COVID-19 Graph Looking Good

Because I tried to predict what was going on with coronavirus, it seems like I have to mention it once a day.

Basically, everything I predicted is still coming true, in spades. My equation’s predicted number for today is 12.7% higher than the actual number, and I predicted a drop-off in April. I was hoping for a very large drop by the end of the month, as we always get with the flu. We’ll see.

My equation was crude to start with. The premise was oversimplified, and the underlying data was dubious. It’s very odd that it ever worked. The longer the epidemic progresses, the less the premise makes sense, so the less inclined I am to talk about the equation. We have a huge number of recoveries now, and they have to be messing things up.

All that is true, but I’m still within 12.7%, which is extremely accurate. Go figure. Who would have predicted that when I started?

If you want to know what’s happening, my suggestion is to start visiting the Johns Hopkins page with the updated graphs. Just Google “Johns Hopkins curve flattening,” and you’ll find it. I’ll post today’s graphs. It seems like the most useful guide out there.

As you can see, things continue to improve. America took a harder hit than some places, and our recovery looks like it’s starting later, but it does appear to be starting.

Still no dead major celebrities. How can that be?

I still don’t know anyone who has the disease. I don’t know anyone who has a sick family member.

Sweden is the big story. They didn’t wreck their economy with panic-driven measures, and they are doing better than their neighbor Norway. When things die down, will “experts” and politicians look back at Sweden and say, “We should have done the same thing?” No. I don’t think so. A lot of people put their reputations on the line, standing up for hysteria. A lot of people made money from hysteria. A lot of people profited politically from hysteria. If they admit fault, they’ll be giving a lot up, and the truth is, they care about themselves, not the rest of us. I think they’ll double down on hysterical. Hope I’m wrong.

Even if Sweden did somewhat worse in terms of infections and deaths, they would still be winners because they won’t have a depression.

One of the bad things about getting old is developing the ability, based on experience and an understanding of human nature, to predict that people will do rotten things. Maybe it’s a blessing that we generally die after 8 decades. Would you really want hundreds of years of watching people do the same crazy things?

My friend Mike seems to be getting caught up in the emotion. He runs a hospice, so he is seeing a lot more problems than the rest of us. Also, he works in Massachusetts, which is a hotspot. I checked. Yesterday, Massachusetts had a coronavirus rate of one in 300. They had about 700 deaths.

Interesting fact: about half of the deaths in Massachusetts happened in old folks homes. That suggests that lockdowns can cause deaths.

Think about it. What percentage of Massachusetts seniors live in old folks homes? Maybe 5%? It’s probably less than that. But half of the deaths took place in these facilities. These are places where people are cooped up together. Old people who are living at home are much, much better off. It appears that when you’re locked down with very few people, it’s not bad, but when you’re locked down with dozens, you have a problem. You and your friends are set up like dominoes, waiting for the virus to tip one over.

Makes me wonder if people in apartment buildings, dormitories, and hospitals are being put at risk by lockdowns. Some believe the Italians killed a lot of people by hospitalizing individuals who should have stayed home. When you’re in a hospital, you have more people to infect.

I’m just speculating.

I checked the coronavirus rate in my county. It’s one in 4000, even though the county is packed with ALF’s and old people (and unhealthy people). The death total here is 4.

I can’t thank God enough for moving me out of Miami. Like I needed another reason. I have no mayor to take away my rights, I’m around the nicest, most thoughtful people on earth, I get to be a Southerner again, and I’m also in a coronavirus dead zone. For now. I didn’t deserve any of these blessings.

Now that America’s epidemic appears to be in decline, maybe we need to start looking at states and counties instead of nations. Urban Northeasterners are very dirty, and they’re packed together. They’re having lots of problems. People in the South are cleaner and farther apart. I would guess that rural Midwesterners and Westerners are also cleaner than people in New York and Boston, but I don’t know. Maybe one-plunger, fork-sharing, sidewalk-spitting households are common in the plains.

Let’s see. Georgia has a rate of something like one in 800. Tennessee has something like one in 1300. Minnesota has one in 3400. New York State has a rate of one in 1000, but the city’s rate is one in 80! New York is a big state with a lot of open areas. California’s rate is one in 2000, which is great. L.A. County has a rate of one in 1000, which is still good. L.A. is not densely populated.

Miami-Dade County has a rate of one in 400, more or less, so 10 times what I have in my county. Over half of the state’s total comes from Miami-Dade and Broward, which borders Miami-Dade on the north side.

This epidemic seems to be whacking cities very hard. That means it’s whacking Democrats.

I wonder if that means anything. I wonder if it will affect the presidential election.

People pretend to be leftists when things are going well, but that can change when life provides challenges. On the other hand, panicked leftists can move farther left because they want to give more power to the god-government they worship, so it can protect them.

George Bush was reelected during tough economic times. No matter what they say, many leftists want a tough conservative in office when foreign aggression is a threat. Will they want a conservative when the threat comes from a disease?

Trump is doing a fine job of swinging left, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’ll be the new Bernie in many regards. Spending 6 trillion taxpayer dollars on a stimulus to revive an economy which is unable to benefit from it is not smart. It’s a gigantic amount of money, and it will have to be paid back with higher taxes or more currency debasement. Either way, productive people will be impoverished to support people who spend their money on weed and lottery tickets.

Maybe coronavirus’s disproportionate impact on Democrats is one of the reasons they’re more hysterical right now. In their urban provincialism, they probably think the whole world is in the same situation.

New York City’s coronavirus death toll has actually surpassed the flu’s average death toll. That’s surprising. It’s strange that they fare so poorly. Maybe it’s hitting ALF’s and hospitals.

For a long time, it has seemed like America was being centrifuged, with leftists settling in increasingly debauched cities and the rest of us remaining in pleasant rural settings. The city people keep pushing for ways to rule the rest of us and turn us into slaves. They would destroy our superior cultures and ruin the nice places where we live. I guess coronavirus is likely to widen the divide.

Anyway, there are no big surprises. Globally the great plague seems to be turning out to be a biological speed bump and a psychological holocaust. It’s too bad we blew it out of proportion.

By the way, I read up on quinine-related drugs, and they really do look promising. Journalists are playing it down. They’re actually saying chloroquine is “distantly related” to quinine, but it isn’t. It’s a synthetic quinine substitute, created for the same purpose, developed during World War Two. You can actually buy quinine sulfate in bags, and you can get tablets from overseas, if you want to have it around for a last stand. Reading about it is tempting. Real gin and tonics! I barely drink, but hot weather has arrived, and an occasional G&T might not be bad.

Also, ammonium chloride is supposed to be hard on coronaviruses. Maybe I should make pizzas with it.