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.