How Long Will the Chinese Virus Panic Last?

The Chinese Virus, COVID-19, is incredibly contagious, it is also remarkably mild. It is clear now that the vast majority of people who catch it don’t even know that they have it. (CLICK maybe only 1 in 10 do!). Most people’s immune systems simply swat it aside.

It is also clear that the only people who get ill are those with a compromised immune system. Smokers, the Vitamin D deficient and those with comorbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or obesity.

It is very easy to see these truths. Firstly look at the statistical death rates country to country (HERE). Those countries such as Iran and Italy where they test only the ill have a high statistical death rate. Those countries where they also test some people with no symptoms and detect the disease in some of them, such as Germany and South Korea, have a far lower statistical death rate. They are seeing a less distorted picture.

Secondly look at the bar chart above, this is for Chinese Virus deaths in Italy. Proof that if you are fit and well with a working immune system you will be just fine. People are dying with Chinese Virus, not of Chinese Virus.

Next lets look at some context. Respiratory infections kill, on average, 2.6 million people every year (CLICK). So far Chinese Virus has killed fewer than nine thousand globally. Statistically insignificant in comparison. So why are we panicking?

Let’s first break down those with Chinese Virus into 5 groups:

  • No symptoms whatsoever.
  • Minimal, often unnoticed, symptoms.
  • Respiratory infection such as a winter cold.
  • Really ill. Like a proper bout of ‘Flu.
  • Really ill, requiring hospitalisation and intensive care (ICU).

The problem is that we don’t yet know how many are in each group. And with Vitamin D deficiency varying with the amount of sunlight this will change with the seasons. We do know that young people, with a more active Thymus, hardly notice the disease. And we do know that very few people (as a %) are in the last two groups and we know who they are likely to be.

We look to Italy when formulating policy. It has the largest number of Chinese workers in Europe, they went home for Chinese New Year, they came back with Chinese Virus. The Italian public health service didn’t notice and really didn’t want to know. The disease spread like crazy. Then all the ICU demand came at once and they were turning patients away, so the death rate rocketed. We don’t want this happening in the UK. Especially as the NHS only has 8,175 ventilators (CLICK).

Our government has turned to engineering and manufacturing companies, such as the F1 teams, Nissan, Meggitt, JCB and Airbus, to supply 30,000 new Ventilators in a hurry. But is is still precious few for 66 million of us if all the ICU cases come at once. So our government is mostly restricting our freedoms so as to manage ventilator demand.

The government expect 60% of us to catch the disease. That is about 40 million people. If one in a hundred need a ventilator that is 400,000 people. You can see the problem. Especially if they all arrive at once, as in Italy.

The good news is that we have known since the beginning of February that the anti Malarial drug Chloroquine can be repurposed against the Chinese Virus (as this blog told you HERE). There have been several successful small scale clinical trials (HERE). And now the global Big Pharma industry is mass producing it in vast quantities (HERE). This takes the pressure off our sparse ventilator capacity.

But the government should be promoting Vitamin D supplements hard. They stop you catching Chinese Virus and make the symptoms far less severe if you do catch it. Watch this short video by a doctor which explains the medicine and the facts:

Boris is preparing us for 12 weeks of incarceration. This won’t happen. People will rebel against the restrictions. The next month or so is going to be bad, as the NHS ventilator capacity is tested. But after that, as the situation becomes more controlled, the restrictions will have to be rolled back, because it will be impossible to enforce them.

The purpose of Government measures is not to reduce the number of people infected. The disease is so very contagious that it cannot be stopped. What they are doing is spreading the cases over a longer time frame. To reduce the amount of ventilator demand at any one time. And to create a breathing space for the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture repurposed drugs.

To have herd immunity we need 60% of the population to have had the disease (or a vaccine) and we have no idea how close to this percentage we currently are. Which is why the government is making a big deal of the new antibody test that is being developed (CLICK). This, for the first time, will tell us how many people have already had the Chinese Virus, without them realising it. It will give the government hard data to remove their controls on us.

Then there is the weather. Winter viral infections die out in the spring. They don’t like the UV light and the warmth. And we humans get an immune system boost when we are exposed to sunlight and manufacture Vitamin D for ourselves. So Chinese Virus will fizzle out of its own accoed.

Another good reason for lifting restrictions sooner rather than later is the immense economic damage. Not just the eye watering government borrowing, which future generations will have to pay off, but also the shock to share prices and corporate income, which harms everyone’s pension. And mostly the loss of household income on an unprecedented scale. A huge number of people are going to suddenly be a lot poorer than they were.

With some herd immunity Vitamin D and Chloroquine this Chinese Virus epidemic would be less bad than a winter ‘Flu epidemic. We could just carry on as normal. The problem is that in its first year it is so highly contagious that all the cases come at once, putting an incredibly high demand on ICUs and especially on our ventilator capacity. So the next few week will deliver eye-watering headlines. But after a month the daily number of new infections will be falling quickly. And after two months it should be largely business as usual.

3 Comments


  1. Good article:
    .
    The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

    Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.

    More here: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

    Reply

  2. It is an epidemiological fact that when a virus reaches 50% of a population it stops spreading. Because of herd immunity.

    This virus is incredibly mild. About 90% of those who catch it don’t even know they have. It is usually symptomless.

    Of those with symptoms most are mild. Others get symptoms as severe as a Flu. Some get it really bad and need an ICU. But data from all over the world indicates that this clearly identifiable group is about 1% of the population.

    So an alternative strategy would be to isolate the at risk people. And then let everyone else get on with their lives.

    This would cost vastly less to implement and would concentrate resources where they are most needed. It would also cause far less social and economic harm. And it would build herd immunity quicker, stopping the virus in its tracks.

    Reply

  3. Italy: “Only 12% of ‘Covid19 deaths’ list Covid19 as cause” – Prof Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s minister of health https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/23/italy-only-12-of-covid19-deaths-list-covid19-as-cause/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/have-many-coronavirus-patients-died-italy/

    Professor Ioannidis warns that the WHO’s global fatality rate of 3.4% is “meaningless” and we are making decisions without reliable data. Considering “the limited testing to date,” it’s unknown whether “we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300”…… “when the mortality rate of the seasonal flu is grounded in confirmed cases, then its .1% mortality rate jumps to 10%” https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/jack-kerwick/coronavirus-hysteria-part-i/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

    Dr. Paul Offit, an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology says “COVID-19 may be only marginally more dangerous than the Swine flu of 2009” and “the flu is far worse than COVID-19“

    Epidemiologist Prof Kenji Mizumoto suggests up to 2 million people in wuhan have been infected leading to an infection fatality ratio between 0.04% and 0.12%
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v2

    Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, a world renowned expert in medical microbiology, says blaming the new coronavirus alone for deaths is „wrong“ and „dangerously misleading“, as there are other more important factors at play, notably pre-existing health conditions and poor air quality in Chinese and Northern Italian cities. Professor Bhakdi describes the currently discussed or imposed measures as „grotesque“, „useless“, „self-destructive“ and a „collective suicide“ that will shorten the lifespan of the elderly and should not be accepted by society. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/fn5zk9/professor_sucharit_bhakdi_a_world_renowned_expert/ (youtube in German)

    Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, ex head of a German Health administration
    “Coronavirus – A respiratory illness like every winter?” http://www.kla.tv/15919

    A Swiss doctor provides many more points, here are just a few examples:
    https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
    – “Most major media again falsely reported that Italy yesterday had 797 deaths from the coronavirus. In reality, the president of the Italian Civil Protection Service stressed that these are deaths „with the coronavirus and not from the coronavirus“

    – “A model from Imperial College London predicted between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths in the UK „from“ Covid-19, but the authors of the study have now conceded that many of these deaths would not be in addition to, but rather part of the normal annual mortality rate, which in the UK is about 600,000 people per year. In other words, excess mortality would remain low.”

    – “according to a first Chinese study, the internationally used virus test kits may give a false positive result… Thus the most important indicator for judging the danger of the disease is… the number of people actually and unexpectedly developing or dying from pneumonia (so-called excess mortality). So far, this value remains very low in most countries”

    – “According to the latest European monitoring report, overall mortality in all countries (including Italy) and in all age groups remains within or even below the normal range so far.”

    – “The director of the German National Health Institute (RKI) confirmed that they count all test-positive deaths, irrespective of the actual cause of death, as „coronavirus deaths“. The average age of the deceased is 82 years, most with serious preconditions. As in most other countries, excess mortality due Covid19 is likely to be near zero in Germany.”

    – “In Italy, overall mortality of the 65+ age group continues to be below average”

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