The focus today remains on my immediate area. However, I will spend a ittle time on geography this time.
In my own county, the number of cases remained steady. So, I decided to look a bit deeper into the the population density. I found something interesting. The infection rate resembles Williamson County. There is one case per 7k people. Does that hold up in general? Not exactly, but it is still in the ballpark, so to speak. Williamson County has about half a million people, versus 20k for Llano. There are 3 cases in Llano. Williamson had 71 at last count.
With those numbers, we may be able to predict a few things. Since some of the counties in Texas have fewer than 7000 people in them, we can expect that there won't be any cases there. Or if there are, it won't be many. Indeed, a survey that I have done over the last few weeks bears this out. Population density drives the total number of infections in a county.
This is probably not news though. So I'll move on to geography. In the Wikipedia entry in Llano county, there was an Indian fight less than 20 miles from my place. A group of 21 Apaches made a stand on a hill close to modern-day Highway 71. Apaches had a rather fearsome reputation. This took place shortly after the Civil War. During the War, the Army in this region had more trouble with the Indians than with the Unionists.
Not too far from here, in Williamson county mentioned above, there was a huge flood that killed a bunch of people. It is hard to see how such a thing could occur unless those people were near a creek or river. The closest major river is the Colorado, but that doesn't go through Williamson county. Actually, there are a few high spots. Any high spot will have the rainfall going downhill towards the low spots. Thus, any spot that doesn't seem all that low could still see a lot of runoff. Maybe that is how it happened.
Just my opinion here. I think we are all too soft and scare too easily. From the looks of it, this thing won't last too much longer. Looking at it from the perspective of history, there have been a lot worse things. Indians could wipe out entire families. So could a flood. The oldtimers had it a lot worse than we do.
One other thing. If it does end in the next month, by election day, people may have forgotten a lot of this. I recall in 2008, Hurricane Ike played hell with Houston traffic. A lot of the street lights were out. It caused major traffic delays all over town. But in a few weeks, it was like it never even happened. At least, in that respect.
In 2005, people were in such a panic about Hurricane Rita that they caused 70-mile long traffic jams. It made the national news, you may recall. Did anybody learn anything from that? Probably not much. Back then, they cleared the shelves at the supermarkets. Does that sound familiar?
Maybe someday, we'll learn. But I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
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