Eager loading, as you have implemented above, will not cache counts. What you may be looking for to prevent those multiple “SELECT COUNT…” queries is a counter_cache.
You can implement it as follows:
class Blurb < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :person, counter_cache: true
end
…and then add a column to your Person table called blurbs_count
You can also specify a custom column if you so desire:
belongs_to :person, counter_cache: :count_of_blurbs
See: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html for more info.