CORONAVIRUS: Herd Immunity At Last?

Okay, okay, here’s the deal: Nobody…NOBODY really knows or can say with accuracy how many people have been infected by COVID19. The problem is those who are asymptomatic. If you have the virus but don’t know it and don’t show any symptoms, do you even exist? Well, as far as coronavirus researchers are concerned, no. So-called heath “experts” talk about “contact tracing” and “antibody testing.” But neither of those can do one damn thing to prevent the spread of the disease.

The World Health Organization initially said that transmission from one asymptomatic to another was not a big thing. Now they’re “revisiting” that stance. But again, the problem is: How many asymptomatics are out there?

Well, what does all this mean?  

Doctors in Italy now claim that the coronavirus is virtually gone. Gone! They say that the coronavirus weakens as it transmits from person to person and now, the “viral load” they are seeing in people being tested is virtually negligible. This is kind of illogical, and those health “experts” are scrambling to counter the claims of the Italian doctors. But the evidence is clear. Just look at the graphs of new cases and deaths in Italy and you’ll see that the virus is dying off.

Why is this happening? We are told that this is not how viruses usually behave. Well, Italy was hit pretty hard by the coronavirus in the beginning. It spread through their society quickly and efficiently, and did overwhelm their health care system.

With a population of 60,000,000 people, Italy now claims a total of 236,000 confirmed cases and 34,043 deaths. Using simple math and divide the number of deaths by the number of confirmed cases, we get a raw case-mortality rate of 14.4%, which is alarmingly high. But that would also mean that only 4% of their population has been infected (236,000 divided by 60 million). We know that’s not right. Many, many more people in Italy must be infected with COVID19 than those who test positive. And now Italian doctors say that the virus is pretty much gone. And that appears to be the case; you cannot argue with the data.

Here in the U.S., most states are seeing a gradual increase in the number of new cases. Some people use scary words like “spike” and “surge” or “second wave” for certain states, but if you look at the actual numbers since the beginning of the outbreak, you would not use those terms. And if you don’t believe me, the Google will provide up-to-date graphs (the same ones I publish here) for all fifty states and most countries on the planet. Pick a location and look at its graph and stats .

When you do, you’ll see that most of the states in the U.S. have curves that are either: flat; increasing slowly; or decreasing slowly. Trends are generally hard to discern because the numbers are always up and down.  There are usually no big changes one way or the other. Except for…well, except for one state: New York.

The State of New York has 19,400,000 people. They report 381,000 confirmed cases of COVID19 and 25,000 deaths. This gives them a case-mortality rate of 6.6%, with only about 2% of their population infected. But as with Italy, we know those numbers don’t tell the full story. Because again, nobody knows the actual numbers.

Check out the graphs for New York State.

Pretty incredible, right?  No other state is seeing such a noticeable trend.  

New York’s arrogant Governor Andrew Cuomo takes credit for this. He believes that his intelligent lockdown policies along with the cooperation of all New Yorkers is what is responsible for this falling-off of new cases and deaths. Me? I’m not so sure. In densely-populated New York City, they never did shut down their mass-transit system. Is anyone willing to say that was not one of the reasons they had so many cases and deaths so quickly?

Maybe…just maybe…Italy and New York State reached a level of “herd immunity” more quickly than other nations or states? Maybe Italy and New York State are just “ahead of the curve,” so to speak. If so, it tells us something very important. And that is, states that have not reached herd-immunity by now still have a long way to go before the virus begins to abate. In a very weird way, Italy and New York State “got lucky.” They went through the worst early on, and for them the problem appears to be disappearing.