mortality rate is as high as ItalyвЂ™s.вЂќДЄt that point, total confirmed cases in the U.S. turns out to have proportionately as many cases as South Korea, it will soon have some 46,000 cases and more than 300 deaths - or 1,200 deaths if the U.S. In another article, published in The Wall Street Journal on March 8, I wrote, вЂњIf the U.S. We donвЂ™t know for sure how many people have it, so we donвЂ™t exactly know its reproduction number and its mortality rate. Uncertainty surrounds it because it is so difficult to detect in its early stages, when many carriers are both infectious and asymptomatic. All I knew was that it was serious, and not only for me and my family.ДЄs I wrote on March 1: вЂњThose who blithely say, вЂThis is no worse than the fluвЂ™. I also left out the fact that I went to see a doctor twice only to be told that - as more or less everywhere in the United States at that time - there were no tests available for COVID-19. 29 вЂњthe mortality rate for people in their eighties is above 14%, whereas itвЂ™s close to zero for those under 40.вЂќ I omitted the less comforting data on asthmatic men in their mid-50s. вЂњWorry about grandparents,вЂќ I wrote on Feb. (To get through lectures, I relied heavily on the alternative medicine that some call Scotch.)

My weekly newspaper column in the first half of 2020 became a kind of plague diary, though I never mentioned the fact that I was ill for most of February, with a painful cough I could not shake off. I used to joke that the lecture circuit had turned me into an вЂњinternational man of history.вЂќ I realized only later that I might have been one of the вЂњsuperspreadersвЂќ whose hyperactive travel schedules were spreading the virus from Asia to the rest of the world. You may wonder what kind of life that was. In the course of February, I flew almost as frequently, though not so far: to New York, Sun Valley, Bozeman, Washington and Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. I wore a mask once or twice but found it intolerable after an hour and took it off. In January, I flew from London to Dallas, from Dallas to San Francisco, and from there to Hong Kong (Jan. I was traveling manically in January and February, as I had done for most of the previous 20 years. Is there hope for the family after the pandemic? Or will the battle of the sexes rage on? The river is round Looking back, I read those sentences as a veiled confession. to resist that strange fatalism that leads most of us not to cancel our travel plans and not to wear uncomfortable masks, even when a dangerous virus is spreading exponentially.вЂќ 2, I wrote, вЂњWe are now dealing with an epidemic in the worldвЂ™s most populous country, which has a significant chance of becoming a global pandemic. The conventional wisdom at that time, from Fox News to The Washington Post, was that the coronavirus posed a lesser threat to Americans than the usual winter wave of influenza. 26, 2020, I was regarded as eccentric (certainly by the majority of the delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, who seemed oblivious to the danger). When I first spoke and wrote publicly about the rising probability of a global pandemic, in the week ending Jan. Never in our lifetimes, it seems, has there been greater uncertainty about the future - and greater ignorance of the past.ДЄt the beginning of 2020, very few people grasped the significance of the news coming out of Wuhan about a new coronavirus.

Doom death from above not working