Kung Flu: One Year Retrospective

 

We were going to use an exchange between ourself and some online Three Stooges to illustrate where we are and why, but in what's sure to be a disappointment to Larry and the two Darryls,

pity has stayed our hand, and we have elected not to beat the retarded kids here, and to skip their nonsense, as it's become apparent they don't know what they don't know about what they're opining, speaking as they do from a bottomless abyss of total ignorance about the entire subject matter. But if you would see the state of the average cretin's grasp of science, medicine, and mathematics, let alone basic logic, you can head over to Mike's Cold Fury blog, and read the comments in this thread. I warn you, it's 10 minutes you'll never get back, and reading their twaddle will probably lower your IQ almost enough to vote Democrat, but I don't want them deprived of the attention their trolling and idiocy richly deserves. Reason #27 why I moderate comments here is to keep house trolls like this out of the pool. Because they can't read the signs that say "Don't sh*t in the pool." So they do that.

Instead, let's look at what I told you then, and see where we are now.

First Take

The funny part for me is comparing that, which I actually said, and comparing it to what uninformed jackasses think I'm saying when I explain in blistering detail that masks work, but people are idiots.

Zero defects, save one.

At the time, I looked at the then-unpolluted numbers for coronavirus fatality, which ranged from 1% up to 5%, so I went with the worst-case numbers rather than downplay things.

Later, I settled on 3%, as it split the difference between the published extremes of 1% and 5%, which seemed reasonable with an hitherto unknown virus, and quite possibly one genetically engineered by ChiCom biowar labs.

It turns out, it's closer to 2% than 3%, most places (though a couple of them have come pretty close to 3%, even now). To be as precise as I'm going to be, 1.775%, on average, in the U.S., is the average CFR - Case Fatality Rate. I.e. how many people who get it will die as a direct consequence. 

And, as I frequently require of others, I'll show my work.

I took Johns Hopkins' numbers for COVID cases and deaths, primarily because of ease of access, and because they're not @$$clown Fauci, nor the politically-compromised jackholes at the CDC. They're by actual medical and statistical professionals, rather than dipshits who've failed upwards for an entire career, and thus a bit more beholden on their accuracy and reputations when they put data out there. You got a better idea, lay it on me.

So, I took the 14 worst-hit states, and the ten least hit ones.

I then took their guesstimated populations (because the 2020 census isn't completely processed, nor, likely as accurate as years past). I divided their total cases in that population to get the actual rate of COVID infection. Some will bitch that those number have been polluted by false positives. Fair enough. However, I would point out they're also polluted by the lack of asymptomatic carriers never added to those numbers, who never got tested because they never got symptoms. And I'm going on the theory that one cancels out the other, leaving the status quo.

That gets us the following rates of infection and rates of fatality, by state (plus D.C.) from most (numerically) infected states (Top 14) to least (Bottom 10):

We're smart, but lazy. So if your state is somewhere in the middle 27 we didn't bother with (which we figure won't deviate notably from what we found with the 24 we did do), and not listed above, do it yourself. 'tain't that hard.

Also, that overall is an average of only the 24 listed, above. 

Full mathemagical disclosure: I didn't population-weight CA's 1.5% at being worth 39 times what MT's 1.4% is. If you want moon landing precision, do it your own damned self. I doubt the actual, dead-on balls accurate percentage will vary enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but any weaponized autists are free to work it out to the last decimal place, and correct me in Comments.

This table tells us several things.

First and foremost, Kung Flu has not, by and large, penetrated anywhere beyond about 10% of the populace in the U.S. (ND, TN, and AZ are the notable over-achievers there.) Early on, with a lack of tests, there was concern that some places were oversampled, undersampled, etc. When CA, for but one example, with nearly 40M people, has had 50M tests, that's not an issue at this point.

So if you still want ten times as many people dead, by all means, spread it to the other 90% of the country who hasn't gotten it yet, before vaccinations are widely distributed. (That'd be 5M dead total instead of 500K, for Common Core math grads.) As just the 10% numbers nearly crashed at least two major metro areas completely in medical terms, we do not advise that.

And also, because we're not a selfish Gilligan, nor a ghoul. YMMV.

FTR, once again, a baaaaaaaaad  flu year any time for the last century is 80,000 dead *(SWAGuesstimated by the CDC), and annual flu has a CFR of 0.1%, since ever, other than the Spanish Flu of 1918. So that makes the lethality of Kung Flu between 5 and 29 times worse than annual flu. Period.

We have comfortably eclipsed anyone tongue-swabbing the notion that this is "just the flu, bro." Well, except for irremediably total retards.

Secondly, the biggest fuck-ups in terms of how much this spread are actually North Dakota, Tennessee, and Arizona. By a country mile. Sorry campers, but it ain't mainly Dumbocrats that're the biggest problem when it comes to pressure-washing the vomit. And FL and TX did worse than NYFS and CA, in terms of seeing that a greater percentage of people get infected. Bullshitters with an agenda lie. The numbers don't. The best states (of those I examined) at containing it were Hawaii, Vermont, and Maine. I think that has more to do with sunshine killing the virus, or cold weather keeping people apart, more than anything else, coupled with low exposure to it to begin with. But the idea that North Dakota did six times worse than Hawaii should duly embarrass the clowns nominally running things in Bismarck, and despite the low pop. density, waiting until November to institute public masking and other measures was demonstrably asinine. The only good news there is they were stupid in one of the least-populated states in the country, so the total damage was contained by happenstance, rather than design.

Thirdly, where it comes down to killing people most of all, NJ, NYFS, and PA lead the dumbass parade of highest percentage of victims killed. Partly, that has to do with shoving the sick in amongst the most vulnerable by forcing nursing homes to accept known COVID+ patients, and partly it has to do with healthcare resources in those states being overwhelmed in those high-population states at the height of the crisis, which always leads to poor outcomes.

Exactly as we dun tole 'ya it would.

And AK's current CFR of 0.5% is downright phenomenal. How'd they do it? Low numbers overall, coupled with enough hospital capacity for those cases, and some generally hardier and healthier people, if I had to guess.

Which is why not letting the outbreak overwhelm that capacity is still a thing, and will be until vaccinations are widespread in the population, for anyone who wants one.

And nota bene: the seriously ill who haven't died, have a host of sequellae that result from weeks of double pneumonia, intubation, disseminated coagulopathy in major organs, etc., so the number of people killed by Kung Flu is going to be like a strike in a bowling game: i.e. it's going to be counted for the next several frames, and this year's pandemic is going to kill people over the next several years, because of damage to their body, and inability to cope with more minor things they would have otherwise survived, had COVID 19 not torn them a new one this year. It's going to be the Agent Orange of viruses, and people have only begun dying from it, not finished, even if we vaccinated 100% of the population tomorrow.

But, as warned, the follow-on effects have been hugely more troubling that this virus, per se.

Unemployment. Lack of anything in the bank account. Death of entire industries and economic sectors, with no end in sight. The prospect of skyrocketing inflation any minute. And/or the collapse of the dollar, the stock market, and pretty much anything that needs money to make it run.

That's before COVID served as the pretext for rolling out the shenanigans that outright stole the re-election of the most popular president in a century while everyone was watching it happen, then doing the same thing again with the Senate, turning the now-dead republic into a banana republic, and slamming the reins of government so hard to the Left it has nearly killed the horse. And they're just warming up!

Then an imperial presidency by a fraudulently installed poser, fortifying the capitol lest the peasants revolt, a diarrhea stream of executive orders, setting military readiness on fire, churning out fiatbux backed by airballs three shifts a day at warp speed, and setting the country up for the greatest financial collapse the world has ever seen.

All while greasing the skids for total gun control, thought policing, and a Final Solution to the Conservative problem, complete with trains and re-education camps, after painting half the country as would-be terrorists in great need of rounding up.

Yeah, we sure missed warning you about all of that.

Wait...not so much. Pretty much been beating that drum all year long.

And now we know why smart people told us to familiarize ourselves with The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich , because watching the @$$clown PTB do a massive scripted do-over of the whole thing reminds one of Yogi Berra's brilliant observation: "It's like deja vu all over again."

As CA says at WRSA: "This is where we are. Imagine where we'll be."

Best wishes to you as you deal with each fresh hell this coming year. These are "the Good Old Days". It only gets worse from here on out, and anything to the contrary will be a simulacrum of normalcy, and the deep breath before the plunge.