Coronavirus Update: Moving North, Be Prepared, Kill the CDC

I thought Italy would break its curve two weeks ago, more certain last week, and there's still no clear break yet. The U.S. is looking towards Easter as a hopeful peak with full quarantine measures in New York.

I was hoping for a quick lift of the virus. It looks like weather will have to cooperate after China closed movie theaters this week. This is a bad sign for service industries such as casinos and restaurants. Maybe less so for theme parks. As for the weather, here's a post from earlier in the week: Is Coronavirus Weather Related?

One reason why I recommended stocking up early (and why I started buying supplies in January), was that even if you don't have coronavirus in your area, shortages will occur because of supply/demand disruptions in other areas. Out of an abundance of caution and lacking other information to disprove the theory, I accept the hypothesis that coronavirus is highly infectious around the 45 to 50 degree temperature range, or 10 degrees Celsius. The yellow band on this April map shows where the average temperature is 10 Celsius. Areas in green and moving into yellow are where coronavirus outbreaks will happen next if the theory is right. The news is saying Detroit and Chicago are at risk in the USA, and they are moving out of green and into yellow this month. Also seeing a lot of news about Germany, Sweden and Russia, all of which fits the pattern. New Orleans, Texas/Dallas and Atlanta are seeming outliers, but if this theory is right, those should clear up quicker than expected. You can read the paper that proposed this theory here (clicking this will open/save a PDF): Temperature and latitude analysis to predict potential spread and seasonality for COVID-19

The flipside of hoping warmer weather will lift the virus in cities such as Atlanta, New Orleans and New York, is that this also means cities such as Toronto are going to be hit hard if they do not practice extreme social distancing or quarantine. If you live in an area moving into the 10 Celisus, 45 to 50 Fahrenheit range, the next month will be crucial period for you and your govt/health authorities. If you can get masks, if you can stock up on food and medicine, do it now.

A report out of France said to use Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol. Not ibuprofen. The said there was evidence the latter could intensify a Covid-19 infection. I don't know the truth of this information, but I haven't seen any rebuttal of it. Moreover, the reliably wrong institutions such as WHO and CDC, say there's no evidence for this. Well, they found no evidence of a covid pandemic. They also said masks don't work.

Masks work. N95 are best. You don't need a lot of masks if you plan on working from home and staying home as much as possible. I reuse 1 mask if I need to go out or take a trip to the supermarket.

Back in February, about 5 days before they changed the guidelines, I saw shocked the CDC wasn't looking for community spread or even foreign cases from anywhere but China. Now after telling the American public for 6 or more weeks that mask wearing isn't necessary, they may recommend or even require it.

On the bright side, if everyone wears masks the economy can restart with a far smaller risk of new outbreaks. Also, this agency needs to die. I'm sure it has some good functions, but these can be preserved while the rest is destroyed. More troubling, the CDC is probably one of the better run government agencies in the U.S. federal government. The incompetence on display is present in every area of government, including the military. President Trump seems to be a less competent executive in these matters because he lacks experience in government, but the problem is replacing him with someone who can actually improve things. A politician from inside the system such as Biden will intensify the incompetence in the rest of the government as I discussed in Will Coronavirus Kick off the 4th Turning? I only touch on one piece of the puzzle there, a big surface piece that most can see. I believe America's problems are fundamental in the extreme. They go far beyond left-right politics to basic concepts such as "What is Truth?" Modern America is a nation of Pilates.