In the USA the great Chinese Lung Rot Virus scare continues to show the usual peak and then decline of such diseases, with falling numbers of daily new infections, hospitalisations and deaths.

This is not unique to the USA. It’s happening in many places around the world.

USA – Daily New Infections and New Fatalities
 

The USA is being led in this decline by New York City, as it was led in the increases. Overall the fatality projections of the models are sinking like stones, which should not surprise anybody as reality never even started to match the models’ numbers – exactly as in past epidemics.

Many things will be learned from this event, but at least in terms of the disease itself the basics have not changed from two months ago, even though there is much more data:

  • The groups at high risk of dying from the disease are the elderly and those in poor health or with compromised immune systems. These groups are still going to be at risk as the various lockdowns are lifted around the world and the disease continues to spread through the population. By the time those numbers jump in 2nd waves, probably around the Northern Autumn, the MSM will have lost interest.
  • The mortality rate continues to drop from the initial frightening numbers of 3-4%, as predicted would happen by epidemiologists. It will continue to jump up and down for various locales as the raw numbers of infected people and the deaths change, but as the number of people found to be infected increase – including asymptomatic people and people who suffered only mildly from it – the mortality rate will continue to drift down towards the usual levels for these classes of virus.
  • The key here will be ongoing antibody or serology tests. One conducted recently in the German town of Gangelt in one of the epicentres of the German outbreak showed that 15% of the population had been infected, which matched studies of the Diamond Princess cruiseliner (17%) and a similar test in the Chinese city of Shenzhen (15%). For the German town this also gives a mortality rate of 0.37%, significantly below the numbers fed into the Imperial College / IHME models.
  • Clearly the virus is just not that easy to catch in ordinary working environments, especially if ordinary precautions are taken regarding hand-washing, as a number of epidemiologists pointed out. Hugging and kissing is another matter altogether.
  • The disease shows up in clusters, as most diseases do, since aside from the characteristics of the virus itself there are factors around the population and their environment. Looking at the clusters centred on New York/New Jersey, Milan/Lombardy and Madrid indicates that high urban density, high public transport density and large-scale open physical contact with the outside world (tourism and foreign workers) were significant multipliers for the virus.
  • Combined with the personal factors this indicates that quarantine of such areas remains the best method of containment rather than total lockdown of an entire nation – which in the case of the US was fortunately never going to be possible.
  • The death toll is being affected by incorrect pathological analysis: there is big a difference between dying from something and dying with something. This will also not be settled for some time.
  • The idea that a coronavirus can be eliminated is insane.