MONCKTON'S BLACK FRIDAY

EARLIER ON WUWT:

But is it really no worse than flu?APRIL 8

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

His taste in shirts has sadly decayed since 2012

Some commenters responding to this daily series providing some information about the Chinese virus have repeated what seems to have become something of a mantra among libertarians who, understandably, dislike the idea of widespread lockdowns, with the loss of freedom and the economic damage that they entail. That mantra is that the Chinese virus is no more infections or no more fatal than flu, and that if we had allowed everyone to acquire immunity by catching the infection and throwing it off all would be well.

Look at today’s graph. 

Fig. 1. Mean compound daily growth rates in confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from March 14 to April 7, 2020.

Though the downtrend in the daily compound growth rate in total confirmed cases now appears well established, that growth rate is still very high...

So don’t dismiss it lightly. Not any more. Wash hands often.

Wear full-face masks when out of doors or away from home.

Fig. 2. Monckton’s outdoor personal protective equipment

 Take Vitamin D3 daily. Be safe.

The spy’s dilemma and the lockdown dichotomy

APRIL 9

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Consider how fair-minded is our kind host. There are two very different policy positions on the handling of the Chinese-virus question: the passivist (let the population acquire “herd immunity” and hope that the virus is not much worse than the annual flu) and the activist (salus populi suprema lex..

My good friend Willis Eschenbach is a protagonist of the passivist position, on the ground that the virus is not much more infectious and not much more fatal than the flu...

 as our daily graphs here are demonstrating, the lockdowns are working. Of course, some countries – notably Sweden – have not introduced strict lockdowns, and yet the daily case growth rate is falling there too...

Another reason, well reflected in a recent posting by Willis Eschenbach, is that official sources originally predicted ten times the deaths they are now predicting and that, if they had gotten the predictions right in the first place, no lockdowns would have been needed.