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The U.S. is staring at a Netflix-type apocalypse. You know, with feral animals eating human corpses, mutant plants reoccupying streets and buildings, empty restaurants and malls across the landscape\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n Well, that last part is true, anyway. Not because of the disease but rather hysteria.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ve heard the apocalyptic claims. Imperial College in London \u2013 in a claim that would later get walked way back to far less fanfare* \u2013 estimated as many as 2.2 million U.S. deaths<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, depending on how drastically the population is locked down, locked out, and locked in. To reduce that figure to a \u201cmere\u201d 1.1 million, we would need to live a gulag life \u201cuntil a vaccine becomes available (potentially 18 months or more),\u201d they said<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a> The CDC has issued an estimate<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of as many as 1.7 million American deaths.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet with lesser measures in place now \u2013 and for a very short period \u2013 the market has crashed, we are experiencing more unemployment claims<\/a><\/strong><\/span> than at the height of the Great Recession, and there looms a real possibility of a worldwide depression<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/a>. And there are those who say<\/a><\/strong><\/span> those measures aren\u2019t nearly draconian enough.<\/span><\/p>\n Do we really need to destroy the country to save it?<\/span><\/p>\n Consider that China has had fewer than 3,300 deaths<\/strong><\/span><\/a> even though the virus struck a country with a lousy healthcare system wholly unaware. Their epidemic peaked over five weeks ago<\/strong><\/span>,<\/a> with almost no new cases now. So with a vastly better health care system, the U.S. can expect a per capita death rate about 666 times<\/em> higher than the Middle Kingdom? Seriously, Imperial College?<\/span><\/p>\n You can quit reading right there. But please don\u2019t. The utter insanity here is worth documenting, as well as knowing why even the lower bound U.S. estimates are nonsense.<\/span><\/p>\n Fact is, the epidemic worldwide, far from \u201cgrowing exponentially,\u201d is slowing. And that was to be expected per what\u2019s called \u201cFarr\u2019s Law<\/strong><\/span><\/a>,\u201d which dictates that all epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. AIDS, SARS, Ebola, Zika \u2013 all followed that pattern. So does seasonal flu each year. COVID-19 peaks have already been reported in China, South Korea, and Singapore.<\/span><\/p>\n Importantly, Farr\u2019s Law has nothing to do with human interventions such as \u201csocial distancing\u201d to \u201cflatten the curve,\u201d and indeed predates public health organizations<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. It occurs because communicable diseases nab the \u201clow-hanging fruit\u201d first (in this case the elderly with comorbid conditions), but then find subsequent fruit harder and harder to reach. Until more or less now, COVID-19 has been finding that fresh fruit in new countries, but it\u2019s close to running out. So while many people assume that China contained its epidemic with draconian regulations, we actually have no evidence of that. Even the New York Times<\/em> admitted<\/strong><\/span><\/a> South Korea recovered far more quickly with measures nowhere on the scale of China, although of course the Times<\/em> still attributes that to human intervention, which assigning no role to Mother Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n When the coronavirus epidemic ends and the public health zealots inevitably slap themselves on the back for having prevented their own ridiculous scenarios, don\u2019t buy it. This isn\u2019t to say that thorough hand-washing several times a day and not sneezing and coughing in others\u2019 faces won\u2019t help<\/em>: It will. But without the authoritarian<\/a> and economically-devastating<\/a> measures the U.S. and other countries are taking that are wrecking the world economy, there will be no Apocalypse Now or in the future. The streets are empty not because of direct effects of the disease, but from fear and from government dictates; as in a cognate of \u201cdictatorship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mind, right now we\u2019re seeing a spike in cases because only now is testing becoming readily available<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the U.S. due to a delay in the CDC developing its own assay. This availability is almost universally hailed as only good, but has at least two bad aspects.<\/span><\/p>\n First, we\u2019re now picking up a lot more asymptomatic people who will be counted as \u201ccases\u201d just as much as people on death\u2019s door. This will further contribute to hysteria. Second, many who test positive will suddenly develop \u201cnocebo\u201d symptoms; the opposite of placebo. As I observed long ago<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, nocebo symptoms come from the mind but can be very real. They definitely can mimic COVID-19 symptoms. It\u2019s a good guess that hospitals are seeing their share of the \u201cworried well,\u201d people who were feeling pretty well before they tested positive and suddenly truly feel deathly ill. And they\u2019re not the only ones suffering as a result. This adds to the burden on severely stressed hospital workers already overwhelmed with patients whose symptoms do<\/em> result from COVID-19\u2014or from the many other ailments and injuries that haven\u2019t stopped afflicting people while our attention is focused on this particular virus.<\/span><\/p>\n On the positive side (no pun intended), the more you test, the lower the death rate<\/em> becomes because the denominator grows faster than the numerator. Rather than the 3.4% rate the WHO put out<\/strong><\/span>, <\/a>the current crude U.S. death rate is ABOUT 1.6%<\/a><\/strong><\/span> and will probably drop to less than half that as we\u2019ve seen so far in South Korea<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>at 0.6%<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Then as testing continues, the rate will drop even further. For the Imperial College figure to be correct, U.S. deaths would have to be 0.66 percent and every American would need to be infected<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n So how many deaths can the U.S. reasonably expect? If it\u2019s not the Chinese model, it appears to be the Italian one<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. At the least, the media tell us<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, \u201cItaly\u2019s Coronavirus Crisis Could Be America\u2019s.\u201d Really?<\/span><\/p>\n That country so far has had over 7,500 deaths out of a population of 50 million, but it appears cases peaked on March 21.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, at this point that\u2019s a stunning 9.5% crude death rate, by far the highest death percentage in the world. Which of course is why the media choose to focus on it, rather than other countries such as Germany with only about 240 deaths out of a much larger population.<\/span><\/p>\n But why is this happening in Italy? Partly it\u2019s because Italy just doesn\u2019t have a particularly good health care system. Even more specifically, last year the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ranked the U.S.the best-prepared country<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in the world to handle a pandemic in late 2019, whereas Italy came in at only 31 \u2013 below Mexico.<\/span><\/p>\n As Forbes<\/em> recently noted, U.S. hospitals have vastly more critical care beds<\/strong><\/span><\/a> than Italy, which in turn has more than South Korea. And you don\u2019t even want to hear about China. Not because they eat bats, but because \u201cbed\u201d pretty much equals \u201cfloor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Beyond that, Italy has the fifth oldest population in the world<\/strong><\/span><\/a> (whereas the U.S. ranks 61). We already knew from Chinese data that COVID-19 is overwhelmingly a killer of the old and infirm. An analysis<\/a><\/strong><\/span> by China\u2019s Center for Disease Control & Prevention found that most deaths occurred in those aged 80 and over.<\/span><\/p>\n Further, almost all those elderly dead had \u201ccomorbid\u201d conditions of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. Similarly, almost everyone who has died in Italy has been over age 70<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and virtually all had comorbid conditions: In fact, half of those who died had three or more. Almost nobody under 50 has succumbed and almost all who have also had serious existing medical conditions. This is a condemnation of the nation\u2019s health care system; not a portent of America\u2019s future.<\/span><\/p>\n And it appears a major factor may be how cases are recorded, which makes the assumption that dying from COVID-19 is the same as dying with<\/em> it. Given the strong overlap between the population susceptible to flu and COVID-19, it\u2019s certain that many who actually succumbed to flu are marked as coronavirus cases. We can expect that in the U.S. as well.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet another U.S. advantage is that the epidemic hit it later than Italy (and Asia, of course) and spring is in the air. Respiratory viruses usually hate warm, moist, sunny weather<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Hence flu arrives in the U.S. in the fall and disappears by April or May. We know the \u201ccommon cold\u201d is rare in summer and many colds are caused by four different coronaviruses<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n SARS was a coronavirus and simply died out between April and July, 2003<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. The media and public health officials desperately want you to think this<\/em> coronavirus is different, but the evidence so far is that it follows the usual pattern with scientific publications such as \u201cHigh Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of COVID-19<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The media and public health alarmists also cite MERS-CoV as an exception, but there\u2019s evidence that it is also complains: \u201cIf it\u2019s not the damned heat, it\u2019s the humidity!\u201d <\/a><\/strong><\/span>This year, the flu peaked in February<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. So it\u2019s possible that even now weather is affecting U.S. coronavirus spread. Will it come back in autumn? Probably. But by then many in the population will have had exposure immunity, hospitals will be better prepared, the worried well problem will be reduced because it will no longer be a \u201cnew\u201d virus, and we\u2019ll have time to see if anything in our arsenal of antivirals and other medicines is truly effective. (No, there will be no vaccine available.)<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, we apparently have a new definition for \u201cAmerican exceptionalism.\u201d Ignore what\u2019s happening in the entire rest of the world; ignore epidemiology; ignore virology; ignore common sense; ignore history. America, as Johnny Cash sang: \u201cGod\u2019s Gonna Cut You Down<\/a>.\u201d<\/strong><\/span> Just as SARS was supposed to (it killed zero Americans<\/strong><\/span><\/a>) and just as forecasters (seriously) predicted more American AIDS deaths<\/a><\/strong><\/span> than there were Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the harsh measures encompassing much of the country are simply unproven \u2013 beyond knowing that hermits don\u2019t get contagious diseases. South Korea didn\u2019t need them<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and Sweden hasn\u2019t used them<\/strong><\/span><\/a> even as its neighbor Norway has been praised for early implementation. For its efforts, Norway has reported over twice as many cases per capita and suddenly suffers its highest unemployment rate in 80 years<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n But as always we follow the dictates of the public health zealots, the media and power-hungry pols. Shame on us that after all these years we are once again ignoring reality for the dubious benefits of hysteria.<\/span><\/p>\n *Note: As this article was being written, Neil Ferguson, the head of the Imperial College study, simply threw his model away. Along with the U.S. one of 2.2 million deaths, he predicted the U.K. would have as many as 510,000 deaths. In an oral presentation he reduced the U.K figure<\/strong><\/span><\/a> slightly\u2026 to 20,000. So the model that launched a thousand articles wasn\u2019t worth anything more than the pixels it appeared with.<\/span><\/p>\nEPIDEMICS ALWAYS FLATTEN AND DECLINE ON THEIR OWN<\/h2>\n
THE ITALIAN JOB<\/h2>\n
IF IT\u2019S NOT THE HEAT, IT\u2019S THE HUMIDITY<\/h2>\n