Those who Can’t Learn the Lessons of Basic Math are Doomed to Repeat Them

The coronavirus news continues to alarm and disappoint…liberals and journalists (but I repeat myself).

As people who read my blog know, I put together a very simply differential equation intended to predict how the disease would spread. I touched the equation up a couple of times, but after I started getting excellent agreement, I decided to leave it alone and accept the error. I thought this would give me more credibility. You can’t change a forecast every day. That’s not forecasting. That’s present-casting.

A couple of days ago, I came very, very close to nailing the actual total number of cases. Today, things are much worse. I’m only within about 9%!

Yes, that was sarcasm. An accuracy of 9% is beyond my wildest dreams. It’s the stuff of Joe Biden’s nightmares. He really needs a plague to get him in office.

Actual figure today, worldwide: 480,446.

Predicted figure: 437,040.

Flu cases: 650,000,000.

Biden is a MeToo nightmare. He is famous for his creepy behavior with the ladies. Trump has already been inoculated againt MeToo. They have exhausted their pop-gun ammunition already, and he survived. They will look stupid shooting the same rounds at him again. Not that some won’t try.

Biden needs a distraction and a stick to hit Trump, and the failed plague is turning out to be a pretty soggy stick.

To get back to the math, for the moment, the epidemic is acting a great deal like my equation, and that should continue for some time. I think the numbers will outpace my equation to some degree, and then as the epidemic dies out, my equation will outpace the epidemic and become invalid.

I’m hoping this will happen by the end of April.

Someone told me his wife got really mad when she saw my equation. She attacked it because I didn’t use exact numbers. People who are bad at math and determined to be upset are impossible to talk to at times like this.

You don’t need exact numbers in a situation like this, and even if you did, only God knows them. Also, the equation doesn’t have to be all that accurate. It’s not really intended to tell us how many people will get sick. It’s intended to give us a ballpark idea which serves perfectly well to tell us whether this is a real plague.

Many women enjoy being upset. This is less common among men, and it’s common among kids. It’s a form of manipulation. “If I’m upset, the burden is on you to do my will.” It’s important to know when you’re guilty of this. It’s a character flaw you need to address. Being worried and refusing to listen to reason are very bad things that bring negative consequences. Worrying doesn’t make you a good person. It makes you a liability and a burden to other people.

If you’re a man over the age of 15, you already know that one of the best ways to upset women is to try to calm them down when they’re flipping out. Very often, when a woman comes to you in a panic, she’s not looking to be calmed down. She’s looking to have her panic confirmed. Don’t ask me why.

Being calm and rational is a good thing. It doesn’t make you insensitive or heartless. Truthfully, I don’t want hysterical people in my life. I don’t like being around them. Coming to me with hysteria isn’t a way to make me embrace you and bond with you. It’s a very good way to drive me off. I have plenty of problems without including neurotic people who do not want to feel better.

It’s pretty obvious now that coronavirus isn’t going to be a big deal compared to other illnesses we already have. It has hit the entire world, it doesn’t have any fresh new continents to attack, and things just aren’t going that badly. I don’t know what the final tally will be. I would guess 20 or 30 million at the outside. We can say with confidence that the numbers won’t be all that bad. We have had ample time to see what the disease can do, and it’s not going to develop new infectiousness to increase the toll.

The disease is not a catastrophe, any more than Obama’s swine flu was. The economy-killing panic is the real problem.

If an ignorant layman who blogs can figure out what coronavirus is doing, why can’t the experts? I suppose they can, because they are much more able than I am. They don’t even need equations. They must surely have excellent software, and they have to know coronavirus isn’t a major threat. I guess they’re giving us worst-case predictions in order to justify their financial support. Also, people in that kind of work tend to be Trump-haters.

Yesterday, I saw an article written by an ER physician from the New York area. It was a hysterical, critical letter to Trump, claiming Cuomo had all the answers and Trump’s policies were going to lead to an Omega Man scenario. She said she had treated “countless” severe cases, and she wrote of watching people gasp for breath.

I checked the figures. New York City was at 15,000 known cases. We know that out of that many people, less than 10% will be in bad shape, so let’s say 1500. How many will gasp for breath? Maybe 750? How many emergency rooms are there in a city of 8 million people? There are over 200 in New York, so that should give you a clue. What percentage of the time is this woman at work? Well under 50; that’s guaranteed. What percentage of her ER’s coronavirus patients go to her instead of another doctor?

“But wait,” you say, “people with detected cases are likely to be much sicker.” Good try, but that’s not what we’ve been told. We’ve been told that severe cases amount to something like 10% of the total, and that has to refer to detected cases, because otherwise, it’s an imagined figure.

She hasn’t seen “countless” anything. She has probably handled 10 or fewer gasping patients. She just wants to get rid of Trump.

When BS fights with math, BS loses every time.

It’s very unfortunate that American kids aren’t taught to think this way. Am I a genius because I can do division and multiplication? Am I exceptional because I passed fourth-grade math? Has it come to that?

Lies are a bigger threat than disease. The truth matters. Most Americans don’t know this.

I can’t help thinking of the many times professionals with big computers gave us bad, alarming information about hurricanes when ordinary citizens could look at maps and models and see that we were being deceived. Reporters re-spewed the hysteria to us with no semblance of criticality. No one was ever held accountable. It looks like coronavirus coverage is working the same way.

If there is one thing I’ve been wrong about, it’s the toilet paper crisis. I greatly overestimated the character and intelligence of the American people. I thought people would quit hoarding in a week. This country is full of toilet paper. There is no shortage at all. It’s still being shipped to stores, and they’re still stocking it. The problem is that selfish, heartless people–worriers–are continuing to show up early and buy it all. And stores are letting them. That’s really something. A great lesson for the future.

Take heart. They can’t keep buying it up forever. The supply is just too great. Sorry if you’ve already used your curtains. Things will get better soon.

You can get toilet paper from Amazon right now, if you look around, and it will be delivered in a few days. Hope this helps. I would hate to see people ruin all their socks and neckties.