Many of you have wondered the same thing. Was all this necessary? Was this disease so deadly that we needed to destroy our economy? Did we really need to let the government take control of everything? Sadly, the answer is no. This is all the result of bad math. Or perhaps I should say legitimate math lacking any element of common sense.

The first assumption that was wrong was that 4% of people who get COVID 19 will die. The actual number is closer to 1.8% and in the end by some estimate it may be as low as .066%. Even at 4% about 65 million people would have to be infected to make that happen. The following simple chart shows how this works:

% OF INFECTED PEOPLE WHO DIE      4%           1.8%       .066%

NUMBER OF DEATHS                       2,600,000    2,600,000    2,600,000

# OF PEOPLE INFECTED                 65,000,000 144,444,444  EVERYONE

% OF POPULATION INFECTED             18.57%       41.27%     EVERYONE

Let’s assume that every infected person can infect another five people. The following chart shows that it would only take about 13 days before almost everyone is infected.

That obviously did not happen. But what if one person only infected one other person. This would grow more slowly, but after 29 days if the pattern continued without interruption virtually everyone would be infected.

That also did not happen. Now we aren’t testing everyone, but as of today 459,121 people have tested positive 16,676 died. That means 3.6% of people who tested positive died, which is already less than 4%. There are 1,605,548 people who tested positively world-wide with 95,808 deaths. That would be a death rate of 5.6%.

Let’s assume that only 15% of the people infected are getting tested. That means there are about 3 million people infected in the entire country. The death toll from that, at 4% would be about 122,000 people. Even the CDC now admits that is too high and they are down to about 60,000. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, adds up.

It is far from certain that we will even get to 60,000 deaths. In any event, there was never any chance we would get to the 2.6 million deaths that inspired such drastic action.

It gets worse. This is easy to understand, if you add just a little common sense. We don’t live in a world where everyone connects with everyone else. Instead we live in circles and most of the people we contact are within that circle. Every scientist knows this, which is why we have quarantines. If you isolate all the infected people, the disease doesn’t spread. In addition, in those circles where people have been isolated, not everyone gets infected. For example, on a cruise ship where virtually everyone was tested, about 15% appear to have been infected.

Think of it this way. Imagine yourself at a party with 100 people. They play a game. Everyone is given 1 dollar. One person is selected to be the spy. The spy is authorized to take one dollar from five people. Each of the five people he selects are then authorized to get one dollar from five more people. In theory, if you just rely on math, in about five minutes, everyone’s dollar would be gone. That is because (1 x 5) x 5 is 5, (5 x 5) =25, and (5 x 25) is over 125 or more people then are at the party. In real life it is easy for the first spy to get 5 dollars. It is much harder for the next 5 people selected to be spies to get their 5 dollars because they are competing with other spies and some people no longer have their dollar. It is impossible for the 5 people each of these spies selects to get 5 dollars.  This explains why multi-level marketing strategies and Ponzi schemes are doomed to failure.

The same principle applies to the spread of disease. You can’t infect someone who is already infected. When you add in the fact that people who get it once become immune, there is a hard ceiling to the number of people who can get infected, no matter what you do. The only exception is when you do something stupid like let people travel from circle to circle setting off another cycle of infections. That is why the Trump travel ban was the most important decision made by anyone.

Like I said, bad math. There was never any risk of 2.6 million deaths, yet a lot of people were expecting exactly that. The Governor of the Nation State of California really believed that 50% of the people living in California would get infected. Of course, many of these geniuses believe in global warming predictions based on the same type of modeling accompanied by circular reasoning.

The question is how long we are going to put up with people who make stupid decisions based on bad math that are doing more harm than if they had done nothing at all. The travel bans were necessary. Beefing up the hospitals and ventilators to treat the sick was very necessary, shutting down the entire economy not so much.

TDM

A lot of people want to delay getting the country back open. That is increasingly clear.  The question is why? Some of them may legitimately fear that returning to work too soon will risk this happening again. Others may feel they gain from the status quo. Regardless of the reason, we are being exposed to extremely misleading data.

Perhaps the most misleading statistic is the most important statistic, the number of COVID 19 deaths. A death can be reported as the result of COVID 19 even if the person was never tested. This has been documented from numerous sources.

The result is that we are inundated with two daily counts, the number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths. Both may be highly inflated. Testing results have accelerated rapidly and there is no longer a backlog. In addition, the number of people being tested has skyrocketed. Obviously, the more tests you do, the more positive results.

We have already described how the number of deaths is being exaggerated. But there are statistics that you no longer see and those may really matter. One is the number of new hospital admissions. Another is the number of new patients transferred to ICU and the number of people put on ventilators. The CDC stopped reporting those numbers. Where they are reported, as in New York, they are dropping rapidly.

In addition, a lot of people currently on ventilators are being withdrawn. Some of them will die. That also increases the death count, but it does not necessarily mean more people are becoming seriously ill.

That begs the question why? Who benefits from this delay and who is harmed?

First the long list of people who benefit from delay of game.

Congress, particularly Democratic members of congress, benefit. They view this pandemic as the opportunity of a lifetime to spend money on pet projects they could never get approved in normal times. Some of them openly admit this.

Big business benefits, because they are hoping for new stimulus programs aimed at helping them more than people laid off from work.

The MSM benefits because this news story is driving up ratings.

Opponents of Donald Trump benefit because it increases the potential for this to have a negative impact on him.

Manufacturers making a fortune making masks and ventilators benefit. That will all stop immediately once the country re-opens.

The experts on TV, the leaders in the CDC etc. all benefit because today they are powerful and influential people who are constantly in demand. That will all end along with the pandemic.

Joe Biden probably gains the most, because when you are way behind, ending the game is the worst-case scenario. Just ask Bernie Sanders about that.

Now the list of people who are harmed.

All those people who lost their jobs.

All those small business owners who were put out of business.

The American taxpayer who, at some point and in some way is going to have to pay for all this.

The good news is that the while the delay of game tactics are still working as of now, the end is near. Ultimately one can only delay the obvious for a limited period. With each passing day, it is becoming more obvious that further delay has already reached the point where the risk far exceeds any potential reward.

Easter Sunday will be a big day. It may be the biggest day for COVID 19 deaths, or it may be the day when people start celebrating the resurrection of the U.S. economy. Either way remember that tomorrow, Good Friday, is the darkest day on the Christian calendar. It marks the day Christ was crucified. But less than three days later, with the resurrection, everything changed. We just may see something very similar this weekend. We will certainly see something similar sooner than you can even imagine.

He is Risen! Any Christian knows that the pain of Good Friday only lasted for a short while, but the joy of the resurrection lasts forever.

Happy Easter

TDM

Democrats and the MSM chorus constantly hammers Republicans and particularly Trump and Pence for failing to believe in science. This is similar to the way many agnostics assume anyone with faith is naïve and relies on fairy tales rather than science. The reality is exactly the opposite. It is atheists and agnostics who believe things that are mathematically impossible.

The scientific experts the MSM demanded make every important decision got almost everything wrong. Here are the real facts and they are devastating for those who think they follow the science while believing in things that are absurd. Following are just some of the major things reported by the MSM that are being proven wrong.

Ventilators are essential.

There are many reports, from various sources, that ventilators may do more harm than good. Doctors routinely put people with COVID 19 on ventilators assuming this would help with breathing. But these patients were not actually gasping for air or showing other signs of lung impairment. Doctors have learned that non-invasive breathing aids may work better and reduce the risk of death or permanent cognitive and respiratory damage.

These reports have been coming in from all over the world. They are just now being recognized here in the U.S. The following report from Yahoo News is an example, but there are many other similar reports out there:

https://sports.yahoo.com/doctors-think-ventilators-more-harm-162500782.html

“Dr. Scott Weingart, a critical care physician in New York, said he thinks patients do “much, much worse” on ventilators than non-invasive devices. “I would do everything in my power to avoid intubating patients,

Hydroxychloroquine is worthless and extremely high risk.

Many doctors say it is unproven whether or not it cures Covid 19. That may be the wrong question. A better question is whether it helps people recover from COVID 19 and whether the risk is greater than the reward. This drug has been used since the 1950s. I was given this drug while I was in Vietnam. There are side effects, as with any drug, but they are well known because of clinical trials taking place over many years. Trump is exactly right when he says we know the downsides and we can live with them and it just might work. There are reports from all over the world that it does work. It doesn’t cure COVID 19, but it helps stop the damage to the body and speeds the recovery. There are more and more reports from the U.S. that it works. A black female Democratic politician from Michigan says she was seriously ill until she learned about hydroxychloroquine from, gasp, Donald Trump. She had to beg her doctor to use it, because the Governor of Michigan tried to ban it. She finally got the drug, almost immediately started to feel better and has now recovered.

The only way to stop this disease is to allow government to micromanage our economy.

The government has been very successful at destroying our economy. Now they are trying to make up for it by spending money they don’t have. Democrats are trying desperately to turn this into a redistribution of wealth, failing to understand that the people they forced to stay home are the ones who should be the first and possibly only ones in line for relief.

It is far from certain that this worked. It is clear that the disease spread very rapidly, in predictable areas like New York. The shelter in place guidelines may have been very important in places like New York. It is less certain that shutting down 90% of the economy was necessary or effective. If you listen only to the doctors, none of us would ever do anything. That would reduce the risk of some disease but increase the risk of dying from boredom.

Trump failed to realize the danger and warn everyone.

This is frankly absurd. In a blatant attempt to blame everything on Trump the MSM has only exposed its own ignorance. Nothing would have been gained if Trump had told people we were about to be invaded by a virus that could kill millions of people. In addition we now know that this prediction was way off.  If he had said this was coming, we can’t stop it and millions will die the only thing that would have done is caused panic. Trump did exactly what he should have done. He did not over-react with his public statements and privately behind the scenes he got the entire federal government in action.

Trump cut funding for the CDC n and disbanded critical agencies.

He did do some restructuring, but the same people were still in charge with the same responsibilities and authorities. If anything his mistake was not replacing Obama and Bush holdovers. It is clear that the CDC was totally incapable of handling the testing. They told Trump they would handle the testing and they weren’t actually capable of doing that at all. Trump actually showed great leadership by letting the governors handle their own states and putting the federal government in a position to facilitate without trying to micromanage. That is why so much was done in such a short period of time.

Trump ignored warnings from doctors and scientists.

The famous memo was from Peter Navarro the top White House trade adviser. He is not a doctor. People like Dr. Fauci were not predicting this. In addition, what Navarro wanted was a travel ban on travel from China and Trump did exactly that.

We are very close to the point where everyone will realize the truth. If Trump had taken advice from people like the idiots on CNN or even the CDC, things would be even worse. It is increasingly obvious that the number of deaths will be far less than these people predicted, as recently as one week ago. If Trump lets them make decisions now the country will be lucky to reopen for Christmas. We should all rely on science, but we should also recognize the difference between scientific facts and scientific models. For example, every global warming model has been proven to be wildly inaccurate. If the forecasts by brilliant scientists like Al Gore were accurate the people in New York would be pleading for canoes to paddle to the hospital ship. There also would be a worldwide shortage of boats and sunscreen because of all the people bathing in those warm arctic waters.

TDM

The only thing certain right now is that the IMHE forecasts were all wrong by significant margins. That is actually good news. If people actually listened to the daily briefings by the White House, we were told these were worst-case scenarios and we hoped to do much better. We are doing much better.

The percent of new cases across the country is starting to trend down. That does not mean there are no new cases, it just means the rate of growth is lower. When you combine that with a massive increase in testing, this is very good news.

The rate of new deaths in New York has changed significantly. It appears to have leveled off and it is likely to start trending down. This same trend is happening nationally. Although there are places where things is going to get worse before they get better, New York is so much larger than every where else that when New York improves, everything improves.

Following are the actual charts. As always, todays numbers will increase significantly.

The MSM continues to distort data and make things seem worse. For example, headlines scream that the U.S. is now the epicenter of the pandemic. Actually, the U.S. is indisputably handling this better than anywhere else. We just have more people and more testing so our results are higher. But if one looks at the per-capita rates, particularly the per-capita death rates, we are doing very well.

There has been a lot of concern regarding the rate of testing. But, there is no indication that this had any significant impact on the mortality rate. There was one media report of a woman who died waiting for her test result. They just failed to add that she tested negative for COVID 19 when the results were produced.

This reminds me of Hurricane Katrina. After the storm moved on, thousands of people were stranded in New Orleans which had waited too long to evacuate. Many were literally stranded on roof tops. The U.S. Air National Guard and the Coast Guard launched the greatest rescue operation in world history. They set up an emergency operation center at the Super Dome. New crews filmed the devastation but they failed to notice all the helicopters flying right over them. While there were numerous complaints about shortages of food and water in reality no one died because of this. There was plenty of food and water pre-positioned in New Orleans including at the Super Dome and the Convention Center. The media failed to tell you that too. Instead, even today, they pretend that George W.Bush botched Katrina. In reality, the opposite was true. The Federal response literally saved the day.

This time the federal government produced results that are nothing short of miraculous. Even Governor Cuomo admitted today that the temporary hospital built by the federal government and the hospital ship in New York harbor were essential to helping New York cope. Ventilators were sent to those who needed them and re-routed from those who were hoarding for a day that never came. I have seen no verified reports of any patients who died because of lack of access to a ventilator. That is remarkable when one considers the size of this country and the scope of the problem.

Now, we move to the next stage. This is “whether” or not to re-open the country. The pandemic is not over yet, but the end is definitely in sight. It is time to start planning on getting this country back to work. There will be great resistance to any date set by Trump, because everything proposed by Trump is resisted. But his critics would be wise to note that Trump is far better at feeling the nation’s pulse than the talking heads who live in the New York or Washington, D.C. bubbles.

Here is something everyone needs to understand. We have all be pretty much self-isolated since March 17. That means even if you, or anyone else had COVID 19 or got COVID 19 before March 22, you are now immune. The standard quarantine period is 14 days, you and almost everyone else have been quarantined for close to three weeks. The primary people who may have been exposed to COVID 19 during that period have been first responders and health care workers. They are being tested all the time and anyone tested positive is being quarantined. This was the whole point of the mitigation strategy announced by the White House. The President’s 14 day plan was announced on March 17^th. Now, we are seeing signs it worked. Remember, most of the statistics you see today came from people exposed to the virus two weeks ago. When the country does go back to work, it will be a remarkably safer place than it was on March 17^th.

One final comment. On March 18^th, the Washington Post reported that there were 62,000 ventilators in the U.S. They estimated we would need 500,000. Fortunately, that prediction was way off. In the meantime, we have been producing and purchasing ventilators. That of course does not stop the usual suspects from screaming that there are not enough ventilators. Keep in mind that the people purchasing or requesting ventilators sometimes show the same degree of logic and common sense displayed by people hoarding toilet paper. This is what President Trump meant when he said a major challenge was to get ventilators to the people who really need them, not necessarily ventilators to everyone who is afraid they might need them in the future.

Everything will look better by the end of the week. The rain appears to be over. The sun is coming out. It is going to warm up rapidly. It is also going to warm up politically. One of the big fights will be whether or not it is safe to go back to work. It may just be the most important fight of all. This is your “whether warning.”

TDM

After I wrote my blog this morning, I did some more research.  My observations were so at odds with what is being reported that I was concerned. Well to my surprise I just discovered this article which basically reached the same conclusions:

IHME Coronavirus Model the White House is Relying on is GARBAGE – It Predicted 121,000 Americans Hospitalized by Yesterday; Actual Number?… 31,142

I did not address the hospitalization prediction, but if this is accurate, and it looks accurate, then the hospitalization rate is about 1/4th of what was predicted. This is consistent with what Gov. Cuomo was saying today. It is at least nice to learn that I am not the only one who reached this conclusion.

TDM

Things are obviously bad in New York. That does not mean it is going to get bad everywhere. While Governor Cuomo says this is coming to a neighborhood near you, that seems unlikely. It is obvious that New York skews every statistic.  Let me show you exactly what I mean.

Since March 26^th.New York is responsible for about 40% of the cases, which doesn’t appear to have changed very much. Since we are increasing testing all over the country, one would expect the number of new claims from outside New York to become a bigger percentage of the total. That is not happening. If anything, the opposite is happening.

While Governor Cuomo says the rest of the country will look like New York, the rest of the country is actually looking better than New York and the difference is increasing, not decreasing. This caused me to look again at New York and a map of where the cases are located. Almost all of the activity is coming from major metropolitan areas like Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and the New York area. The more rural parts of New York are reporting results similar to the rest of the country.

The death rate in New York is also skewing results for the entire country. This is actually good news, because it may mean that all the projections are off:

These numbers are as of right now; they will probably be higher by end of day.

Today Governor Cuomo said he expected New York to peak in 7 days. Previously he was saying it would peak in 30 days. He admitted that the number of discharges from hospitals in New York is higher than the number of new admissions. New York appears to be leveling off and may even have already peaked.

It appears that all of the dire predictions are from a model developed by Bill Gates. It is a truly frightening model, but it is only a model. While we should not assume that happy days are here again, we can see that the worst-case scenarios being trumped in the press and elsewhere are far from certain. Dr. Fauci went from predicting millions of deaths, to 200,000 to maybe 100,000 if things don’t go well. In order words, he really doesn’t know because no one has enough data to evaluate.

There are a lot of people saying we are expected to trend like Italy. New York is trending like Italy. But New York, while arrogant enough to think they represent the entire country, is still just New York.

We are doing a ton of tests and so we should expect more positive results. There are wide-spread reports of doctors prescribing hydroxychloroquine and getting great results. If that is true, it should be showing up in a declining number of new deaths.

At least some people have a vested interested in making the COVID 19 virus look worse rather than better. Some sadly want this to get worse so they can blame Trump. Others may even be making money off the situation. In addition there are politicians who are getting a lot of free air time that will go away when this is over.

This reminds me of when I visited a lab that produced insect repellent. One of the top executives for that company was excited to report that because of weather conditions they predicted a lot more mosquitoes to hatch during the coming year. They gleefully expected a banner year for insect repellent sales. To him, that was great news. The rest of us, not so much. There are winners and loser for every situation good and bad.

We will know a lot more by next week. We can expect deteriorating results from places like Detroit, but that may be offset by improving numbers in New York. We will soon know. Remember that ultimately the number of positive tests matters, but not nearly as much as the number of deaths.

TDM

Do you remember Y 2k? That was when the world, or at least the computer driven portion of the world, was scheduled to end. The problem was that a lot of computer programs had been written with the assumption that all years started with 19. That was true from 1901 to 1999, but suddenly around 1995 people realized, with a gasp, that the year after 1999 was 2000. Virtually everyone predicted disaster. The company I worked for set up an entire Y 2k computer task force, gave them a huge budget and set them up in a special conference room. That task force worked full speed from 1997 through the end of 1999. No one thought it was enough. People were certain that New Years Day 2000 would be a disaster.

None of us knew what would happen. Some of the predictions were truly catastrophic. I was assigned to manage our risk management response and had our entire claim department on standby to handle developments. We started by watching the New Years Celebration in Sydney Australia. Nothing happened, other than the usual mistakes made by people who celebrated a little too hard. Then we watched New Years travel across the globe. We were very interested in what happened in London. Again, nothing. Finally, New Year’s Day arrived in New York City. Still Nothing. Chicago, nothing. Denver, nothing. By this time, it was obvious to everyone that Y 2k was a big dud. Now perhaps all the planning to prevent disaster really worked, or more likely the problem was a bit over-hyped in the first place. Regardless of why, the what was more than obvious by the time 2000 approached San Francisco. I thanked all the staff that had waiting so patiently to deal with disaster, and we all went down to the waterfront and watched the fireworks over San Francisco Bay.

Perhaps I am wrong, but this is starting to feel like Y 2k all over again. Oh, the virus is here, and a lot of people are getting sick, but, at least in the U.S., this is starting to look a lot less scary. So, I started looked at some facts, ignored by most of the media.

FACT Number one.  Not that many people have the virus.

Here in the U.S. the testing was slow, so the only people being tested were seriously ill or considered at risk. Yet, many reports show that 85% of these people were testing negative. About 36% of people tested in New York turned up positive, but New York is New York. No place else tested anywhere near this number.

A lot of people assumed and some still assume that there are all these people out there who have the virus with no symptoms. We don’t know that, of course, because they aren’t being tested. Some people think South Korea tested everyone, but that isn’t close to true. South Korea has over 50 million people. It tested 250,000. They ended up with 9,786 people testing positive. That is about 4%.

The Diamond Princess tested everyone and 15% tested positive. If there is any place on this planet where a virus is likely to spread rapidly, it is a cruise ship.

Here is California, we are only testing people who are ill and who are considered to be at risk. So far, about 8% of people are testing positive.

FACT Number Two.  We are just now starting to get real test data.

We have done over 1,000,000 tests and we have about 150,000 positive results. That looks like 15% but remember that about half of them are from New York which skews the results. In addition, the test results were coming in slow. It often took 6 or 7 days to get a result. Now we have a lot of tests that return results in 45 minutes and some new tests give results almost instantly. Less than 5 minutes to test positive, 15 minutes to prove negative.

Fact Number Three. There really aren’t that many deaths, anywhere, other than places like Spain and Italy.

Let’s face it. Even if the spread of the disease became just as bad here as it did in Italy, we would be unlikely to lose any many people. Our death rate is 9 per million. In Italy it is 192 per million. Of course, they have socialized medicine which is obviously so superior to our health care system.

As of now, we have had about 3,000 deaths. While this is likely to grow, it just seems like the predicted 100,000 deaths is a bit of a reach.

Fact Number Four. There are already signs the spread is slowing down.

Even in New York the rate of hospitalization is dropping rapidly. On Sunday it was estimated to double every 2 days. Now it is expected to double every 4 days.  A lot of people are predicting our hospitals will be overwhelmed, but so far that hasn’t happened. That is why ABC had to show video of a hospital in Italy, it couldn’t find good enough video in the U.S.

No one knows, but a couple of things seem beyond obvious. If only 15% of people who have serious symptoms test positive, why on earth would anyone expect a high percentage of people who have no symptoms to test positive. There is no evidence of that happening anywhere in the world. South Korea appears to have tested more than anyone and a whopping 4% are positive. Here is California, although we only test people with serious symptoms, only 8% are positive. Do we really believe that there is this large mass of people out there who really have this virus and don’t know it? I am not sure I buy that.

Our response is moving at the speed of light. In early March no one would have predicted the entire country would shut down like this. Yet, here we are. We already have vaccines; we have found several drugs that appear to be working and more are on the way. Do we really think none of this had an impact?

I went back and looked at the early studies and all had one thing in common. They assumed that huge percentage of the population would get the virus and that the death rate was about 4%. If both those assumptions were true, we would get about 2 million deaths. But are they true? Do you see any evidence of that? Does anyone have any evidence of that?

We will soon know. Like I said, feels like Y 2k in a lot of ways.

TDM

As of today, the U.S. shows 135,957 cases, 2,391 deaths and 4,378 recovered. In addition, there are 2,948 people considered to be in serious or critical condition because of COVID 19. The number of recoveries is highly misleading. Once a person who has tested for the disease stops having symptom, they are quarantined for 14 days. Then, in order to be considered recovered, they must be tested twice and with negative results. Yet how many of them are even tested?

In order to get tested in the U.S., you must be a health care worker, a first responder or someone either at risk because of age and health or you must be seriously ill. Anyone else asking to be tested will be told to suck it up and go home for 14 days. If you recovered, you won’t be tested, because you have passed the quarantine period anyway.

Results show that 85% of people being tested do not have the disease. This means we have probably tested close to one million people by now. But odds are few of those tests are being given to people who appear to be recovered. That is why the recovery rate is ridiculous low.

Two things will change explosively next week. Numerous doctors ignored the advice of medical experts like the Democratic governors of Michigan and Nevada and have been prescribing Hydroxychloroquine. I have seen no reports where anyone was injured by this drug. I have seen numerous reports that it is working wonders. Two doctors in New York have prescribed this to over 800 patients. None have died, none have been incubated and only two have been hospitalized. Dr. Didier Raoul, a French doctor, was the first to report success. His initial results were downplayed as being from too small a sample to consider. He has since released an even larger study with similar results. All over the world, other than in Michigan and Nevada, doctors are prescribing this.

Clearly the pharmaceutical industry believes. At least seven different pharmaceutical companies are mass producing this and there may be up to 250 million doses available by mid-April. They are only doing this for one reason, they believe it works.

There are still a lot of doctors practicing medicine in Missouri and demanding show me results. The problem is that if we follow their advice we will know if this works just about in time for next spring. We obviously cannot wait that long. The people who are currently ill or who are exposed to the virus absolutely cannot wait that long. They won’t have to. The results are going to become obvious starting next week.

New tests have been developed that change everything. Previously it took up to two days to get a result. Now it takes about 15 minutes and a positive result is received in five minutes.  Hundreds of thousands of those test kits are on the way. We are already seeing massive testing and by next weeks this will skyrocket.

Now combine the two. People treated with hydroxychloroquine are not only getting better, they are getting better FAST. Some report that after six days they are testing negative.  Thanks to the new test, we will soon have evidence of that. That means many of those patients who started getting the drug this week will start testing negative next week. If that happens, watch the “recovered” statistic to skyrocket. When the number of recoveries starts to exceed the number of new cases, the end is near. Most people think Trump is insane to talk about starting to re-open the country on Easter Sunday. But, if we start seeing a ton of recoveries, that just may happen.

I predict that by the 4^th of July, this pandemic will be discussed in historical terms. People will be far more concerned about getting the economy moving again.

I believe there will be wide-spread use of hydroxychloroquine, much more testing, and much more selective isolation of people with the disease. This will create a perfect storm of medicine and science that will blow COVID 19 out of existence.

It will, of course, take the MSM much longer to notice. Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will never figure this out. It will take even longer for some people to grudgingly admit that Trump was right about this. But you will know. Your neighbor will know and soon the whole world will know the truth.

You won’t have to wait much longer. Now you are inundated with only bad statistics. The number of new cases and the number of deaths. This looks like it is bad and getting worse. But all the numbers you see are based on things that happened three weeks ago. Nothing you see is based on things that happened last week. Either the entire world is insane and shut down their economies in a failed attempt to delay the inevitable, or they are right, and at least some of this worked. In addition, all the horrible predictions are based on no treatment, no cure and no vaccine. The vaccine will take months, but the cure may already be here. If it is not here now, they are testing at least 70 other drugs and one of them will work. Now is the time to consider selling that excess toilet paper and start preparing for a brighter future.  Easter Sunday, maybe, 4^th of July, you bet!

TDM

It is increasingly clear that a lot of supposedly bright people are making major decisions based on highly questionable data. One of the problems is that no one really trusts the data from China where this all started. The Chinese government is telling us what they want us to know. There are reports of people who are ill, who appear to have the virus, who are not tested and are not being admitted to the hospital. That would explain why China is reporting no new cases. If you don’t test anyone, no one tests positive. Most people, not working for CNN, understand this.

Another is that the tests used in China are highly suspect. For example the free tests sent from China to Europe weren’t actually free and the error rate may approach 80%. It is important to note that the U.S. would not accept tests from any other country because they questioned the validity of the tests. The U.S. tests are verified, so the most accurate information we have now is from right here.

Finally, the U.S. health care system is the best in the world and that is becoming increasingly obvious.

Perhaps the best real data we had is from the Diamond Princess Cruise ship where everyone was tested. There were 3,711 passengers and crew on board and 542 people tested positive. That is about 14.5%. Nearly half of them had no symptoms. So far, there is no place in the world where the spread seems to be higher than this.

The U.S. is reporting more cases than anyone else, because we are testing more than anyone else, but it is still about .03% of our population. New York is reporting 55,000 cases. There are about 8.5 million people in New York, so that is about .65%, significantly higher than the rest of the country, but lower than the rest of the world.

The number of cases in New York may skyrocket, but they may level off. Even New York Governor Cuomo hinted at that. One thing is certain, New York is a lot more crowded than the rest of the country. The rest of us travel in private passenger cars, not subways and taxi cabs. It is stupid to predict that the rest of the country will experience the same results as New York.

Yet some are predicting exactly that. California Gov. Gavin Newsom predicts that 50% of people in California will get the virus. That appears to be based on a study done in the UK which predicted 2 million deaths. The author who did that study recently admitted his prediction model was off and lowered his estimate to 20,000 deaths.

Trump has more information that you, me or anyone in the media. This includes the very best experts in the world. He clearly thinks this is about to peak and things will rapidly improve. He also knows the truth about hydroxychloroquine. There are numerous reports that its works. I have seen no reports that it is hurting anyone. The couple in Arizona who drank fish tank cleaner has nothing to do with the actual drug hydroxychloroquine. Trump said today there were 10,000 doses of it being administered.  That means this drug is being tested, results are starting to come in already and next week they will flood in. If Trump was getting any hint of a problem he would have started walking this back. He isn’t doing that, if anything he is doubling down.

If this, or any other drug, starts curing the disease within a few days instead of weeks that will change everything overnight. We will soon know. The only thing certain right now is that Trump is acting more optimistic and his critics are backing down.

One side note. It is clear that Democrats know Joe Biden is in serious trouble and has zero chance of defeating Trump. But, they may still want him on the ticket; because they know Trump is going to win regardless of his opponent. They don’t want to throw good money after bad or a good candidate in an effort destined for failure. They would rather have Biden get hosed and then they could blame everything on him. When defeat is inevitable, people start looking around for the best candidate to throw under the bus. Joe Biden appears to fit all the criteria for that honor.

This reminds me of Winston Churchill’s speech after the defeat of Rommel at El Alamein:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

I think we are at that point with regard to coronavirus. It is not over yet, but we have come a long way from where we started.

TDM

From a Tale of Two Cities:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

Dickens was writing about 1775, but he could have been writing about today. While most people are somewhat familiar with the revolutionary war, from the U.S. perspective, many are unaware of the impact on Great Britain. It was very expensive to build all those ships and fight a war 3,000 miles away. This put a tremendous strain on Great Britain and crime became a serious problem because all the “enforcers” were on the other side of the world. France, on the other hand, was run by an arrogant monarchy that supported the U.S. revolution probably because France was willing to do almost anything to hurt Great Britain. After the war, Great Britain had serious financial problems and had to raise taxes to astronomical levels. It took years to recover. France experienced the French revolution, inspired by the American Revolution. The French revolution lasted from 1789 to 1799. The monarchy was overthrown, but the result was violence and political turmoil that finally resulted in the dictatorship under Napoleon.

Great Britain turned to William Pitt, who became the youngest Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1783 when he was only 24 years old. Many people give Pitt credit for providing the leadership that allowed Great Britain to pass from the old order to the new order without violent upheaval. France turned to the mob and ended up with Napoleon who looked good in comparison.

The point is that times like this expose people with real leadership skill and it also exposes leaders who are totally incompetent.

I thought it would be difficult to nominate someone for the position of idiot in chief, but the Governor of Nevada rose to the occasion. He issued an emergency order banning doctors from using hydroxychloroquine or any other malaria drug on a coronavirus patient. He did this for two reasons. One is that Trump said this drug has promise, so the Governor is sure that Trump was lying. The other is that a couple decided to self-medicate using Koi Pond cleaner because it lists an ingredient that kinda sorta looks like hydroxychloroquine. It was actually chloroquine phosphate, which promptly killed the husband.

Sadly, fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine phosphate skyrocketed in demand and the price for a bottle of this stuff increased from $10 to over $400 in some cases, even though manufacturers warned against ingesting this stuff.

The governor either did not realize this is not the same drug, or he hates Trump too much to care. In either case he just ordered doctors not to use a drug that is having miraculous results all over the world. It is hard to imagine anyone doing something dumber than this, but there are democrats definitely in the running.

The Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcettil said that the city’s neighbor prosecutors will be scouring the city for “nonessential” business that are still operating and he threatened to cut off their utilities like power and water.

Then Ralph (Blackface” Northam, Governor of Virginia, issued an executive order making it a criminal offense to hold a church service attended by more than 10 people. Actually he banded all public and private in person meetings of 10 or more individuals. There are some families larger than that. While the executive order did not specifically mention church services, the Q & A sent out makes the intent clear.

1. What about religious services? Can I still go to my church, synagogue or mosque?
2. Virginians are strongly encouraged to seek alternative means of attending religious services, such as virtually or via “drive-through” worship.

In the meantime Trump has told people about hydroxychloroquine and is working with medical experts to make this available while also conducting clinical trials. There are reports from all over the world, including the U.S., that this is working wonders. I know of no reports of anyone seriously injured by the drug.

Trump is talking about getting the country back to work, sooner rather than later. Governors Cuomo and Newsom are saying this will take months. When Trump says we need to make sure the cure does not do more damage than the disease, most people understand. However, leading Democrats in position of leadership are having difficulty grasping the concept. Here is what Joe Biden had to say:

“We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what,” he said. “No matter what. We know what has to be done.”

It is the best of times and it is the worst of time. This will bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. The good news is that the American people are catching on and the worst offenders are self-identifying. Ultimately the coronavirus may change a lot of things for the good. It is just too bad that like most important life lessons, this type of learning is often very painful. Dickens tried to warn us.

TDM