Herd Immunity Update

Unlike Sleepy Joe, I will try, in the following post, to keep my decimal points in the right place.

Now, the World Health Organization has recently estimated that 10% of the world’s population has been exposed to Covid-19 (see: MSN Story) ... that’s about 730 million people! If we compare this to the World Meters actual reported numbers, roughly 36 million, we quickly realize that WHO is estimating the worldwide multiplier between asymptomatic to symptomatic cases is almost 20X.

If this multiplier be true (hate to rely on WHO) and applies to the U.S., then total Covid cases (asymptomatic+symptomatic) cases here might easily approximate 160 million (20x the 8 million that have  been reported to date). Now, stay tuned kind readers ... this is damn close to 50% of our American population (330 million).

Finally, herd immunity is generally estimated at 50-60% ... so we are also getting damn close to herd immunity (a vaccine should put us over the top) ... the place where we should see a dramatic drop-off in our Covid infection rates ... and may well have achieved it in places like New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey already ... where current new-case statistics seem to confirm this possibility.

Have I made your day a little brighter?


Afterward ... see: Politico Article

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Scaredy Cats

President Trump recently “joked” about the best way to reduce the number of new coronavirus cases would be to reduce virus testing. There is no doubt that our testing has expanded almost ten-fold since our last pandemic peak in April. However, the number of new cases are only roughly twice what they were in April. This comparison has a wrinkle ... tests for antibodies done back then ... in two places in California and one in New York State suggested the real (asymptomatic) cases were 10 to even 40 times higher (pick 10) ... which, given our testing capability back then, our April peak could have been, in reality, as much as five times higher (10/2) than our current peak. In other words, our current “Covid spike” is a convenient fiction ... being used for political advantage.

This possible conclusion is borne out by also looking at coronavirus deaths during the same period (see:Washington Post Numbers) which are down to a third of what they were back then. Thus, new deaths are better relative to new case by a factor of 6 (down by 3 x up by 2). Now we have better virus treatments that should account for some of this difference ... but, there seems no doubt that most of the increase in new cases today can be attributed to better and more extensive testing  ... now totaling over 48 million ... the best in the world (other than China’s questionable numbers). And it should thus be the number of new deaths ... not the number of new cases ... that should be the better metric when measuring progress in combating this pandemic.

But why might Trump suggest, even in jest, that testing should be reduced? Because the Democrats and their media pals are focusing on the current fallacious “spike” in new cases to panic states into re-closing their economies and not opening their schools ... both of which would dampen Trump’s re-election chances in November.

Human nature being what it is ... if enough scaredy cats believe that President Trump’s policies are putting them at greater risk, they will be less inclined to keep him in office ... even though he might be doing what is right for our country. What is that old saw? “Perception is reality.”

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Calculations

On ABC this AM, Martha Raddatz was grilling the head of the FDA, Dr. Stephen Hahn, with her buzz-saw confrontational style, asking him if Trump was correct when he said yesterday that “99 out of 100 people who get COVID-19 will be Ok?”  ... clearly making it blatantly apparent that the Orangeman was, once again, lying (#18,587).

Now, the CDC-official death rate from this virus is 0.2% ... see: USA Today Story ... but authorities believe that there may be 10 to 20 times more asymptomatic cases than those officially diagnosed. Even ignoring this multiplier, those CDC stats suggests that just 2 people out of 1,000, who get COVID, die. And even if five-times as many who die suffer other side effects, we still are just approaching Trump’s assertion.

QED. The Donald wins again.

Obvious Truth

If it is quite rare (according to the WHO ... and contract tracing in multiple countries) that asymptomatic people can transmit COVID-19, then only symptomatic people need to self-isolate, wear masks and social distance ... see: NewsMax Story ... which was Dr. Fauci’s original position before his politics got the better of him.

This suggests that lockdowns were only valid until we learned this fact ... and asymptomatic people, whether infected or not, wearing masks and social distancing are just virtue signals.