ease into accepting it.
• Figure out the rhythm of it.

Most of us are going to get COVID-19 just like we all got the flu. This virus may kill as many of us a “Sudden Accidents” the number 3 cause of death now. We don’t know when those are coming. They are tragic, shocking, sad, and create massive setbacks in our lives. COVID-19 may live with us the same way.

And, as we attempt to get back to work COVID-19 will come back. In some places with an elderly population, bad diets, and poor immune systems it may rage back. It's going to be a bit of a Wack a Mole. There is going to be an ebb and flow. We tamp it down, we go back to work, and it comes back so we stay at home and tamp it down again. See-sawing our way to normal. Compound this chaos times 50. 50 different states all working and hiding at different rhythms. We are going to have to learn a new balancing act of how we live in such a way that we make a living and manage how this thing keeps creeping back into our lives.

Or, perhaps, we just intentionally get it. Go volunteer at a hospital. Get it over with. Get the antibodies. Become immune … superhuman … able to walk down any street, take an Uber, sit down fearlessly in any restaurant that dares to be open. People won’t know whether to fear or revere you.

Maybe these are part of the new norm circa 2021

• (Photo by Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)
  A TSA type screening process at all airports, public transportation, hotels, resorts, and booze cruises. Everyone gets a temperature check and a finger prick. If you light up the screen you get bagged, tagged, and sent home.
• A “Home Office” becomes more standard than a garage in new homes and remodels. (What do we need a garage for since we can’t go anywhere?)
• Gut health, nutrition, wellness, and stress reduction are the most important sciences. (Whoa ... what’s that stuff?)
• Our financial IQ goes through the roof. Now people are aware of their money, income/expense, debt, residual income, and investments. (We are never getting cold-cocked like that again.)
• Anyone that is in public with cold or Flu symptoms is publicly shamed back into their house.
• Anyone that coughs chronically behind us on an airplane is tossed out.
• Everything we touch commonly from elevator buttons to doorknobs to the company coffee pot gets sanitized before and after each use. (Remember those guys in the funny suits that used to push the elevator buttons for our great grandparents?)
• More important than lipstick and our cell phones, is the personal hand sanitizer we carry with us at all times in 100 different shapes and colors.
• Companies that invent and manufacture "whole room laser and blue light sanitizers" explode overnight.
• The handshake is awkwardly optional and at the last possible moment like the side hug replaced by some kind of glancing elbow click. The handshake and hug are so habitually engrained in our DNA that we unconsciously lose our minds and do them only to be totally humiliated at our mindless digression.
• We, obsessively, wash our hands and other people’s hands for them. “Here, let me get those for you!"
• We avoid public restrooms like the plague. If we have to go we block the entrance with the trashcans while we sanitize the whole place.
• We wipe down the Uber before getting in ... and then the driver ... and then we take his temperature.
• Those of us that are naturally cautious, wear masks in public … all the time.
• Those of us that are fearless, Mt. Everest kind of folks, go commando style or maskless. We are seen as crazy, reckless, swashbuckling heroes.
• Nobody sits in the front row of my workshops since I tend to spray those seats with spit.
• Bank robberies go through the roof since everyone looks like the suspect.
• Common language in the Network Marketing community becomes, "What’s your R0?"Referring to how many people you have recruited.
• And, 1,000 more new norms.

Remember, I do not pretend to be a doctor or a scientist. I am a Network Marketer. That is my expertise. It's oddly suitable to speak to this tragedy. This is just a perspective, part entertainment and part education. Don’t lecture me on where I got my facts wrong. I got them off the internet. "They"said these things, so I KNOW them to be true.

It will be fun to look back on this in a year to see just how wrong I am.

The Work is Worth It,

Richard

P.S. Comment below! Tell us what you thought as you read this blog.