The headline on Nov 18, 2020: America’s COVID response grows more nonsensical, even as the pandemic gets worse | Business Insider India

Except that (a) the trajectory of the pandemic in the U.S. is identical to that in most of Europe right now, and (b) we have potentially “turned the corner” on the 3rd wave already. Guess the EU’s response is also “more nonsensical”.

Meanwhile, the media is using terms like “horror winter” and “nightmare existence” (we have no way to predict the future as proven by numerous failed disease models this year). And:

America’s COVID-19 response has devolved into a politically driven, toxically narcissistic, tribalistic mess. And it’s only getting worse as we’re heading into what could be the most brutal stretch of infections and hospitalizations to date.

Are you sufficiently scared enough by the “toxic, narcissistic, tribalistic” media coverage?

Official CDC new cases chart as of Nov 18, 2020:

New cases possibly peaked last week, nationally (too early to tell for sure) but the Kinsa model suggests this too. There will continue to be rising cases regionally – the entire country does not peak simultaneously.

Watch the media segue to a focus on crowded hospitals from now through the next 2 weeks or so, and then attention on new deaths attributed to Covid-19. As they refocus on hospitals and deaths, reports of the declining new cases will be invisible. Their goal is “fear porn” amid what appears to be very good news including:

• 3rd wave peaking
• Fewer deaths per new cases, relative to last spring
• The “excess deaths” count is almost back to normal

IMPORTANT – the media will not show ANY of this good news. Instead they will focus exclusively on the bad news. Which is why media ALWAYS gives you a distorted view of the world. The SOLE PURPOSE of the opinionated media story from Business Insider is to scare you to death. It is a propaganda piece written to persuade you to become as frightened as possible.

The media will not catch up with the good news until about 4 weeks from now. This is the same time line that occurred during the 1st and 2nd wave. As the epicurve declined, the media turned its attention to the lagging indicators of hospitalization and deaths. Then, about a month later, they noted that things had gotten better.

Will there be a 4th wave?

There are estimates that 5x to 10x more people have Covid-19 than are tested. With the U.S. posting more than 100,000 “positive test” cases per day, this implies 1/2 million to 1 million potential new cases per day. At this rate, combined with other forms of immunity present in some populations, we are approaching natural population immunity soon. To answer the question, will there be a 4th wave – perhaps, but it is unlikely to be as high as the 3rd wave as there are fewer and fewer targets for the virus to spread to. It is also likely that the first 20 million people will be vaccinated by end of the year or early January, and increasingly rapidly after that. Each vaccination removes one more “targets” for the virus, causing the virus’s transmission rate to fall dramatically. This is why UBS recently said they think new cases will be approaching zero in the U.S. by March. That’s just how viral pandemics play out.

Remember, I am idiot who has no health care knowledge and my comments are strictly for Entertainment Purposes Only.