Prominent Doctor Does his Part to Spread Panic

Yesterday, I used a differential equation to predict how the coronavirus epidemic would pan out, and it made the future look very good. Total predicted deaths by June 5: 150,000, give or take. That sounds bad until you consider how many people will die during that time from the flu, the common cold, pneumonia, car wrecks, tobacco-related diseases, and so on. You have to remember that the world is a very big place, and a disease that kills 150,000 people isn’t a big deal.

Today I found an article quoting a Johns Hopkins professor. He’s trying to panic people. He says the number of actual cases is much higher than what we’re seeing, because testing isn’t going well.

For a minute, I wondered if I was on the wrong track. After all, I can only rely on data that’s available to me, so if the data is no good, neither are my predictions.

I’m not on the wrong track. I realized that after a short period of thought. It’s unfortunate the the Johns Hopkins doctor didn’t say what I’m about to say.

What is it that matters during this epidemic? The number of actual cases? Not at all. That figure means nothing. No one cares how many people get sick, because the symptoms generally aren’t very bad. The only thing that matters is the death toll.

The death figures are very solid. Why? Because dead people can’t escape diagnosis. If you have mild symptoms and you decide not to bother with the major annoyance of dealing with the post-Obama healthcare system, no one will ever put your case in a database. If you die, it’s a different story. They will know you died, and they will know what killed you. We know how many people are dying, regardless of how bad the testing program is.

Here’s something that will make people mad: the more actual cases there are, the better the news is. It increases the ratio of infections to deaths, and the inescapable conclusion is that coronavirus isn’t as bad as we thought it was. The death toll is a solid figure, so changes in testing won’t change it. The case total can only go up as testing improves, because it’s a mathematical certainty that we are missing cases. If the case total goes up, the death rate will drop. Say the current death rate is 3%, to make up a figure. If the total case number doubles, the death rate goes to 1.5%.

They think the real death toll is around 1%. The doctor thinks the actual case number in the US is at least 50,000 and could be 500,000. The official figure is 1600, so if the doctor is right, there are 30 to 300 times as many cases as we thought. If that’s true, the death rate is 30 to 300 times lower, making coronavirus less lethal than the flu. The rate would be three thousandths to three hundredths of a percent. The latter figure would put the coronavirus well below the flu death rate.

Any way you slice it, unless the death figures are unbelievably wrong, this disease is much less of a problem than people think.

Interesting thing: preacher T.B. Joshua prophesied that rain would come to China and wash the epidemic away. Since he said that, the China numbers have been just about flat. Hmm.