Covid-19 on a Southern Hemisphere Rampage
An Email exchange with Jim Bianco and Erik Townsend reveals a Covid-19 pattern that many of us expected but no one wanted.
Bianco reports “The virus is exploding in the southern hemisphere … Central/South America, Africa, around India and around Iran.”
“Here is my thinking/idea: The virus is no where near disappearing. Instead it has moved to the southern hemisphere (winter) and out of the northern hemisphere (summer). If so, we are enjoying a summer respite before a second way this coming winter.”
Reported Infections – The World Excluding the US
Bianco emailed charts of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa, Keyna, India, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and other countries.
I put those countries on a single chart, above. Data is from Our World in Data, with credit to Bianco for the idea.
Thanks Jim!
Phew?!
Yes, we have a collective “Phew” but the chart shows that is not even justified.
The US has flattened the curve and no more.
The recent riots may easily un-flatten the curve just as things were, at least for a while, starting to look better, even as some states are looking worse.
US Covid-19 Cases 2020-06-04
New US Epicenters
- Illinois
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- Georgia
- Virgina
While people breathe a sigh of relief about recent declines in New York and New Jersey, huge problems erupted in Illinois, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia despite warmer weather.
Seven days of mass rioting without masks are sure to exacerbate these worsening trends.
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Mish
I do wonder how we will handle the second spike. In California the testing has more than doubled since April but from a very low level. It’s hard to know how much is more testing vs more virus. It used to be nearly impossible to get a test here. We have contact tracers now and we had none in April. As long as our hospitals don’t get overwhelmed then we can probably handle more cases per day than we currently have. We are all learning. What is the manageable balance of new cases per day?
“Nobody gets out alive. This is the end, my friend. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I’m going to get my kicks in before the whole damn sh-t house goes up in flames.”
Have a good Saturday, Mish. I’m going out for a 12 mile run on the wooded trails today. I don’t expect to run into Governor Morbidly Obese, which is a nice bonus.
Some people struggle for months with Covid, with symptoms that come and go. Do they still have the virus? Do they have a hyperactive immune system that is causing the symptoms? Do they have scar tissue from Covid? Do they have what is known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which often follows viral attacks? It’s not clear at this point:
Thanks for the charts, Mish.
The charts doesn’t seem to show correlation with the seasons or temperatures. It does seem to show some correlation with lockdowns.
Well Americans aren’t known for their mastery of world geography. You do realise out of those 12 countries 8 are not in the southern hemisphere?
Nice one!
Statement from The Lancet
Today, three of the authors of the paper, “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis”, have retracted their study. They were unable to complete an independent audit of the data underpinning their analysis. As a result, they have concluded that they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.”
The retraction notice is published today, June 4, 2020
KTLA “News” kept telling me that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. A national news anchor apparently said that if i took HCQ it would kill me.
Yet people have taken HCQ for decades and the media can’t point to a list of people who have died from using the drug. This drug has been utterly negatively politicized. Is that politization endangering peoples lives, by keeping people from using the drug, particularly in concert with zinc?
That so-called “study” was identified as suspect if not outright fraudulent from the very beginning by many dozens of researchers and statisticians.
It has become pretty obvious to me over the past couple months that many people, including Fauci in my opinion, have been acting as shills for Big Pharma, desperately trying to protect potential big profits more than than helping people who come down with COVID-19.
I would not be surprised at all if this retracted “study” was a poorly executed attempt, supported by Big Pharma, to keep “bashing” the very inexpensive HCQ+zinc(+zpac) protocols that have been used with much success in many different regions of the world.
“Yes, we have a collective “Phew” but the chart shows that is not even justified. “
Bend the curve was never designed to eliminate Covid-19. It also suppressed the attainment of herd immunity.
Nobel Award winning scientist Michael Leavitt said recently, that the lock down, as it was performed, was a huge mistake. Again, the issue of herd immunity.
Read the Science article on people having some sort of pre-existing immunity.
It says…Thiel and colleagues analyzed blood from 68 uninfected people and found that 34% hosted helper T cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2. The La Jolla team detected this crossreactivity in about half of stored blood samples collected between 2015 and 2018, well before the current pandemic began. The researchers think these cells were likely triggered by past infection with one of the four human coronaviruses that cause colds; proteins in these viruses resemble those of SARS-CoV-2….
The article says 34% to 50%.
Not 40%, not 60%, not 80%.
And it doesn’t say immune, it says that a similar virus had been encountered in the past and the body was prepared to mount a response to the Covid 19 virus. It doesn’t mean you won’t get it, it’s just further along the path for the body to fight it. Just because you had a cold before, doesn’t mean you’ll never have the effects of a cold ever again.
And, use your brain, if 80% were already immune, there would be no epidemic. It never could have spread as far, as fast and as widely as it has. There would be herd immunity.
According to this article in Science magazine (based on 2 per reviewed studies) some 40 to 60% of the population are already immune due to contact with earlier forms of Corona viruses.
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?”
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
As I understand it, the Buddhists say there truly is only this moment and no other. Seems like Elliot was saying the same thing.
There will always be a contingent of people that think they know better than the professionals. Sadly, they also infect others and complicate the problem.
Sadly, there will always be a contingent of people unable to think for themselves, so they believe w/o question anything someone with a string of letters after their names tells them. These people are called sheep.
Bubble busting time has arrived for all you panicking Debby Downers. Uh oh….
Karl Friston: up to 80% not even susceptible to Covid-19
The influential professor’s statistical observations could radically change how we lift lockdown
June 4, 2020
And you will find out if you’re the 20% later.
Life offers no guarantees…
That’s a nice theory, but unlikely to be true for several reasons. First, it has long been posited that if 60-80% of the people develop immunity, we would achieve herd immunity, and Covid19 would die out. If we started with 80% of people having a natural immunity, we would have had herd immunity before it ever arrived, and it would never have spread in the first place. Second, there have been places where a whole population was exposed, and tested, such as in meat packing plants. It is not unusual for 60–70% of the people in a packing plant to test positive.
It’s not impossible that some people have some level of immunity, and I hope it’s true. I doubt it will turn out to be over 30%. It is also true that a number of people have asymptomatic cases…they get it, but never show symptoms. Some would lump those people witth those that have a natural immunity, but there is one important difference. A person with immunity would never catch it, and thus could never spread it, while a person with an asymptomatic case would catch it and could spread it. Thus, they would not initially count towards the 60-80% required for “herd immunity”.
Given that Covid19 did spread, I think it’s safe to say 80% did not have a natural immunity. Hopefully, between those who had immunity and those who had mild or asymptomatic cases, there will be enough immune people that we will not have a second wave in the Fall, but only time will tell.
Been a lot of transmissions in meat packing plants…this bug is so contagious its still a problem in heat and goes ballistic at 40 F. I just hope the Italian doctors are right the covid there mutated into somthing non lethal.
Dying from Covid is not really the biggest threat, and that is what people really fail to understand. The impression most people have is that if you are infected and live you simply go on with your life as if nothing happened, That is not the reality of this virus. The vast majority of people who contract it will live through it. The real danger of Covid is the permanent damage done to lungs and organs that you then have to live with permanently from then on. This virus attack blood vessels and damaging internal organs and even the brain. If you do not have pre-existing medical conditions before you get the virus, you very well may have some after.
I keep hearing this, but I’ve not uncovered any hard research that details what proportion of people end up with long term issues.
Same issue with failed suicides and car accidents. 40k people die from car accidents each year in the USA. Hundreds of thousands more live the remainder of their lives crippled or maimed from from car accidents. What do you want to do about this?
Or are CV19 victems of more concern? One would think so!
C19 victims are more preventable. Some countries, ones that managed the epidemic better than the US will have a lack of victims. Other countries that allowed it to spread will have more.
As you are very selective what news you choose to bring to the attention of your very woke comrades i will help fill in the holes of the massive amount of very important news items that you miss. Here is a piece of proper journalism that you should read regarding hydroxychloroquine. Lets call it what it is, deliberate medical fraud but as you wont post anything that goes against the revolutionary agenda i will post it for you. Warning to all comrades that this is proper journalism and may cause you serious amounts of keyboard rage.
link to market-ticker.org
Here’s a challange: Name a more misleading and useless metric than reported cases of Covid 19 per political unit?
Projected change in GDP as a function of number of votes cast in the last Eurovision song contest.
BLS 5-year planned inflation science fiction.
Death statistics re Covid. All and any.
Bianco forgot Russia in his list of “Southern Hemisphere” nations.
He also very selectively forgot to mention Australia, also a southern hemisphere country that has had nothing. Mish is always very selective with his news reports.
Bug in the “like” heart logic. I “liked” Webej and went on a list of 3 people, myself included. But the count was 2. Toggle my “like” off and the count went to 3, with the list having 2. Toggle on, the count’s 2, the list has all 3. Time to refresh the page.
In south africa a high court judgement on the lockdown there ruled it or various facets of it unconstitutional
Have not seen national measures challenged in court elsewhere that I remember.
In Spain they plan to allow travel within the country on the 22nd, international travel on 1st july. Actually I’m not sure anyone much knows what is going on, and the government has little respect left from anyone regarding their presentation of anything.
Mish, I don’t believe your analysis of the U.S. is completely accurate. Testing is also increasing, i.e. the number of tests today. If you adjust new cases per day by the increase in tests, the overall infection trend is downwards in some states (e.g. California).
This is not to say we won’t have a wave 2. But even in that case, things now in place such as social distancing, testing, the use of face masks and cleansing, etc., will likely reduce the impact.
In general, if someone feels ill, they get tested, IF testing is available. If no symptoms, why test? So more testing positive is indicative of rising cases. There are very few cases of proactive testing except in afflicted nursing homes.
As for social distancing, testing, the use of face masks and cleansing, my feeling is that much of that has dropped off in the past few weeks with the assumption that the crisis has passed, the peak is past, and summer automatically means no worries.
Masks are very effective if 80% of people wear them, but have no appreciable effect if only 33% of people wear them. Around here it is probably around 40%, so they aren’t doing much.
You just made all of that up.
There is so much clear evidence that if masks are worn by all people the spread can be reduced or eliminated, one has to be purposefully obtuse to deny it. Nevertheless, here is a typical link:
I much prefer wearing a mask to shutting down the economy.
In my area of TX you’d be hard pressed to find evidence that there was a virus. More cases and deaths but without much mention on MSM people are acting like it’s gone. Denial is now the norm here.
U.S. coronavirus cases have been slowly ticking up since Memorial Day
PUBLISHED THU, JUN 4 20205:59 PM EDTUPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Cases will grow because the number is big – but it’s the % change that matters most!
With a R0 of 3 and 1.9M US cases, we should be seeing 12% growth or 228K cases a day (to double every 6 days), we’ve been at about 20K or just over 1%.
The so called “spikes” are near meaningless until we get the real R0 value.
We are riding on the residual effect of the shut-down. Florida, today, has their highest ever number of new cases–a week of so after re-opening (average incubation time 1 to 2 weeks). On 5/27 the US hit 100K recorded deaths, today on 6/4, we’re at 110K–a week later. That will accelerate with the number of cases. It is quite likely that 10K per week will be the lower bound for the restof the summer.
It is becoming clear that the summer slow-down effect will not be that great and with the messaging that it is all over, the spread will widen.
…Researchers studied 144 geopolitical areas around the world with more than 375,000 COVID-19 cases by March 27. They found that public health interventions are working – they are slowing down the spread of this pandemic. However, scientists found no evidence that countries experiencing warm weather in March had any advantage over colder climates. COVID-19 is a global phenomenon and you have to remember that it is pretty hot in the southern hemisphere. COVID-19 is spreading very quickly in Brazil and Australia. And what is slowing this disease down is not the warm weather, but extensive public health measures….Dionne Gesink, one of the authors of the study, said: “Summer is not going to make this go away. It’s important people know that. On the other hand, the more public health interventions an area had in place, the bigger the impact on slowing the epidemic growth.”…
In Idaho, where I reside, the numbers of cases is going back up, while we are returning to ‘normal’ and opening restaurants, etc. Everyone is quietly hoping that the increase in cases is simply an anomaly that will right itself in time. I sure enjoy getting back to my favorite haunts (restaurants, watering holes, etc.), but I see the writing on the wall.
It’s not spreading rapidly in Australia. Did you mean Argentina?
How long will this hot weather fiction go around? Your average body temperature is 37 degrees centigrade. Does it stop the multiplication of the virus?
However, hot weather is accompanied by long intense sun radiation. There may or may not be something to vitamin D, but what is measurably certain is that UV light stops the viruses dead. This was tested by some agency, but I don’t have the link.
Also, droplet evaporation is increased in hot weather, so slowly the spread, R0 if you will, will degrade.
Also, humidity. Your nasal passages contain more mucus in warm, damp weather, and that mucus is designed to catch viruses before they catch you.
Another round of lockdowns across the globe?
The psychological impact will be massive, food chains broken, both quiet and loud desperation immeasurable. Doesn’t bare thinking about.
Imagine an autumn and winter of awful weather and no joy. Christmas devoid of social interaction, close to zero footfall in the run-up to the holiday season.
That’s a depression.
I hope you are so wrong c-a. I so hope so…
UK perspective only: I don’t think we’ll see lockdowns of the scale we have seen to date. They aren’t working because they were starting to fail even before it became fashionable to gather in large groups to protest police violence (which isn’t even a thing in the UK).
The most recent data in the UK suggests 7% of people have had the virus. If we believe that every death is accurately recorded, then we get an actual death of 0.89%. That’s 579,000 deaths at 100%, of which 40,000 have already died.
My suspicion is that rather than lockdowns, we will see suppression of localised flare ups and just regular social distancing – which most people are doing by default – elsewhere.
Also i noted a recent UK study found that Chinese women are the least likely group to die from this. Given where the virus supposedly originated and the length of time it has existed in each ethnicity, it is just possible that this signals a weakening.
The pattern is clear, C19 rockets for about 70-90 days then bends dramatically. Most curves were bending in the US as the lockdown started. Social Distancing likely only lowered R0 by .5 to 1% it would have gone below 1 naturally. But, masks indoors will help come fall.
The pattern may be clear, but the cause may not be. By 70 days, most countries were either in full lockdown, or their citizens had adopted social distancing. In my town the papers were reporting that restaurants and cafes were reporting an 80% drop in trade 8 days before the government mandated lockdown commenced.
Read the comments sections of UK newspapers and you’ll find the claim that the lockdown was unnecessary because the disease isn’t spreading. It’s like saying “I stood in front of the train, after the driver stopped it, so you lied when you said standing in front of a train was dangerous”.
Social distancing may well have been effective at stopping the virus without a lockdown. But based on my first paragraph, it was also effective at stopping the economy.
I am thinking more fall than summer. Even if the numbers get worse in the summer, there will be massive resistance from all sides to not lock down because of financial and other considerations. I expect that when fall hits and the weather cools, the numbers will explode, and there will not be any other choice. So far estimates are about 15% of the populations has been exposed, and we will not see the beginning of the end until we get to 60%
Look at the 1957-1958 Asian flu pandemic. The second wave was the nasty one.
I don’t think they will lock down again. Wearing masks accomplishes as much or more, anyway. Mostly I think they will just let it rip this fall, until the hospitals are approaching capacity, and then make masks mandatory. Sadly, some will refuse, and the election will take place against a backdrop of pandemic.
A series of 7 unbroken antibody studies, including the massive ones from Italy and Spain, show there are at least 8-10 cases for everyone tested – so we are approaching 20M in the US, not 15% yet.
I only see 3 countries located in the southern hemisphere: Chile, Argentina & S Africa.
Brazil and India are substantially N Hemisphere, and that is where COVID-19 is preponderant.
N Zealand & Australia do not figure in the data.
As for epidemic waves: These are (very) poorly understood. The herd immunity of 80% only applies if we assume homogeneous connectivity and susceptibility. There are scientific estimates based on data so far that put the community immunity to dampen transmission at 10-20%. Herd immunity is a number that belongs within vaccination theory, not epidemic wave theory.
Whole thesis is baseless speculation on the basis of too few variables about a phenomena we know very little about (waxing and waning of plagues). Susceptibility (differentiation in immune systems and cellular biology) for pathogens is not homogenous and virtually impossible to predict.
I also noticed that some of those countries like Iran and India weren’t in the southern hemisphere. Not saying that debunks the argument.
I worry about India. With it’s huge population and densely packed cities, poor hygiene (A great many homes have no running water) and poorly educated people… a recipe for disaster!
I disagree on it being impossible to predict. We know more about how viruses work than ever before. We know more about the human genome than ever before. We are not static in our knowledge or evolution of anything.
Just like the ruin we see in our cities, we will have the liberals to thank for the second wave of Covid. As a rule, it takes 2 years for a pandemic to run its course, and if the people act stupidly the 2nd wave is worse than the 1st. Well I guess we know what to expect….
I thought covid was fake news…. how quickly things change.
hoax
Yes, the protests will spread covid. So will opening up prematurely without a coherent plan.
Funny that you only blame one side.
Isn’t that what this is all about, sides?
Who does not have a coherent plan? Please be specific….
And why Exactly do you blame the liberals?
Because deepstate globalists Soros!!!!
They are the ones out there screaming and spitting by the thousands to glorify a convicted criminal. They are the ones providing the cover for the looters and rioters who are ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people. How many innocent people have now been killed and will have life altering injuries and lose everything they worked lifetimes to build over the glorification of a common criminal? Yea, I blame the damn liberal and Democrats….
Liberals are refusing to wear masks?
My revised model says 100k MORE deaths by September 21st. We will need a miracle to not hit this. Get ready for shutdowns again this summer and more mass layoffs.
So? Still the majority of deaths are too old people with multiple comorbidities in nursing homes.
What’s the death count against 350 odd million USA population? Minuscule.
Stop worrying. Be happy.
Stop telling me what to think or feel. This isnt about deaths alone.
Jojo, I hate old people too!
Mr. Causal, you are far more correct than you may realize. You’ve actually agreed fully w/Mr. Jojo’s comment….but I realize, its irritating to have someone openly state what you thought was exclusively, yours.
“The future enters into us long before it happens”
Rainer Maria Rilke
The future hasn’t happened. No matter how bad the past, think positive thoughts!
Positive thoughts without action led to the rioting. Our current present used to be our future. Americans lead the world in thinking positive thoughts, and it’s brought us to this.
At this point, we are not thinking positive thoughts, we are just being delusional.
People should think positive thoughts over things they can control, goals they can personally achieve. If they want to get a certification, learn a language, find love, or get in better shape, positive thinking is helpful.
For societal issues like the economy or a pandemic, positive thinking is not only useless, it can be dangerous when used to mislead people. You don’t have to expect doom, but there are countless examples of people allowing themselves to be led down the primrose path with happy thoughts. Scrutiny is a good and healthy thing!