Here's the 2020 herd immunity paraprosdokian I thought I would never hear but did

We have to infect the entire population with the coronavirus in order to save it from the COVID-19 disease.

A few voices are actually saying this right now, mostly on "conservative" talk radio. You know who I mean.

England was going to pursue this policy until they realized just how many people would have to die.

Consider what this would mean in the US.

Let's take the South Korean mortality rate, which right now is 1.7% after 6 weeks with no new cases reported today (the US is currently at 2.7% after 4 weeks). Say half the population gets exposed because we give up, go back to work and carry on: 165 million get exposed @ 1.7% means 2.8 million deaths.

Mark Levin was poo-poohing such a catastrophe on his show tonight, like it's not even a possibility, as he rattled off the deaths annually from our wars, heart disease, cancer, etc.

He's wrong. They're all wrong. America is a wide open sitting duck for this disease, which spreads like a cold but kills like the flu. We have the most cases in the world already, by far, 276,965. Flu doesn't spread the way coronavirus does. Not everyone gets the flu. 30 million flu cases is typical, with 30,000 deaths, that's it, in a completely free and open society. But everyone gets a cold. Everyone. And that's the problem. A high morbidity rate.

Fortunately 3/4 of those surveyed think stopping this coronavirus is job one, not saving the economy.

Yes, this will be catastrophic for the economy. It already is. But we've had economic catastrophe before and we know how to rebuild.

The important thing right now is for the government to rescue people, not companies, and buy us some time so that the people actually saving us in the hospitals aren't overwhelmed and succumb. Without Americans there will be no America.

Conserve that. 

Remember George Bush in 2008?

Yeah, George Bush: We have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Good times 2008 are here again in 2020. Not.

The S&P 500 closed tonight at 2,488.65

That's down only 23% year to date.

Pretty remarkable, that. I mean, look at these first time claims for unemployment over the last two weeks: 8.7 million not-seasonally-adjusted, 9.9 million seasonally-adjusted.

The market in the past has often risen on bad jobs numbers, but this is ridiculous. It's a total disconnect. These are apocalyptic numbers, yet the market is holding on just 23% down.

There's trillion$ of aid in the pipeline to bail out businesses and individuals, but how long can that last? And to what effect? At some point the laws of supply and demand and inflation will have their say, and it isn't going to be pretty, especially if a 4th bill is passed in the Congress, which now seems likely. Had economics ever been susceptible of replacement by passing bills, we would have done it long ago and enjoyed prosperity without work all this time!

Yeah, right.  

The coronavirus infection is a momentous turning point for America. 

Bank Failure Friday: Second bank failure of 2020

The First State Bank, based in Barboursville, West Virginia, failed today, costing the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund $46.8 million.

The FDIC insures deposits at the nation's banks and savings associations, 5,177 as of December 31, 2019.

An anniversary of sorts, more of a milestone I guess

Real GDP growth since 2007 lags the Great Depression era by 42% and the post-war by 52%

And Trump thinks this is the greatest economy ever.

Climate update for KGRR February 2020

Climate Update for KGRR February 2020

Max Temp 51, Mean 50

Min Temp 4, Mean -2

Av Temp 27.5, Mean 24.5

Rain 1.2, Mean 1.79

Snow 15.9, Mean 13.2

HDD 1081, Mean 1136

HDD to date 4517, Mean to date 4892

By heating degree days the winter has been milder than the mean winter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by 7.7%.

  

How Wuhan/Hubei deaths from coronavirus might have been 27,000 or 33,000 not 3,177

From the story here:

Urns are reportedly being distributed at a rate of 500 a day at the mortuary until the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, which falls on April 4 this year.

Wuhan has seven other mortuaries. If they are all sticking to the same schedule, this adds up to more than 40,000 urns being distributed in the city over the next 10 days.

Already on Jan 26 there was evidence, quickly removed, that China deaths from coronavirus had reached 81% of the official figure as of Mar 28. Remember that the closing of Hubei Province didn't occur until Jan 23, so on Jan 26 there was still chaos in China as authorities scrambled to secure the actual as well as the information environments.

Based on widely discussed figures, if one assumes Wuhan's 11 million population normally experiences a death rate of 0.7%, then 77,000 residents die annually from all causes under normal conditions. This yields 211 deaths per day on average and 6,417 deaths per month, or 12,833 over the two-month epidemic. Call it 13,000. 40k-13k = 27k dead from COVID-19.

The problem is that it was asserted that as many as 5 million residents of Wuhan had already departed the city for Chinese New Year of the Rat celebrations ahead of the Jan 23 closing of the city. These remained outside Wuhan during the epidemic because they were not permitted to return. If you leave 6 million in the city, the normal mortality rate of 0.7% yields 42,000 deaths annualized, or 3,500 a month. So there would have been just 7,000 deaths normally over the two-month period of the epidemic from non-epidemic causes. 40k-7k = 33k dead from COVID-19.  

But we'll probably never really know.

China drops to third in world coronavirus cases behind US and Italy: China's numbers look less credible by the day

MI moves up to 4th in COVID-19 rankings thanks to high-density Detroit metro, but no place compares with NY

I am so sick of all this winning, Donald Trump

Welcome to hell, courtesy of "just a cold"

Hospitals across U.S. consider universal do-not-resuscitate orders for coronavirus patients:

The conversations are driven by the realization that the risk to staff amid dwindling stores of protective equipment - such as masks, gowns and gloves - may be too great to justify the conventional response when a patient "codes," and their heart or breathing stops.

Trump The Libertarian to America: We have to get back to work and infect the whole country in order to save it

“Our country wasn’t built to be shut down. This is not a country that was built for this".

“America will again and soon be open for business. Very soon. A lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting.”

'Trump very strongly hinted that he planned to ease federal guidance on social distancing at the end of his administration’s “15 Days to Slow the Spread” initiative, which ends next Monday, despite an expected explosion of reported cases as tests for coronavirus become more widely available.'

'Trump began broadcasting his growing impatience with public health measures meant to combat the pandemic — even as public health officials have offered contradictory forecasts — on Twitter over the weekend, a shift that continued throughout the day on Monday.'

Read the whole thing here.

We've gone from 0 cases here in Michigan on Mar 10 to 1,324 on Mar 23, putting us 5th in the nation

Our mortality rate is 1.2%, 12x worse than for influenza.

A week ago I expected the nation would have only 25,000 cases by now at a 5x rate. We have 41,701 and 537 deaths, for a mortality rate of 1.28%.

Increased testing is occurring.

Michigan is staying at home to prevent spread.

Every day you stay at home increases the chances someone hospitalized for COVID-19 will survive.

You do your part just by doing nothing, at home. 

Gramps, born in 1926, says this is worse than 2008

Dad will be 94 this year if the coronavirus doesn't get him first.

He's been through a lot, seen it all. Darmouth graduate. Served in the US Navy from World War II to Vietnam, retired as a captain.

He was just a little kid during the Great Depression, didn't really know any better. But he's watched America become a lot better since then, and now it suddenly isn't.

Things may end for Dad the way they began, with Great Depression II.

Long war on terror, coronavirus, economic meltdown.

We've had war, plague and depression before in this country, sometimes in rapid succession. WWI ended with a whimper as the Spanish Flu pandemic killed tens of millions, followed quickly by the depression of 1920. That one was very deep and severe, but ended quickly because the government . . . did nothing.

Free market economies, if left to be free, quickly recover from catastrophes because debt overhangs are allowed to clear through bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is the cure.

But we can't stomach that, same as we haven't been able to say No to our children. Self-esteem and all that.

So, expect the suffering and disorder to continue.

Sad. 

Why coronavirus spread in the USA

Because instead of issuing a travel stop on Feb 1, Trump let everyone keep flying hither and yon, except for Chinese nationals.

Do you know how many that is?

On average 1.75 million people move through America's nine busiest airports EVERY DAY, as of the first half of 2019.

And the planes still fly to this day.

Things on my list I couldn't get at Sam's Club today due to coronavirus panic shopping

butter

bacon

lettuce

Got everything else I wanted, though. 19 items.

Interesting that I wasn't permitted to buy two bags of mandarin oranges or two bags of frozen flounder, only one of each, but I was permitted to buy two 1.75 liter bottles of vodka and two bags of bagels.

Politically speaking about coronavirus . . .

The virus and the economic problems themselves have basically drowned out the Democrat race for the presidency. Trump is front and center in all of it, dominating the news cycle.

The news is very bad for Trump, but the focus is on him and the problems, not the Democrats.

Neither Biden nor Sanders have much going for them personality wise or policy wise. Their voices sound frail and small in the face of these enormous challenges.

Trump is clearly in his element . . . for now.

But wealth destruction, massive unemployment and death now stalk him politically as much as they do the rest of us in reality. It's not going to help him to insist he knew this was a pandemic all along as he did yesterday when he's on camera denying it was not long ago. Besides, if he already knew, he should have taken drastic action like canceling jet travel on Feb 1. Instead he simply canceled the jet travel of a few Chinese nationals. Had he been knowledgeable, he would have known too that all those travelers by jet from China had asymptomatic spreaders in their midst. That's in part why we have an explosion of cases everywhere. They also came from other hotspots on jets to America. Trump bungled this badly and allowed the pandemic to come here.

Anecdotally people in my orbit are heeding the call to stay home. Commuter trains into Chicago are nearly empty, says a close friend. Road traffic is very light on workdays here in Michigan. Work orders have dried up and employees are on-call, if they haven't been furloughed outright. Work-from-home for the $40k or less crowd is estimated to be possible for just 17% of all individual wage earners in the US. Higher earners have more opportunity for that, but it will probably not last long for some as the economy nose dives. Many will soon be underwater, if they aren't already. This is going to cost an enormous sum and do tremendous damage to the people and the economy.

And to think it was mostly preventable with a little common sense, something neither party seems capable of providing.

This is a catastrophe, a pathetic display of human incompetence.    

America is truly great again: Trump has the best stock market losses, I mean, they are YUGE! Top shelf stuff!

Top 20 daily percentage losses Dow Jones Industrial Average

Top 20 daily percentage losses S&P 500

West Virginia still has no cases: Boomers say it's the moonshine, zoomers say it's the meth, I say it's because they don't fly and no one flies there, at least on purpose