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Reblogged:Fumento on the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Michael Fumento has weighed in against corona virus hysteria. Although he concedes that old age increases the risk of the virus causing life-threatening illness, he is absolutely correct to call the media on sloppy reporting of death rates:

physician.jpg
Image from National Cancer Institute, via Unsplash, license.
As for death rates, as I first noted in these pages on Jan. 24, you can't employ simple math -- as everyone is doing -- and look at deaths versus cases because those are reported cases. With both flu and assuredly with coronavirus, the great majority of those infected have symptoms so mild -- if any -- that they don't seek medical attention and don't get counted in the caseload.

Furthermore, those calculating rates ignore the importance of good health care. Given that the vast majority of cases have occurred in a country with poor health care, that's going to dramatically exaggerate the death rate. [link omitted]
This has been obvious to me from the start. Not so obvious is the following, which I am under the impression is panning out:
China is the origin of the virus and still accounts for over 80 percent of cases and deaths. But its cases peaked and began declining more than a month ago, according to data presented by the Canadian epidemiologist who spearheaded the World Health Organization's coronavirus mission to China. Fewer than 200 new cases are reported daily, down from a peak of 4,000.

Subsequent countries will follow this same pattern, in what's called Farr's Law. First formulated in 1840 and ignored in every epidemic hysteria since, the law states that epidemics tend to rise and fall in a roughly symmetrical pattern or bell-shaped curve. AIDS, SARS, Ebola -- they all followed that pattern. So does seasonal flu each year.
I am not a medical professional, but Fumento does seem to be employing a standard model, and publicly-available data that I looked at are consistent with the above. (Scroll down to the "active cases" graph.)

Fumento's column offers other good news, as well as some precautions once can take to improve one's odds of avoiding the illness.

-- CAV

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