Coronavirus: Taking a Roman Holiday?

Coronavirus needed two things to succeed: a vulnerable host and messengers to take it there. The map shows where this played out.

It is with great disappointment, but little surprise that we now concede that the Chinese greatly misled the world with the information they provided from their Coronavirus epidemic. They could have saved many lives with useful scientific data, but opted to use the disease and their contrived narrative as a propaganda tool instead.

Still, I believe, for no good reason, that they did forward some truths connected to the disease, before they, for ominous political reasons, shrouded the whole country in mystery. Their willingness to expose their own population to the disease staggers the mind. Their insolence to provide information which they knew would be eventually impugned and which could set back their foreign relations by decades was especially short-sighted and self-defeating... Unless we consider the near revolution which they had been contending with... and what they might be willing to do to squelch it. A handy epidemic could well mask a few thousand executions.

MAYBE, if nothing else, we learned the origin, the high contagiousness, thus the significant threat, and the lack of effective treatment, and the approximate life cycle of the virus within a fairly isolated population. Maybe. There was no good reason to lie about those things. They had their reasons, which we may never know, to not share the route and casualties of the virus in regions beyond Wuhan.

So, forget China... even though a great deal of my own confidence and optimism was centered in their fallacious representations.

Coronavirus bypassed many Chinese neighbors 
and almost made a beeline to Italy and then
 to New York. Might some demographic groups
 have had a more than normal susceptibility? 

For a moment, let's focus on just the Eastern Hemisphere. Removing the U.S. and China, the seeming beginning and end of the pandemic, the Coronavirus outbreak is mostly a Mediterranean/ Middle Eastern phenomena. And the casualties in New York prove it.

Italy was the first on the western side of the Eastern Hemisphere to exhibit great susceptibility to the disease. A massive Chinese population in Italy, and significant inter-relations between the two countries, not unlike a partnership, sealed Italy's fate. Yet China has plenty of other partners around the world, who should also have suffered from their kinship. Strangely, countries surrounding China, including Hong Kong and Singapore, seem to be immune. But South Korea, not exactly an ally, has had a touch of it. Mysteriously, the disease went elsewhere. This seems to prove that not all regions will react the same to the virus.

Finding more fertile prospects in the west, the disease leap-frogged over the Orient and landed in Italy, and Iran, and here is what may be significant, it invaded Italy and many places where there were significant Italian populations: Of the top 20 countries who have suffered the brunt of the Coronavirus outbreak, 9 of them are also in Italy's top-20 list for her ex-patriots. So it is not surprising that Germany (2^nd), Switzerland (3^rd), France (5th), UK (6^th), Belgium (7^th), US (8^th), Spain (9^th) and Australia (11^th) are also 4^th, 9^th, 6^th, 8^th, 11^th,  1rst,  3^rd and 20^th respectively in reported Coronavirus cases.

Other Mediterranean/Mid East countries, less important to Italy but in the top- 20 are Iran (7^th ), Turkey (10^th) Israel (18^th ) in reported Coronavirus cases. Others in the region may be suffering but not reporting very accurately. The obvious hyper-susceptibility of these mostly western populations should be of interest, as compared to China's neighbors. There might be a racial or demographic angle to this pandemic.

News agencies easily acknowledged that Italy had become the epicenter of the pandemic for several weeks... an insidious Roman holiday, until the U.S. took its place. And we soon eclipsed Italy with our cities sporting the densest collections of Jewish and Italian-Americans in the U. S... New York-New Jersey, which constitute, at this writing, one half of all of the casualties in the whole country. Ten times the losses in Louisiana, 38x that of Texas, home of the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan regions America, (Houston & Dallas-Ft Worth) AND Austin and San Antonio. Surely something is missing from the equation. Sure cases and casualties are rising... and they will for a couple of weeks more... but declining numbers in Italy tell us to hold on. Italy has gone six days where their death totals were less than those when at their highest (Mar27) ... indicating a downturn of the epidemic, and a "curve" very similar to that suggested by the Chinese. Hopefully they have just entered their epidemic downturn, and we are a week or so behind them and will experience a downturn, at least in New York, very soon.

This observation, of a Mediterranean connection, could contribute greatly to understanding the spread of the disease, the inexplicable and disproportionate casualty rate around the globe, and the most susceptible populations to the disease, and help warn the most endangered demographic groups.

It also could mean that the models being used to forecast the Coronavirus are skewed towards the general population... disregarding the significant Italian population now suffering the pandemic in New York and New Jersey.

In the United States, where the virus has done the most damage, it has been the quickest and most deadly in the densest Italian populations: New York and New Jersey. Here the carriers, some Chinese and some Italian, brought the virus to the most susceptible populations. New York and New Jersey represent the third largest concentration of Italian-Americans and Italian nationals outside of Italy. New York boasts a huge Italian-American population, over 8%, and there are around twenty towns in New Jersey which tout 40-50% Italian-American populations. They argue back and forth just who is the most Italian. That argument has morphed into who has had the greatest losses per capita from the dreaded Coronavirus.

True, it could be argued that the disease just followed where the Chinese elites took it, to the more populated and prosperous places on the globe, where there would have been Italians... who are part of the Western network of industrialized countries. Perhaps it was merely the Chinese and Italians who were the carriers to Europe and the U. S.. The path of the disease would indeed overlay perfectly with airline travel, trade routes, and tourism corridors. But India and Pakistan, Poland, Russia, and most of China's closest neighbors got a curious reprieve from the outbreak. They have travel and trade as well, and in fact probably have the virus, but it is not killing them in great numbers.

We in the U.S. are greatly Ameri-centric... we always think it is all about us... so when the virus comes calling first and foremost to New York... of course it did!  But why not London? Why not Moscow? Or Houston? Los Angeles (still only 269 deaths)?

There has to be a practical explanation to the explosion in Italy when so many highly populated areas closer to China were skipped. In fact, it would have been expected that poorer populations, worse medical facilities, more backward societies would have been hit the hardest. Certainly not the very opposite.

When Chinese nationals brought the virus to the U.S., they no doubt hit our western shores at about the same time that they hit the east coast, and the outbreak surfaced from Georgia to California to New York about March 1- and New Orleans about a week later, on the Gulf Coast. Yet experts seem to be anticipating a deadly wave across America, as if delayed, which (I believe) may have already visited upon these places... and done their deadliest. Perhaps Corona has hit and climaxed with a speed beyond our comprehension. Outbreaks in California, Colorado, almost every state, suggest that it has had time to seek from coast to coast, and kill or terrify a majority of the population, already.

Then those infected in those places did the rest, spreading the virus to the elderly and those with immunodeficiency, or some other fragility, of all demographic groups... and causing great suffering. But perhaps not as many deaths as those with the Mediterranean/Mid East bloodlines. Only time will tell.

As Rush Limbaugh has pointed out, it is impossible that social distancing prevented the Coronavirus pandemic from having its way, in California or anywhere, since most populated places had probably been exposed for weeks before the public adopted these strategies.  Limbaugh has been intrigued for days with California's seeming immunity. They have a significant Chinese population... no doubt quite a few "carriers"... but perhaps not the density of Italian -Americans which would catch it and suffer greatly, and propel a health threat anywhere near an "epidemic." So far the total deaths (270 in first month) in California is small compared to New York, sand many other health threats they have faced.

"Just an observation..."

But it might be helpful to add another demographic to the “model” being used to forecast America's fate regarding the Coronavirus: Victims are old to very old, (avg of 80 years in Italy) suffering a myriad of preconditions which increase their vulnerability, and more often than not in countries associated with Italy... or Italians, and in New York, where the model for Coronavirus forecasting was born, at least 8% across the board are of Italian descent. That is just my “SWAG” from Internet sources, based on population estimates until actual numbers are available, but the Mediterranean/Mid East angle which is suggested by the world Coronavirus map, and the related casualties in New York and its environs, suggest that it may be even more.