https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
If I remember correctly, the  2018-2019 flu season resulted in 45,000 death in the USA (normally much lower - maybe 20,000 to 30,000, I'm not sure (see the attached image, which seems to have a slightly higher figure for 2019-2018 than I remember from reports).  It's ridiculous to think that we will shut down every year for a month or two for seasonal flu, but I believe that we are that stupid!

Very few people point out the "politically-correct" (and taught) estimate of 40,000 US deaths per percent increase of unemployment (as in the film "The Big Short" years ago).   That's regularly used by the politically-correct, but they [ignore, suppress] it when it doesn't fit their message.   While I don't trust that number, and certainly don't feel comfortable extrapolating it, I might as well use a fool's weapon against them.  [Late March, early April] estimates by prominent economists were for were 20-25% unemployment (all my numbers are from my very bad memory), and we are approaching those levels ALREADY.  So let's do a ridiculous extrapolation :  800,000 USA deaths (allowing some bull-shitting) directly attributable to the cure (one might say deliberate murder) as opposed to the disease (shit happens)?  That junk number is close to one of the 1918 Spanish flu death estimates (I forget if that was USA only). Those are stupid estimates and comments, but I'm probably not as bad as what we've been fed.  

While we didn't really know how bad this would be, well, we really did know how bad it would be, given the very early example from China, which everyone [ignored, disbelieved], in spite of previous SARS epidemics, in spite of what the Chinese stated, and their global assistance for the pandemic (far more than the USA, I suspect).  

?Fauchie? (spelling?), the medical "public face" in the USA stated very clearly as recently as the latter part of February, that we have nothing to be concerned about.   (...don't ask me about the dipshit Canadian leads including Potatoe-head himself...)  Great politician, ?Fauchie? smoothly changed his tune to divert blame elsewhere.  How on Earth has this become a polarized political issue?  Well, that certainly fits what I've been seeing for decades in purely scientific subject areas :  one can best predict the opinion of scientists by knowing their political affiliation (cynical? yeah, but seems to hold).

I am HUGELY [frustrated, disappointed, angry] with our [medical experts, scientists, media], and I totally agree with Trump's expression "fake media" (I've felt that way for several decades).  Self-isolation periods as broadcast to the public went from [2 weeks, 1 month, 1.5 months, several months,].  Only in the last two weeks have they spoken about "successive waves", and even now no-one is talking about a reasonable expectation of a "mutated virus" potential (eg possibly 1916 flu versus 1918 Spanish flu).   All of this is written large in history (and past USA [epidemic, pandemic] analysis going way back). 

By the way, by far the best [model, forecast (very high)] I saw up until recently (best now is by the Uof Washington IHME?) was by a complete amateur who clearly stated that he didn't know what he was doing.  Where have the media been?  His [model, estimates] were based on the Spanish flu in a 26Feb2020 post : 
https://selenianboondocks.com/2020/02/modeling-covid-19-when-will-the-peak-occur-in-the-us/

Do I trust the Chinese?  No, but I trust them far more than Western experts (who seem to be getting better, VERY slow though).  They are pragmatic, and addressed the problems without too much concern for perfect stats.  It wouldn't surprise me if the Chinese have much better immune systems - I don't eat [bat, dog, snake, rat]s, but maybe I should (and shout incantations, burn insense, and do mystical dances), but maybe the Chinese do.  They also addressed a political issue based on past problems - not unlike Westerners now, and spent more time addressing the problem than writing reports.   But overall, I see this across science :  the Chinese are no fools, but they probably see us as fools.  They are leaders in [climate, physics, astronomy, geology, Computational Intelligence] (areas I look at) by not just doing the maiinstream religious sciences, but jumping onto better concepts and building the satellites etc to do them.   The USA deserves a lot of credit, no doubt, and I still have a lot of respect for what they do, but the Chinese are especially powerful in the tough, fundamental areas, with tough mathematics.  The USA is currently scambling to catch up in all of these areas aftera long-standing period of dominance.

Last summer saw a record number of "cosmic/galactic" days (near-zero geomagnetic Kp index), and they have such high energy, well, you can't find a better driver of mutations unless you live inside a nuclear reactor.  These occur especially at solar minumum, and we are in an exceptional solar minimum.  Everyone has forgotten that now is ALSO an ideal time for a major influenza pandemic, possibly a very bad mutant.   But since 1710, if I remember correctly, these most often to cluster around solar maximum, and were are still at a minimum.  Grand Solar Minimum is really bad news, AND WE JUST MAY GET THERE IN THE NEXT 3 SOLAR CYCLES! (there seems to be a BIG though sloppy solar correlation for all major pandemic types (maybe even including Ebola?, but we'll have to wait for five or ten solar cycles), except smallpox.  Note that many scientists dispute that, and I am supposed to scrutinize one such recent paper, but my motivation is low.  The author has nice statistics applied to tthe wrong type of  problem, and the paper seems to be more of a political statement like "Anthropogenic CO2 is the primary driver of climate since 1850".  (Yeah, bullshit, moron scientists).
http://www.billhowell.ca/Pandemics,%20health,%20and%20the%20Sun/_Pandemics,%20health,%20and%20the%20sun.html

This "self-isolation" is killing business and ruining livelihoods.   "Flattening the curve" mostly delays the same problem (and future occurances, including possible [mutated, worse] versions) , although it does save some lives just by avoiding triage, improve care for those with seriousproblems, and allowing [hospital, community health] resource to buildup to deal with it.  My completely ignorant guess : improved medical care afforded by self-isolation will reduce deaths by 20-40% up until a vaccine is developed.  Statements that only 10% of the population will come in contact seem ludicrous.  Face it - almost all of the saved lives (>>95%) are thanks to our immune systems (most of it due to the primary immune system, when it gets bad the critical parts due to the Killer T-cell etc gang).  As usual.

So now the question of US global status, frequently brought up in [Barrons, MarketWatch, maybe Wall Street Journal] .   A good chunk of the world now looks to [cash-rich, profitable] China, and don't care about the USA.  Many may have learned from the modern example of what happens to US allies, and do not want to go down the same path, except they do want the money.  With the exception of hi-tech, what  does the USA do best? (and even in that area - is this impression a perceptual lag?)  As per Arnold J. Toynbee, survival of civilisations depends on rejecting ideas (deep beliefs) that served well in the past, and adopting to new competitive realities.  Maybe one-or-more of [democracy, freedom, freedom from  torture], especially in their morphed modern Western forms (to me "The cancer of modern democracy") have to change?

As for myself, well, if the virus has the combination to my immune system, that will be bad news.  Anecdotal perspectives run the opposite to what I stated above <grin>.

Other things

Anyways, I'm having a blast.  I retired from voluntary neural network conference organising committee work in March, and have almost started to work on my own projects.  Self-isolation means that, for now, I ddon't spend a huge amount of time on [Lions, Seniors, Firefighting] clubs, and I can focus on my work.  Quiet to focus and progress with projects.   Awesome.

You probably don't care about [market, business] quick indicators, but here's a [recent, fun, 3-day] brain fart (1 day pondering & coding, 0.5 day fix the worst bugs, 1.5 days write-up and post, no feedback from a US dividend guy the idea came from, though he said he posted it (behind a pay-wall, so I didn't check)) :
http://www.billhowell.ca/economics,%20markets/S&P%20500%20Shiller-forward%20PE%20versus%2010y%20Treasury%20bond%20rates.html
You should be able to find much better in standard textbooks.  I don't plan on going further with it.


Bill Howell
Volunteer firefighter, Member of Hussar Lion's Club & Sundowners
1-587-707-2027     www.BillHowell.ca
P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0



-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	Greetings
Date:	Sun, 19 Apr 2020 18:28:43 -0700
From:	Geoff Cowper <>
To:	Bill Howell <>