Sticking to my Heuristic Guns

The other day, I predicted the coronavirus epidemic would fizzle. Time has passed, figures have changed, and now I have a chance to backpedal and save face. Here is my new prediction: the coronavirus epidemic will fizzle. In fact, I would say it HAS fizzled.

Let’s talk about a typical flu season in America. We can use 36,000,000 as a good typical number of cases, because it’s true. Let’s say the season lasts 4 months or 120 days, which is more or less true.

How many new cases do you need every day in order to maintain an epidemic? Here’s the answer: 300,000.

Per day.

In one country.

Which comprises about 1/20 of the world’s population.

COVID-19 is something like 90 days old, and it started in China, which has about 5 times America’s population. To have a typical American-style flu season–not exceptional or catastrophic–China would need 1.5 million new cases per day.

Per DAY.

As of this moment, the WORLDWIDE total for COVID-19 is about 95,000. Mind you, this is after the Chinese did everything they could to make it spread.

Am I missing something here? Did I drop a decimal point?

So, unless I made a howling error I can’t spot, COVID-19 is not doing well at all. China developed around 90,000 cases in 90 days, or…let’s do the math…1,000 per day. In America, this would correspond to 200 per day. So 24,000 per season. So imagine you went to one college basketball game, and everyone there got the flu. That’s what you’re panicking about.

I don’t get it. I’m actually using the Windows Calculator app to confirm obvious things like, “36,000,000 divided by 120 equals 300,000.” I can’t understand why people are panicking. How can the medical establishment be so wrong? How can I be right when they’re wrong? Is it really possible? Surely I’m overlooking something.

A commenter suggested the disease was underreported here. If it’s underreported, it sort of proves my point. If hundreds of thousands of Americans were down with a new bug with a high death rate, it would be impossible for it to be underreported. Doctors aren’t total idiots. They would figure it out, especially with “VIRUS” in the headlines every day.

You can say the cases weren’t reported because the symptoms were too mild. Again, I win. If the symptoms are too mild to drive people to doctors and spark record-keeping and investigation, then COVID-19 isn’t a major problem.

Today I saw a graph showing how the disease is doing. It flattens out toward the right. That means the rate of new infections isn’t going up. That’s not how an epidemic works. In an epidemic, you would expect a graph that keeps going upward until saturation is reached.

If you love worrying, and you get mad at people who discourage it, you have a common character flaw, and it will not surprise me if you get mad at me. That being said, I have to say something that will make you even madder. The epicenter of the epidemic is Wuhan, China, and Wuhan’s population is…take deep breaths…11 million. So even if every case in the world were in Wuhan, less than 1% of the residents would be affected.

You’re going to get REALLY mad when you read this next statistic. Guess what percentage of the world’s population caught the Spanish flu. Come on. Guess.

The number is…27.

Guess what percentage of the world’s population it killed. Unless you got so mad you left this page.

Here you go: 5%. Give or take.

That’s not the percentage of infected people who died. That’s the percentage of all humans on earth who died. The death rate for infected people would have been something like 20%. Again, for people who think looking up exact numbers is somehow indicative of a scientific mindset…it’s not. If the actual figure is 15% or 25%, I’m still really, really right. The Spanish flu was a bona fide plague, and so far, COVID-19 wouldn’t make a wart on its butt.

Things are looking worse and worse for people who find optimism hateful.

You can make really bad arguments like, “The actual number of flu cases in the US last year was 23,405,203, so YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID.” That won’t work. We’re not dealing with figures that have to be precise. If we’re within a factor of 10, I’m still way right. When the number you need to hit is 1.5 million or anything like 1.5 million, and the actual number, which is known, is 1000, you can’t fix it with corrections of 30% or 50%. You have failed by a factor of 1500. You can’t recover from that.

Look; imagine you went to the store to buy a jug of cheap wine, and the cashier asked you for $15, and you offered her one cent because it’s practically the same.

See what I mean?

What if it turned out you had a customer loyalty card, and the price was actually $5.00?

Nope. No wine for you.

When you couple this with the fact that COVID-19’s death rate is comparable with that of the flu, except for places where doctors are incompetent or restrained by face-obsessed Asian politicians, the hysteria looks even worse.

“Oh, no! You might get the flu, which has a low death rate that mainly affects people who are old or sick! Or you might get a somewhat similar but much rarer disease with the same kind of death rate, and which only causes minor symptoms in most people!”

That’s not scary.

Here’s something else: the spread of COVID-19 is slowing down in China. The Chinese are very dirty. Sorry to say it, but it’s true. They blow their noses in the street. They let their kids defecate in public. Their food markets are horrifying. On top of this, the Chinese have a culture of selfishness, so they’re not likely to do their best to protect each other from infection. Finally, the Chinese government has done all it could to promote the spread of the disease. Still, the rate of new infections is dropping. If the infection has been a total flop in the very place where it has the most chance of succeeding, how is it supposed to turn into a global plague?

I’m trying to find out how I can be wrong about this, but I can’t see it. I’m not a doctor, and many doctors are worried, so you would think they knew something I don’t. Where is it? How is a failed Chinese epidemic supposed to turn into a deadly worldwide epidemic?

As of today, I say the epidemic is going nowhere, barring an unforeseen mutation. This is just my common-sense guess based on a total of maybe 45 minutes of web surfing, so take it for what it’s worth. If I’m completely wrong, it will be interesting to find out what I failed to take into account.