Lancet did a study to get a clearer picture of the mortality rates. Lancet view the rate when one includes mild cases (many of whom who don’t get tested and are not included in the stats), as .66, less than 1% but at least five to six times more lethal than flu but less than the Spanish Flu. Or is it because our medical care is better?
The problem we have is that we are working with incomplete data and we can make the following assumption. One, the number of infections is higher than the numbers reported because we are not testing everyone. There have been articles in which different standards used to report death to the COVID virus, so we may not have a complete accuracy of the numbers of the death. Lancet data will show percentage of mortality is lower but also may be five to six times more lethal than the flu, but it is not SARS or even Spanish flu. We have to include that in our economic decision. As someone who has polled hundred of thousands, I view much of the data collection the equal of polling a state but polling only 60 percent of the state. A candidate pollster who did this would be providing his or her candidate an incomplete picture and this could cost an election.
Models are as much art as science and depends upon the data put in. If the data is inaccurate or incomplete, the model will present bad information. The Modelers also have to guess how human would react to initiatives. The University of Washington have made mistakes in guessing mortalities, number of beds required and overall data dealing with the infection. One model in Great Britain was off be a factor of 10-fold when redone a couple of weeks later but British government-based policies on the original data. Experts consulting to 538.com website. has changed in the past two weeks their own estimates from 200,000 Americans dying to 263,000 deaths. If nothing else, this has shown that to depend upon Models for policy is risky and if you can’t predict accurately a week or even a day out, how could you depend upon modelers for longer term. This should give any politician using models to predict future climate pause in depending upon the on policy.
The drug combination Hydroxychlorine/Azithromycin is proving to be effective in selected patients but there are very little controlled studies to prove its worth, but thousands have been treated and thousands of doctors have sworn by its use. This drug is not innocuous and does have side effects so it is a panacea for the virus but it is a first step in helping patients. In normal times, double-blind studies are essential to finding a drug efficacy, but in this case, we are looking at life and death and economic shutdown. The FDA has to adjust its rule to the situation.
Speaking of bureaucracy, they have been a big failure as they have delayed diagnostic tests and production of masks and these delays has hurt our response. The bureaucrats are not protecting Americans by possibly killing them by these delays.
When this is over, our policy toward China needs to re-examine as they have lied and are still lying about this virus. They suppressed information and delayed response to this pandemic and allowed the virus to escape. There is evidence that this virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory as oppose the wet market and British government believes that Chinese government may be underestimating the total number of infected and death by a factor of 15 to 40 times. That means we are talking anywhere between 1 million to 3 million Chinese infected and from 50 to 150,000 dead Chinese. We are talking worldwide infected two to three times what we are seeing and worldwide death as many as 225,000 dead.
India decided not to export Hydroxychlorine to keep for their own people but in a future world in which there could be a decoupling trade from China, India stands to gain but if the rest of the world doubt their reliability as a trading partner, India won’t benefit. After a conversation with President Trump, India decided to allow some of the drug to export. Maybe Trump reminded India of a future role in a post COVID era.
The Donelson Files 