COVID-19: Will There be a Second Wave?

From Worldometer, I have adjusted this table to show how new deaths best determine the phase of COVID-19:

DAY     China   Italy   USA   Spain   Germany   S. Korea  WORLD

May   1         0    269   1897      281          113               1        5624
          2         0    474    1691     276            76               2        5215
          3         0    174    1154     164            54               0        3481
          4         0    195    1324     164          127               2        4096
          5         0    236    2350     185              ?               2        5787

Summary:

• Certainly not a good day for the World and the USA.
• China had only one new case and zero new deaths.
• The USA had 24,798 new cases and 2,350 new deaths.
• Cases are picking up in Africa.
• Same for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The U.S. economy is beginning to switch on.  Is this wise, for there could be a second wave, killing an additional tens of thousands.  My sense is that, with a probable second wave, the stock market could still break into the Dow 30,000 range by early next year, hopefully too late for Donald Trump to be re-elected.  He will be blamed for these extra deaths, and much more, but the economy will return to a new normal after November 3, and the American public will moan, but live on with these additional deaths.  Why?

• Two days ago I made an analysis that was incorrect (so I went back and adjusted it).  You can read why those numbers below by going to that posting, but here are the probable eventual mortality rates (percent of deaths relative to number of cases) of COVID-19:
• 1%, or ten times more deadly than the seasonal flu at 0.1%
• 0.7%, one analysis
• 0.5%, a second analysis.
• Although, keep in mind that the World mortality rate is currently 7%, and that of the U.S. is 6%.
• This factor of difference is because we don't take enough tests and anywhere from 20% to more than 50% could well be asymptomatic (infected with no serious symptoms).  So far, as much as our President brags at how great we are at this, only 2.3% of the national population has taken a COVID-19 test.

• So if the mortality rate is between .5% and 1.0%, with total deaths in the USA as of yesterday being 72,271:
• 0.5% suggests that 14.5 million Americans have already been infected, or 4.4% of the national population, not 1.2 million.
• at 0.7%, total cases = 10.3 million
• at 0.1%, total cases =  7.2 million

• At the 1.0% mortality rate, 92.8% of Americans would still be susceptible to this coronavirus.  Without adequate testing, totally opening up the economy, including schools to operate as normal, even if everyone takes every precaution to wear masks and wash your hands, "something will happen," and cases will grow, for people will go home and stop wearing face masks. The source will mostly come from those asymptomatic carriers (and to remind you, they make up at least 20%, and maybe 50%, of the population).  Also, Donald Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to make sure meat packing plants stay open.  Not only was this dumb, but he actually overstepped his authority.   Next he should pass an executive order that families must be allowed to visit nursing home patients.  That was a sarcasm.  In any case, there will most probably be a second wave.  This increase in cases, and, therefore deaths, should not be as bad as the first one, because government and the citizenry will be smarter this time.  
• Will these extra tens of thousand deaths be worth opening up the economy?  Probably, because last year 35 million contracted the flu in the U.S. and 34,000 died.  There was no impact on the economy or any mass concern. 
• Further, two years ago 36,750 people in the country were killed in traffic crashes and last year it was 38,800.  We still drive, but probably not realizing this scary statistic.

Will there be a third wave?  Don't know.  Will there be a good enough vaccine by next year?  All current signs are hopeful.  There are signals of breakthrough at Oxford and in Israel.  Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech will begin human trials next week.  Four years ago Baylor University and partners developed, what they thought, was a coronavirus vaccine for SARS, but ran out of money.  China has more COVID-19 vaccine candidates approved for human testing than anywhere else.  There will be others, and one should prevail.  Finding this solution still means a period to ramp up production.  This vaccine will be part of the Fall seasonal flu shot, which will no doubt begin inoculations by the summer of 2021...if available.

Remember, though, that a vaccine has still not been found for HIV, which has been around for four decades and killed 32 million.  There is no vaccine for dengue fever.  Nothing for the common cold.  Will there ever be a vaccine for cancer?  Most crucial of all, the SARS Pandemic of 2003,  caused by another coronavirus, eluded a proven vaccine.  That was 17 years ago! 

The 2008-2010 Swine Flu (H1N1 virus) Pandemic killed around 200,000, so the current COVID-19 Pandemic, with 258,027 deaths, has already surpassed the previous one.  You are alive because there was a one in 30,000 chance that you were one of them.  

Let's say that when all is said and done, a million people eventually succumb to COVID-19.  That would be 0.13% of the global population.  The 1918 Spanish Flu might have killed up to 3% of the human population.  Thus, the only difference this time is that the economy went bonkers way beyond what could have been predicted for a virus that has killed only 0.0034% of the World population.

One wonders why the region in and around India and the African continent have largely escaped the onslaught of COVID-19.  But the previous Swine Flu Pandemic also left them mostly untouched.  The best I can determine is that their populations were somehow infected by other strains of H?N? and coronaviruses, making them more immune during the past two pandemics.  This general theory has been supported by some research.

I suspect that social media/networking spooked everyone.  I again refer you to my Huffington Post article of 25March2011:  A Pandemic Worse than the Swine Flu.  Instant and open information is fabulous.  It is also dangerous, and getting worse.  Society hasn't yet found a way to civilize it.

#1 songs of 1974 in two minutes.  Too fast?  Here is another compilation that lasts 45 minutes. 

1974 was just after the First Energy Crisis that occurred in the Fall of 1973.  During this period of gasoline lines, I took what might have been my most monumental energy-related trip to Miami, Washington DC and Denver.  Read about my first few steps in wind energy and hydrogen.  

I learned a valuable lesson that should have scuttled my career, but by the sheer boldness and a lot of luck, everything actually worked out fine:  which was, have the courage to enter into a new field even if you know nothing about the subject.  I later used this thinking in my book entitled SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.  Oh, when I went to that travel link, I noticed the performance of Ansley Burns singing Aretha and Andy Rowell stumbling through a karaoke song.  Simon Cowell of America's Got Talent loved both.  Go back and watch them.

Let me end with a number of songs from around the world dealing with COVID-19.  Here are some song parodies.  Randy Rainbow has released a number of these, and here is another one with Vice President Pence.

Turns out that Rainbow has roasted Trump 33 times.  So here is Rainbow as the conscience of Trump in Grab Them by the P***y, which is censored.

I noticed that the Neil Diamond reinvention of Sweet Caroline was removed from this article, so here is Hands Washing Hands.

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