Chapter 9 in the R.M. Dolin book, “Truth and Trust in Crisis.”
In early June of 2020, the CDC declares the American part of the global COVID crisis (i.e., our epidemic) is over. While this is fantastic news it comes with a cautionary caveat, namely, deadly viruses always have a second wave more virulent than the first. For example, the first wave of the 1917 Spanish Flu killed between three and five million people worldwide while the second wave kills upwards of thirty million people.[1] When I was involved in local, state, and federal planning for the Avian Flu, we projected the first wave would kill several million Americans and the second wave would kill significantly more. Luckily that virus never achieves effective human-to-human transmission.
We began our initial COVID analysis with a goal of determining if the virus was human engineered and found it behaves like a naturally occurring virus, which doesn’t preclude it being engineered. This led us to develop a simple exponential-based model that has accurately predicted COVID deaths in each of the past six months. This model also precisely predicted when the epidemic would end (June 7th) and now that the first wave has abated, the issue before us is will there be a second wave, for which there are three possible outcomes
- A second more deadly COVID wave is coming
- The virus is attenuating, and a second less deadly wave is coming, or
- The virus is fully attenuated, and any subsequent waves will be innocuous.
If a second more deadly wave arrives in a few months, it is further evidence that COVID is a naturally occurring virus. If a second wave is less lethal, it suggests the virus was engineered and for that outcome it seems likely any subsequent wave will be innocuous because if you design a virus to either act as a weapon or to cull a targeted demographic, which seems the most likely reason anyone would engineer a deadly virus, you would not want a second wave killing non-targeted demographics. Something that has plagued me from the start of COVID is that there are no dead bats, and they would be everywhere if COVID were naturally occurring. Additionally, it appears our government is going to great lengths to obfuscate COVID death data and I can’t figure out their reason or rational. Given the quantitative and qualitative evidence presented thus far in our crisis, I’m leaning toward COVID being human engineered; either way, we’ll have our answer shortly as the virus reveals its true nature.
By July of 2020, the nation finds itself embroiled in COVID chaos. Since declaring the COVID epidemic over in June, CDC death data shows a continual decline so one might be tempted to think such positive trends means the country’s returning to normal, however, with the presidential election 95 days out the politics of COVID coupled with media induced hysteria indicates it’s the long, strange trip it’s been is only going to get more bizarre.
For the past five months, we’ve been tracking academic model projections, along with the FEMA model[2] used by the White House Coronavirus Task Force[3]. Amazingly, these models have been outrageously wrong and yet, they’re still held in high regard because they support political and media narratives. Meanwhile, our first principles model, has been spot on accurate since March.
Table 8.1. July Month-End COVID Model Performance.
Table 8.1 summarizes the performance of our COVID model relative to the big three models. The UW model has a July error rate of 69%; keep in mind this discredited model is the basis for government lockdowns and facemask mandates, even though the model’s incapable of predicting the number of times an apple tossed in the air returns to earth.
The Penn model is no less of an academic disgrace and is this month’s winner of the “Fantastic Farce” award, with a whopping 82% error rate. The performance of UW and Penn models are an indefensible embarrassment to both institutions and the fact that faculty in these departments still have jobs is indicative of the state of academia today.
The FEMA model, which should represent the federal government’s best crisis management capability, is an equally epic failure with an embarrassing July error rate of 75%. This failure on the part of an agenda-driven government agency should tell you everything you need to know about anything Brix/Fauci say concerning COVID.
Our simple model came in with an error rate of 0.01%. What separates our model from the others is we’re trained to objectively apply data to modeling, and to understand both the limitations of a numerical tool and how results are to be interpreted. What’s so damn frustrating is that the model we developed contains four lines of code and was programed in Excel on a laptop, so why is it so hard for the “experts” to develop a model that at least comports to empirical evidence in some measure? For that answer we must look at the pandemics within the post-pandemic.
Keeping with tradition, it’s time to again lay down the gauntlet with our August forecast. Keep in mind that in the run up to November elections, the fictional projections made by UW, Penn, and FEMA are likely to get even more fallaciously outrageous. Consider the projected end-of-August death counts; our model predicts 172,903 cumulative COVID deaths, while the big three project a combined average death count of 464,000. Imagine how different decision makers would act faced with a scenario involving 173k deaths versus 464k deaths. Imagine where we’d be today had decision makers been using a valid model as a basis for policy.
For our August projection to be valid, 672 people will die from pneumonia, influenza, and COVID (PIC) each day in August. For the big three models to be accurate, 10,062 people will die each day. If you think our model can’t possibly be right, let’s consider a couple collaborating touchstones from two different sources: the CDC and Index Mund[4]. According to the CDC, the mortality rate from COVID is down 86% from its peak in April[5]. In addition, influenza like illnesses (ILI) are below baseline endemic levels and have been decreasing for the last 15 weeks.
The U.S. percentage of confirmed COVID cases resulting in death at the start of June was 4.79%, which dropped to 3.89% by the end of July, representing a significant increase in survivability. This also represents the fourth straight month of improvement. One can argue this trend from several perspectives, such as the more you test the more infections you find. Another likely factor is that the virus is attenuating, which we would not expect naturally occurring viruses to do at this state but would expect such behavior from a human engineered virus.
In January, prior to the start of COVID, Index Mundi expected the number of Americans who would die from something in 2020 would be 2,863,859. This translates to approximately 7,846 American deaths per day. Through July month end, 1,666,108 American’s have died. Shockingly, this is 564 fewer deaths than Mundi’s pre-COVID expectation, which means COVID is having a minimal impact on annual death expectations. If you think this is too fantastic to be true, consider that in 2017, 61,000 Americans died from flu and that didn’t even penetrate the news cycle. On the downside, this statistic also suggests that an additional 1.2 million Americans are going to die from something before the end of the year, which is both sad to consider, and normal.
In March, we used the Italian COVID crisis as a basis for generating a statistical model for the number of Americans likely to die from COVID by April 14th, not only was our model spot-on, it outperformed academic projections. In a recent study of Italian COVID deaths[6], their government announced that 99% of reported COVID deaths involved people with three or more pre-existing conditions and were likely going to die from something this year. The median age of an Italian COVID casualty was 80.5, with only 17 deaths under the age of 50. While the Italian study is controversial, it confirms our assertion that COVID is not significantly altering the number of people expected to die this year. This becomes an important topic later when the CDC takes more aggressive data altering measures.
The U.S. is reticent to conduct similar studies because it could show lockdowns and school closures are an overreaction. The delta between the Mundi expectations and actual deaths was flat in June and decreased in July, but politicians and the media continue to mislead the country by hyper-sensationalizing the increasing rate of infections, which is a false flag metric since the rate of infection is most likely tied to increased testing. At the same time, the “experts,” ignore the inconvenient truth that death rates are declining.
The unexplored question is what’s motivating the continued COVID hysteria when evidence indicates the crisis has abated. An equally poignant question is why are STEM academics silent while nonSTEM illegitimi run rampant with wild assertions that go unchallenged? The answer is, as the answer’s always been, greed; and the risks of running afoul of research sponsors who profit from the crisis.
After the CDC declared the COVID epidemic over in June, politicians ramp up campaigns to convince us we’re still enmeshed in an existential crisis that can only be resolved by their ordained wisdom. Borrowing from the Communist Manifesto playbook[7], liberal governors outlaw church gatherings and funerals; that is until Congressman John Lewis dies and the opportunity for political exploitation presented itself. Then suddenly, as if Noah himself reappeared, it becomes permissible to sit shoulder-to-shoulder in a crowded church proclaiming to the great unwashed (i.e., you and I), “do as I say, not as I do.”
To all the moms with school age kids, let’s take a moment away from media hyperbole and political narratives for some post-pandemic perspective. Do you know your child is more likely to die from a lightning strike at school then from COVID? There have only been 151 COVID deaths from people 24 years old and younger[8], which is a death rate of 0.00047%. Meanwhile, the probability of being struck by lightning is 0.008%[9] which makes lightning caused death 17 times more likely. I’m collecting data on how many days you held your kids home from school last year to avert certain death by lightening if you care to contribute.
Additionally, and hang on to your freshly poured Chardonnay for this, there are no known cases of an infected child passing COVID to adults. Don’t repeat that to your local school board, or DOJ agents will arrest you for domestic terrorism. Also, and this is where you and I need to be serious, since lockdowns and school closures started, more children have died from suicide and overdoses than from COVID[10]. Our kids need to be in school for their social health, mental health, emotional health, and physical health. As a nation, we picked a horrible time to be leaderless, and regardless of the outcome of the November elections, that’s not going to change, even after we get our nonvaccine vaccine.
Finally, there’s the issue of a post-pandemic second wave, I made my August projection based on available quantitative and qualitative evidence asserting COVID is human engineered so any second wave will be innocuous. I pray to God I’m right, because if not, we’re in for a very nasty next couple of months.
[1] Did the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Kill 20 to 30 Million, While the First Wave Killed 3 to 5 Million? – Truth or Fiction?
[2] Shocking Draft FEMA Report Sees 200,000 COVID-19 Cases, 3,000 Deaths Daily By June 1 | HuffPost
[3] Inside the White House’s attempt to message its way out of the coronavirus crisis (nbcnews.com)
[4] IndexMundi – Country Facts
[5] CDC: COVID-19 Deaths Peaked in Mid-April; Down 86% by Week Ending June 20 | CNSNews
[6] 99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says – Bloomberg
[7] Karl Marx publishes The Communist Manifesto – HISTORY
[8] Coronavirus: COVID Deaths in U.S. by Age, Race | American Council on Science and Health (acsh.org)
[9] The British officer who was struck by lightning four separate times – The Vintage News
[10] More youth are dying of suicide, overdose than COVID-19 during pandemic: CDC director | U.S. News (christianpost.com)
