My 500 Second View of the Coronavirus

The illusion swells… April 10, 2020 UNSUBSCRIBE | ARCHIVES This Stock Market Presentation Will Stop You in Your Tracks Recently, one of the world's top experts on the Federal Reserve released an urgent message… He's convinced he's discovered a shocking new development in the coronavirus market crash… And now he believes the Federal Reserve is going to do something that used to be unthinkable… More important, he's discovered a way to cash in BIG from it. Just be sure to watch his presentation now… Because it goes offline this Sunday, April 12, at midnight. Click here to see it now. My 500 Second View of the Coronavirus Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, Mark Twain offered the crucial inverse rule of time and expertise: "A genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is 500 years away easier than he can a thing that's only 500 seconds off." A "panel of experts" predicting doom can attain the certainty of infinitude.  Sorry folks, I'm going to give in and write another prophecy on the coronavirus. Like many of us I get up in the morning and read about it, and as time passes I gain an illusion of expertise.  It is borrowed expertise. But having watched scores of experts' YouTube videos and blog posts expounding their views on the crisis, I feel ready to give a report from the online wilderness. I descry an increasingly high–resolution mirage of cumulative medical and political insight. As the illusion swells, my fingers itch, and my readers cringe! My doctor daughter chastises me fiercely. My Chinese friend Habi writes me off. But not being a genuine expert, I can offer the 500 second view. That means that by the time you read this the prophesied event will have already happened. I figure that to people who are fain to accept it, the truth on the coronavirus will become obvious fairly soon. So, I compensate for my lack of Twain's genuine expertise by predicting an event that is essentially over by the time you read this.  That is, the crisis of the epidemic will be over, and it will become merely our chronic political crisis. It will become a crisis of narrative rather than a crisis of knowledge. The Experts Weigh in The two experts I have found most knowledgeable and convincing are William "Matt" Briggs, who earned a PhD in statistics from Cornell and taught there, and Rockefeller University and German epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski. To my innocent ears, learned in economics, technology, and information theory, these two voices in the wilderness evoke a mirage of conviction and an oasis of truth. They lead me to what I will distill as ten propositions. Since I am neither statistician nor epidemiologist nor professor nor politician, nor any chimerical combination of the above, I can oversimplify their arguments without violating any academic or professional norms. COVID–19 is just another respiratory virus like many others. Fearsome death rates are a function of testing biased toward acute cases and asymptomatic spread of the disease which lowers the denominator. The tests are flawed by false positives and false negatives. Asymptomatic spread is speculative in the absence of antibody surveys that measure immunity. All respiratory viruses end through herd immunity, whether through direct exposure or artificial vaccination. Social distancing, closed schools, and obsessive masking prolong the epidemic and ensure a second peak comparable to the first. By flattening the curve, they widen it and thus render it more menacing to more people. The more that young people get exposed, the better. They are the vessel of herd immunity. Closing schools delays the immunity and tends to expose vulnerably old and frail grandparents in the home. Stocks Suck — Do THIS Instead An entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager reveals the ultimate guide to boosting income without touching stocks, bonds or options. Discover… On Page 221, how to create an online course — and have a shot at earning thousands in 45 minutes On Page 197, how to potentially make up to $2,000 in a weekend, from anywhere in the world And on Page 161, you'll find 10 businesses you can start from home today! To name just a few! But don't take my word for it… One of his readers put it the test and put out a short clip — go here to see the full story. By delaying herd immunity and assuring secondary peaks in the fall, school closings and other lockdowns will increase the number of deaths among the co–morbid population of vulnerable old people.  As Briggs writes: "The H1N1 virus responsible for many deaths is still with us. The 2020 data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) affirms, "Nationally, influenza A(H1N1) pdm09 viruses are now the most commonly reported influenza viruses this season."  Given the ease with which coronavirus spreads, it's reasonable to suppose variants of COVID–19, like common colds and other respiratory distresses, including deadly pneumonia, will be with us for years to come.  Briggs and Wittkowski agree that most testing is mischievous because of false positives, especially in initial testing. Fewer are misclassifications of deaths due to the bug but there is a tendency to suppose that deaths with the virus are caused by it. The conclusion, says Briggs, "is that it's nuts to implement large–scale testing on a population. It will lead to huge numbers of false positives — which will be everywhere painted as true positives — and more panic." Although closing down the private economy may seem plausible to physicians and politicians, it is an extreme overreaction to viruses that we will always have with us and provides a dreadful precedent for future crises. Medical crises will always require wealth and resources to combat. In an age of hysteria about such spurious threats as climate change and Internet privacy, banning private enterprise sets a terrible precedent.  Other crises — from real meteors to meteorological mass madness — are sure to follow and require a bold and ingenious private sector. Socialism means sinking into the arms of a misremembered past. Capitalism, and investment, cannot proceed in a world where it can be suspended anytime a group of experts suffer a domain–specific dementia. Regards, George Gilder Editor, Gilder's Daily Prophecy If You Use Apps, a Smartphone or Online Banking… You'd better read this. Because, says world-famous futurist George Gilder, we're headed for a stunning $16.8 trillion reboot that could impact the way you use every single one of those modern tools. It could also radically transform the way you get paid, the way you save and — maybe most of all — the way you invest for retirement. It's all in his brand-new presentation — you'll find it at this link. What you'll see could change our way of life, the way microchips did. The way the internet did. The way smartphones have. And, says George, it could make you exceedingly rich — click here to see why. To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, click here to unsubscribe. If you are having trouble receiving your Gilder's Daily Prophecy subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by whitelisting Gilder's Daily Prophecy. Gilder's Daily Prophecy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. 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