More Heresy?

Democracy dies in darkness.

Here is another dissident researcher who disputes much of what we have been told regarding how we are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. I post this not because I necessarily believe it ... but because the medical debate should not ... and cannot be one sided.

Watch it post haste before our Google masters denounce it as heresy (it might well be ... how can one possibly decide? ... but it still needs a voice) and forbid us from seeing it.

One thing however I have learned over the last three months ... epidemiologists are seldom right ... no matter how definitive and confident they sound. This “science” is far too political for my taste.

Afterward: For more on Judy Mikovitz see: Wikipedia Entry.

Obviious Truth

Epidemiology is the most unscientific science next to climatology ... both being only slightly better than alchemy. — Anon.

Epidemiology

Today, dear reader I am going to play an epidemiologist. Given how poorly they have performed to date, I don’t see how I could do any worse. I also realize that many of my assumptions here will be wrong ... but, hopefully, they will be offsetting errors.

Way back on February 5th, I published a blog that, using data from a Taiwan newspaper, I estimated that China’s coronavirus numbers were off by a factor of 10 for reported cases ... and by a factor of 100 for deaths ... see: Straight Skinny. (I am now backing off this 100x mortality factor and now estimate it was more like 50x.) Current “official statistics” have China cases at 81,907 and deaths at 3,336. We know that these are fudged numbers and that the real statistics should be more like 820,000 cases and 115,000 deaths. One more adjustment: a German investigation has shown that there are about three asymptomatic cases for every symptomatic one ... see: Reason.com Article. Ergo, China’s actual cases were likely more like 2,460,000. This would place China’s mortality rate at 4.5% ... close to what it allows in its “official” numbers.

Now let is look at things from a different angle:

Wuhan, China (an urban area of some 21 million people) now seems to achieved herd immunity since things have been reopened there completely.

Coronavirus might produce herd immunity at about a 33% penetration rate (a number developed during previous pandemics)

Meaning 7 million people in Wuhan might have been infected ...including asymptomatics

Assuming 66% were asymptomatic (German study) ... or 2.3 million exhibited symptoms

Assume  mortality rates for symptomatic coronavirus patients approximates 1% ... 10x seasonal flu rates

Meaning that there had been about 230,000 deaths in Wuhan

So one model says 115,000 actual deaths ... the other one comes up with 230,000 deaths ... exactly twice that number. Let’s split the difference ... guessing the actual number of Chinese deaths was 172,000! This is a little over 0.01% of the total Chinese population.

This would suggest that we might have that same mortality proportion here in the US ... with similar mitigation rules as China ... producing around 52,000 (+ or - 17,000) COVID-19 deaths ... or even more on the downside due to our better testing and therapeutics. We’ll see if I should take up this new profession ... or slink away in shame!

Afterward: Dt. Oz said on TV last night that herd immunity took 65-70% being infected. My numbers might still work out if one assumes that  9 or 10 million fled Wuhan before it was shut down.

COVID-19 Questions

- What country has executed the most effective strategy in combating this pandemic? And what was it?

- How many celebrity grandstanders have claimed to have been infected with coronavirus, when they weren’t ... just to grab some headlines?

- How come epidemiologists are producing such a wide range of pandemic predictions with their “models?” One would think that this process should be settled science after we have been through a number of pandemics?

- Why did we ... and the rest of the world ... not shut down our economies during the much more severe Spanish flu in 1918-19?

- Is coronavirus a STD?

- What are the real Chinese infection and death numbers? 10-fold higher ...or even greater than that? What punishment might be levied on China for the worldwide consequences of this duplicity?

- Why are all the American job losses only in the private sector ... while government workers seemingly are immune to layoffs? And will these same government workers also be receiving the $1,200 @ coronavirus stimulus checks for (not) being unemployed? We might also add to this bonanza class retired people (like myself) who have had no interruptions to our income? And private sector employees who have not been let go from their jobs?

- What percentage of our population needs to be infected/recovered with or vaccinated against coronavirus to provide us herd immunity? Does this differ with different diseases (a function of transmissibility)?

Dark Sciences

We have learned from our current pandemic that epidemiology is a grey science ... not a dark science like climatology and economics. — Anon.