[Our correspondent @pdxsag
shares his latest thoughts below. I'm not as optimistic as he is and
I'm planning to write up my thoughts separately.]
In the
two weeks since my last
piece, the WuFlu has hit the United States head-on. I expect the
coming week will be the climax of the epidemic as far as the new-case
growth rate is concerned. Total cases are a lagging indicator, as are
mortality rates.
As for the oft remarked conundrum I believe I've figured out its
source.
Among highly rational thinkers the Covid virus, in isolation,
would not be a cause for a Societal Reset. Comparing it to recent flu
epidemics it's remarkable only for its speed, not its total
magnitude. Even a 10% CFR, if it's entirely among the oldest and
least healthy population is not an existential threat to the economic
health of functional society. The cold, rational fact is that these
are not productive members being lost. It is a psychological toll
only.
Among highly empathetic thinkers, however, the speed and
intensity that makes the Covid virus such a headline grabber means it
will elicit a societal response. If the social contract is
such that there already exists a state of “frayed nerves” and
institutional instability, the societal response will necessarily
have significant consequences.
Global economic
imbalances today are at such a scale they can no longer be
maintained. The Fed Reserve in tandem with the Political
Establishment has doubled-down on the status quo in 1994
(Mexican Peso Crisis), 1998 (LTCM Crisis), 2001
(Dot-com equity bubble followed by WTC and Gulf War II), and 2008
(GFC, biggest of them all). They have reached the limit of their
Martingale Strategy. A reset is inevitable.
As for the current events, the three states with the most liberal
and dysfunctional governments (as measured by budget deficit and
pension obligation ratios to GDP), California, Illinois, and New
York, were the first under official state-wide quarantine orders by
their respective governors.
(I'm sure that's only a
coincidence. As is the fact each of those three states has the
country's largest three metros, and those metros have the largest
foreign-born populations. It's just another coincidence. That New
York, whose Governor Cuomo was highly critical of President Trump's
early travel ban, had their 'patient zero' be a healthcare worker
that had been infected on a visit
to Iran is another total coincidence. Globalism is not to blame
for the unfortunate events, any more than China is to blame. It's all
an unavoidable coincidence that could happen to any country. There is
no causality here. The most highly credentialed experts in the
respective fields of economics and public health have studied it
carefully and assured us this is the case. /sarc)
The
question at hand with the outbreak raging across the United States
is: how bad is this disease really? In one sentence my
hypothesis is: SARS-CoV-2 causes metabolic disease to transition
from a chronic health condition to an acute one.
The most
damning study might be the one
from Italy that looked at a random sample of nearly 18% of the
death certificates where Covid19 was implicated. Only 0.8% were
negative for any other comorbidity. 47% were positive for 3 or
more.
It is reminiscent of what low-carb advocates say about
diabetes: no carbohydrate overload, no diabetes. Similarly, no
metabolic disease, no WuFlu. (Note, I am referring to the illness,
distinct from the virus, same as health policy experts refer to AIDS
distinctly from HIV.)
A close second is the following morbidity table from Spain. Nearly
19,000 cases are divided into age cohorts. The hospitalization, ICU,
and mortality rates for each cohort are computed. While
hospitalizations are high to be sure, they grow at a linear rate with
each age cohort. In contrast, the mortality rate is nearly flat until
turning exponential at the 40-49 year old cohort. (Hockey stick
curve, anyone.) I stand by my judgement that reasonably fit people
under the age 50 have nothing to worry about, and exceptionally fit
people in their 50's and 60's while taking prudent cautions, do not
need to self-isolate.
The following is a miscellany of threads I've seen and thought
about over the last two weeks:
Corona viruses originate from
bats. This is often stated in the media, but never developed. It
means corona viruses evolved to be spread under the environmental
conditions of bat caves, which is to say aerosolized fecal matter.
The ramifications for nursing homes, hospices, and hospitals are
profound. (It is no coincidence they are Covid19 hot-spots, and it
goes beyond the fact they service those people with the worst
health.) As for the home environment, mortality among family clusters
is very common. Should one member in the family fall ill you must
treat it like you would a norovirus in the home. If you have the
ability to segregate bathrooms, do so immediately. Bathroom hygiene
is paramount. Toothbrush heads should be kept submerged in a glass or
cup of diluted lysol. Towels should be changed frequently, and in the
middle of an outbreak removed from the bathroom itself. Hang them up
outside the bathroom and change daily. Always close the lid on the
toilet before flushing. Clean daily and use a tank disinfectant. (see
this
and this)
The first statement I recall President Trump having on WuFlu
was in late January. He said that by April the weather would be
warming up and it would all be fine. Of course he was widely derided
for such a flippant statement. Among the complaints the "intellectual
yet idiot" class charged was that he had no way of knowing a
wholly new virus would exhibit seasonality. While the IYI's are
technically correct, there's a multitude of factors that contribute
to the phenomenon. With so many factors contributing, it actually
makes the effect more robust since the WuFlu virus would have to
overcome all of them, rather than just one or two. Among the factors:
increased UV intensity kills the
virus (it evolved under the conditions found in a bat cave)
increased UV exposure increases
endogenous vitamin D and nitric oxide (
see)
April showers clean the air of
particulates
warmer weather increases humidity
which is good for mucus membranes
naturally occurring ozone in
outdoor air also has anti-viral and anti-microbial properties,
milder weather will result in more open windows in their homes
bringing in fresh outdoor air (
@mangan150)
while numerous cases of WuFlu have
been reported in tropical and sub-tropical countries, they've all
been from infected travelers bring it into the country. There have
not been any community-spread clusters in Singapore, India,
Thailand, Laos, or Vietnam, all of which (excepting India) are
popular Chinese tourist destinations.
- sauna
therapy, of course lacking a sauna, hot and humid summer days
will suffice
An anti-malaria treatment was first reported being used to good
success in China. It then began making rounds among
“autistic-nationalistâ€
ﾝ
twitter (high-IQ Trump supporters). It then began
getting attacked by progressive-liberal twitter. Finally, it was
acknowledged by President Trump both in a press conference, and in a
tweet directly putting the FDA on the spot. Whether the
hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin combo is as efficacious as the
initial study suggested (
1),
there are doubts (
2),
or some other off-label, generic combination presents itself, the
glacial bureaucrats in the NIH, CDC, and FDA are on notice that the
world is watching and suspicious of their gatekeeping. Good
times.
There may be a genetic component to Italy's high
mortality rate, beyond the age component and the large number of
Chinese sweatshops, er... visa holders working there in the garment
trade so that designer bags can overcharge for a Made in Italy label
(
see).
The ACE gene allele rs4343 gives an increased risk for hypertension,
diabetes, and all the usual metabolic diseases. Italians in Tuscany
have a 41% preponderance of haplotype D/D (
1).
Utah, the proxy for NW Europeans were next highest at 26% for D/D.
ACE2 is also a sex-linked gene on the X-chromosome. Much has been
made of the male-female disparity. It could well be a function of
heterozygosity, such as color-blindness or sickle cell trait, where in females the two X chromosomes give them better
fitness against the virus (
2).
Also apropos, Italy has 4X the seasonal flu deaths as the world-wide
per-capita average (
3).
I have a real, live, nearly first-hand to my own ears report
to share. My wife's friend has a brother that lives in Seattle. The
brother was feeling really unwell the week before last (2ndweek of
March) and went to the hospital figuring he had a case of WuFlu. The
hospital didn't have a WuFlu test at the time, but he tested negative
for all the usual suspects, seasonal flu, etc. The hospital told him
you probably have coronavirus, go home, don't go anywhere else for
two weeks, and don't come back to the hospital unless your condition
severely deteriorates. It took him 3 days to recover at home. He
ended up also giving it to his wife, but it was not as bad for her as
for him. All in all, it was a really bad flu, but... still just the
flu. They're in their lower to mid 40's. They are reasonably fit, ie.
typical of Seattle and the Pacific NW, but are not athletes or
anything of that nature.
Billions in opportunity cost -
foregone taxes, lost wages and revenues, unemployment insurance,
small business bankruptcies, etc. - are being spent by
governors imposing state-wide quarantines, but 1/1000th the amount is
not available for random community-wide testing to get a handle on
how broad the virus really is. The frightening CFR's (case fatality
rates) are based upon a restricted range for the denominator: we are
counting only the cases severe enough to present at a hospital, not
the 10, 100, 1000, times the number of cases, such as the brother of
my wife's friend, that do not get tested. Again, as we've seen in
South Korea and the Diamond Princess, asymptomatic cases may be 2 to
10 times the total number of cases. The CFR among the active,
work-age population may well be 0.01% instead of 0.1% that it appears
to be. A few private individuals have noticed and are responding
(
Sailer).
Likewise, just as the government was caught flat-footed with
regard to testing, they were, and remain flat-footed on masks. There
has been a huge disinformation campaign on the efficacy of masks,
despite the obvious benefit our lying eyes are seeing in the
mask-wearing countries of Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan. (
Sailer)
Why has this obvious lie received such little critical push-back?
WuFlu is a political lightning rod on social media. A novel
virus is about as close to a real-life case of Reagan's quip about an
alien invasion of Earth. Yet, it seems to be having the opposite
effect. It's as politicized as a Presidential campaign. For those
familiar with Scott Adam's concept of "Two movies, one
screen,
" WuFlu
checks all the boxes.
What does it all mean?
First,
sadly, the public health threat is real. About 10 million Americans
fit the high-risk profile of being severely obese and over 60 years
old. The CFR of that cohort is in the 3-6% range. This is not obscure
data. It is safe to assume the whisper number in the halls of power
is half a million dead Americans by election day.
That is a
headline risk politicians cannot abide. They have to respond. Since
they are poorly informed and poorly positioned to actually do
anything of actual value - the country has been resting on its
laurels, patting itself on the back that “we're number one,”
putting political considerations at the forefront of every decision
and experiencing "cost disease
"
and functional sclerosis among our public institutions
for arguably some 20 to 40 years, that it is as shameful as it is
predictable that we would not be able to respond in any effective
form or fashion - they fall back to their cognitive biases and
notions of justice.
For Democrats in progressive states, it
means shared sacrifice, more social safety-net, more Big Government
nanny-statism. The politicians that are comfortable micro-managing
shopping bags, soft-drinks, and carbon emissions are the politicians
that are going to be comfortable ordering everyone off the beach, out
of the parks, and sitting at home until further notice, regardless of
the cost or efficacy to the threat at hand. Also not to worry, if you
are too poor to feed yourself, the government will send paid public
servants to bring food to your door.
For Republicans, it's
the opposite side of the same coin. Distrust the self-anointed
experts. Mock shared sacrifice because for as long as anyone can
remember the sacrifices and the shares have gone in exactly one
direction. Trust private enterprise to solve every problem that comes
your way, while remaining conveniently oblivious to the
crony-capitalism that modern private enterprise has devolved into.
However, go down a level and what we are seeing is two sides
vying for supremacy in a new social-economic order that is set to
unfold. A Societal Reset appears at hand. The events this year, an
obvious propaganda campaign taking place on the public psyche
evidenced by the "two movies, one screen
"
in social media, speaks to the battle taking place.
The two sides are Chinese-aligned Globalism versus
Independent-Nationalist Free Enterprise.
One one side we
see Progressive Democrats and Big Business Republicans using "flatten the curve
"
as justification for a drawn-out economic depression
which necessarily and inevitably increases the power and scope of
government. Ironically enough, this is approach is akin to a cytokine
storm where the infection does not kill the patient, rather their
immune system reaction to the infection kills themselves. If we get
an economic depression, it will not be from the virus killing a large
segment of our working-age population, it will be from the
self-induced quarantines and shelter-in-place orders entirely
destroying the service sector in our service-oriented economy.
On
the other side we see President Trump seemingly (hopefully?) taking
the 1921 approach of a swift and severe recession to clear bad debts
(in nominal terms) and give time for the manufacturing sector to
repatriate and supply chains to reorganize into more fairly balanced,
pro-American terms.
The stakes are incredible and I reckon 98%
of the population is oblivious to the real contest taking
place.
P.S. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest Governor
Cuomo will replace an incapacitated Joe Biden before or very soon
after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention.
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