A Journal of the Plague Year

It has been looking bleaker week by week: no end to the lockdowns, talk that there might never be a vaccine. Talk that there may be no herd immunity either. Maybe one remains vulnerable to reinfection. We just keep getting it until we all die.

But in the last day or two, there has been good news.

To begin with, Sorrento Therapeutics of San Diego says they have a cure. That’s the word they use, “cure.” It is an antibody that, they say, blocks the coronavirus 100% of the time. Better than a vaccine. A vaccine is never 100%. And can risk causing rather than preventing infection. Since this is a naturally occurring antibody, it seems likely to be pretty safe. Trials must still be held, but that’s a pretty bright light suddenly appearing at the far end of this tunnel.

An online source that has been pessimistic reports a study comparing hydroxychloroquine with zinc and azithromyacin to hydroxychloroquine with azithromyacin alone. This is not exactly what we need to see, but it showed a significant effect, at least twice as high as has been claimed for remdesivir. With remdesivir, patients recovered in eleven days, compared to fifteen without treatment. With this zinc mixture, treated patients recovered in five or six days. Mortality rates were significantly lower; not so for remdesivir. It looks as though they are cut in half. This despite the fact that the mixture was only given to hospital inpatients, already experiencing severe symptoms. Previous studies suggest hydroxychloroquine is most effective if given at first symptoms.

Other studies are showing that Vitamin D deficiency is highly correlated with the severity of the illness: a serious deficit makes you eight times more likely to die. If we can all take Vitamin D if we are deficient, fewer may get the virus, and fewer get seriously ill from it.

John Campbell reports that the British figures show a mortality rate of only 0.05 percent there, without these factors yet being added.

Scott Adams reports a study that universal use of face masks would by itself reduce the transmission rate by 80%. And probably cause what infections happen to be less severe.

Imagine how much less troubling coronavirus would be if all of these steps were implemented. My math is probably wrong here, but back-of-the-envelope: Face masks reduce death rates to 0.00625. Vitamin D further reduces death rates to 0.00078125. Hydroxy/zinc/zpack pulls it down to 0.00039—less, because it would also have an effect in reducing spread. Then, when it comes onstream, the antibody treatment gets it down to zero.

Meantime, the rate of transmission or death does not seem so far to have jumped in Georgia, considered reckless for opening up a few weeks ago. It may simply be that summer has arrived, first in the southern states, and that will significantly reduce the rate of spread in itself.

Meantime, Scott Adams, who has a degree in economics and an MBA, thinks we will see no serious economic fallout from all the extra debt for pandemic bailouts.

If the economy can open again, with a cure seeming just around the corner, things may take off like a rocket.