Some Inconvenient (for the N.H. Democrats) Truths About ChineseCoronavirus

So check out this tweet, which inspired this post:

Matty sure has a short memory. Per the CDC, 60.8 million Americans got sick and 12,468 died due to the H1N1 pandemic under President Obama, who took six months after the World Health Organization to declare an emergency.

But that’s not what inspired this post. The threat to order us to “shelter in place” did.

We have, so far, and thankfully ZERO deaths in New Hampshire attributed to ChineseCoronavirus. Our hospitals are not filled with dead and dying people. Indeed, they are not even filled with Coronavirus-patients. Is this what you would expect from all the hype you have heard regarding Coronavirus? Does not this anecdotal evidence suggest that Coronavirus is far less dangerous than we keep getting told?

Well two people have taken the proverbial “deep dive” into the data, and what they’ve concluded is that we are massively overreacting to ChinaCoronavirus and unnecessarily destroying our economy.

I’ll start with Julie Kelly, who writes for American Greatness. Her piece is called DANGEROUS CURVES.

We know the ChineseCoronavirus originated in China, by December, 2019 at the latest. We also know that travel was not restricted with China until January 31, 2020:

… an average of 14,000 people per day traveled between the two countries in 2019. That means tens of thousands of potentially infected people entered the country for weeks prior to the travel stop.

In other words, we may have been living with ChineseCoronavirus since December, 2019, far earlier than the first reported case of January 21, 2020.

Kelly dug into the data at CDC and found that the number of people complaining of “influenza-like illness,” defined as fever (temperature of 100°F or greater) and a cough and/or a sore throat spiked from mid-January into mid-February. There was a corresponding increase of testing for influenza (the flu), BUT testing indicated that a material number of people did NOT have the flu:

At its peak, about 20,000 people per week were diagnosed with influenza—but it also represented a positive rate of around 30 percent. That means lots of people were tested for the flu, had flu-like symptoms, but did not have the flu.

So what did they have that was causing the flu-like symptoms:

It’s not unreasonable, in fact, it’s necessary and responsible, to consider that COVID-19 has been in the states since the first of the year; that people suffering similar symptoms to the flu actually had COVID-19; and that the peak of the outbreak occurred last month. The number of people now testing positive for the virus does not mean that the outbreak is accelerating because the data is incomplete.

I urge you to read the entire article.

The second piece is by Aaron Ginn and is called Evidence over hysteria — COVID-19. In his own words, the piece is a systematic overview of COVID-19 driven by data from medical professionals and academic articles that will help you understand what is going on. His conclusion:

When 13% of Americans believe they are currently infected with COVID-19 (mathematically impossible), full-on panic is blocking our ability to think clearly and determine how to deploy our resources to stop this virus.

Some highlights:

The results of their [The Who’s] research show that COVID-19 doesn’t spread as easily as we first thought or the media had us believe … . According to their report if you come in contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19 you have a 1–5% chance of catching it as well. …The majority of viral infections come from prolonged exposures in confined spaces with other infected individuals.

Which suggests that we only need to practice “social distancing” in confined spaces.

Global data shows that ~95% of people who are tested aren’t positive.

In other words, 95 out of 100 people who think they have ChineseCoronavirus DON’T.

~1% of everyone who is tested for COVID-19 with the US will have a severe case that will require a hospital visit or long-term admission.

In other words, our hospitals are not going to be overwhelmed.

Looking at the US fatality, the fatality rate is drastically declining as the number of cases increases, halving every four or five days. The fatality rate will eventually level off and plateau as the US case-mix becomes apparent.

AND here are some recommendations:

REOPEN THE SCHOOLS: Based on transmission evidence children are more likely to catch COVID-19 in the home than at school.

REOPEN THE RESTAURANTS, BARS and GYMS … and NO SHELTER IN PLACE: With such little evidence of prolific community spread and our guiding healthcare institutions reporting the same results, shuttering the local economy is a distraction and arbitrary with limited accretive gain outside of greatly annoying millions and bankrupting hundreds of businesses. The data is overwhelming at this point that community-based spread and airborne transmission is not a threat. We don’t have significant examples of spreading through restaurants or gyms. When you consider the environment COVID-19 prefers, isolating every family in their home is a perfect situation for infection and transmission among other family members.

Read the whole article. It is well worth it.

The bottom-line: A very strong case has been made that MUCH OF WHAT WE ARE DOING TO FIGHT CHINESECORONAVIRUS … AND THE ADDITIONAL STEPS THE N.H. DEMOCRATS ARE PROPOSING … IS INEFFECTIVE AND/OR COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.