Mask use has gone from nearly 0% to nearly 100% for those who have to go out and share airspace with others. Mask use has been normalised in China but was seen as weird or paranoid in the West, perhaps. Even President Trump said that he would not be wearing a mask, probably ensuring his avid cult followers continue to be potential killers as they shout and rant about their stupid beliefs in their ‘dear leader’ Dictator Trump.

In fact, a mask may not just protect you from inhaling the vapour emitted when another person talks, but, more effectively, it prevents your own vapours from pouring out, floating in the air for a few seconds and being inhaled by another. The science is in, masks that cover the mouth and nose are important to prevent the virus from getting out. Masks may rescue the economy from collapse as people will be able to go out sooner with a little less danger, however, isolation is the only way presently to prevent the complete devastating overwhelm of the health system from those who get very sick from Coronavirus infection.

Perhaps it is no accident that infection rates in the self-conscious mask-shy West have greatly exceeded that in the East, where there is a social priority to ‘save face’, and indeed, in the Muslim world where half the population has a filter between themselves and the world. The beauty industry, by creating face paints instead of decorative health coverings, has emphasized a need to display: the lips, the eyes, the cheekbones. The fashion industry can now come to the rescue by producing face filters that look good, that people want to wear and make them available.

Why risk infecting others when it can be so easily prevented?

I fear for the health of Americans. So quick to claim how perfect they are in their response to the pandemic, so harsh on the response of their rivals, so quick to shutter their borders, so lax in controlling the spread internally and the result of the President’s leadership?

Right-wing cult followers of the Trump philosophy would rather die trying to protect their economic isolationism by buying guns and breaking any lockdown than admit that they are powerless unless they protect each other. One guy claimed older people should go back to work so the economic future of their children should be protected. He obviously has not read Lord of the Flies.

American infection figures are rocketting and now there are more active cases in the USA than anywhere else, and soon the majority of active cases in the world will be in America. Soon it will be the land of the lockdown, and its lockdown will have to be about 3 – 6 months to isolate the virus. But the cult leader, Trump, will have to enact more draconian policy than China ever did, and sell it to his acolytes to prevent a looming catastrophe that could kill millions.

The number of deaths is creeping up, but the figure to watch is the number of serious cases, that is the load on the hospitals. it is about 2,000 yesterday and deaths are tracking at about 10% of that figure. Think about that, it is gruesome. With an average mortality of less than 5% that means that the serious cases will double in a few days. And it will continue to do that until the death rate is thousands per day. Maybe that will convince America that it has terrible leadership, the cult of personality, Trumpism, more concerned with numbers than lives. Trump makes North Korea look good.

The tragedy is that intelligent leadership has prevented more serious but less infectious diseases from going out of control. Obama would not have made these mistakes! And there would be a health system available for those who can not afford insurance.

Instead, Trump has run things down to extract profits. And here is the result: Corona America.

We predict the USA death rate will climb and become worse than Italy within two to four weeks. The number dying per day will climb faster than that. The rate of infection is already out of control and yet the President’s advisors seem to believe it is contained.

What the numbers mean?

Italy has about 5,000 new infections per day, it was about 8,000, so that has started to reduce based on their actions to isolate and confine the spread, which is a slow way to reduce the virus, but may be the only way until a vaccine can be used.

The death rate is still uncomfortably high. This is not a function of the new infections so much as the seriously or critically ill. For most, the human immunity gets to kill the virus before the immune reaction needs to be too terrible and it makes breathing too difficult, or the virus itself has infected too many cells so they are effectively no longer ‘you’.

When the immunity stamps too quietly, the virus continues to turn your own cells into virus factories and if you have not defeated it in about 3 weeks, it is likely that it would make one critically ill and slip down the ‘potentially fatal’ list.

Italy got to it only just in time but it will kill thousands. But that number of daily deaths will come down after the number of critically ill reduces. Sadly, many of the 3,500 critically will will die. But most of the 57,000 active cases will not become critically ill and will recover.

Compared to the USA, Italy is not doing that badly. The USA deaths are just approaching about half of Italy’s number, but they have more active cases and that number is screaming up. The critical cases are creeping up too. The infection rate of the USA is twice that of Italy, but it is rising. And the mixed messages from the President is probably stopping any effective confinement or isolation from protecting the population.

So, although the Spanish and Italian statistics have been and are awful the USA is going to be worse than China, and little hope that they can prevent the death total rising from 1,000 to potentially hundreds of thousands. The UK acted just in time to only be as bad as Italy at worst (if people listen to the medical advice about isolation, but so far the respect for the Government is not reflecting 100% belief or enthusiasm).

During times like these, it is discipline and innovation at the personal level really counts. We all have to isolate for about one month and the virus will leave most of us alone. Can we just do that?

Not sure America will unless the President is very specific and on-message. One man’s lack of moral fibre and consistency may indeed cause a catastrophe.

This is why democracy is stronger than the feudal cruelty that republicanism seems to promote: a platform for the monotonal replacement for royalty from which people are lied to by those who have money because wealth is all that matters.

Humanity will survive this pandemic. Not so sure it will survive its own greed.

The coronavirus, Covid-19 has spread to about 50 countries in a few weeks. The WHO does not want to call it a ‘Pandemic’ yet, maybe because the term is thought to induce panic, and therefore the uncontrolled spread of this highly infectious respiratory disease which can induce pneumonia and in some cases is fatal.

It’s spread, due to masked symptoms and many people who do not suffer symptoms, given the evil name ‘super-spreaders’ as if it were their mission in life, is inevitable due to air travel creating many epicenters. Each one is a circular ripple in a pond, and as it gets larger, gradually, natural immunity is left behind.

The news of reinfection, those who have tested positive and then self-isolated, and then tested negative, only to be found to be positive again indicates that the virus is rapidly learning its host’s immunity and defeating it, or worse, that is has a retrovirus component like a pupae phase (like a butterfly) or dormant capability to hide inside host cells. For an airborne virus to be that sophisticated is more in the realm of science fiction. It seems most likely that reinfection may be due to the state of the host immune system as it is not common.

Not yet.

The unknowns are still the real problem with the pandemic, as the inevitable spread of the very successful virus increases, those unknowns are factored into the longer term dangers it may offer: mainly mutation.

The best hope is the race to find a vaccine.

Our prediction is that the USA will not cope with this pandemic as well as China did. Faith did not protect the Pope who appears to be unwell and the VP getting down on his knees to pray or a bloviating President sweating at his fans are symptomatic of a lack of understanding of the dynamics of infection. It seems entirely likely that the West will suffer more than the East, dependent upon the discovery of a good vaccine, otherwise 250 million deaths worldwide could be the horror in store.

We watch the uncertainty taking trillions away from the stock market as the international thermometer of expectation may plunge the world into a new kind of hellish depression followed by a period of unrealistic prosperity. The next twenty years may be remembered for millenia.