How will this play out? Below is my attempt at predicting the future. We will see in a few months if I am correct.
While I believe the overall mortality rate for the Coronavirus to be about 0.2%, in Donald Trump’s age group, and with his risk factors (stress, work, overweight), the mortality should be considerably higher than average. He is old, overworked and with a few extra pounds. As a public figure he might also have been exposed to a significat viral quantity. So, it would not be surprising if he gets seriously ill before he gets better.
In my view, the most likely scenario is
— Trump recovers after a week or two. Like Berlusconi or Prince Charles, he makes a full recovery and returns to the campaign.
— Biden is likely to catch COVID-19, too. It’s not the sort of thing we can protect ourselves from indefinitely. Already, between one quarter and one half of the US population has been infected. It won’t be long until everybody in the US gets this virus. Biden is also very old and fragile.
— With Biden dead or also disabled by Corona, Turmp goes on to win the election. His chief electoral promise is that he will end the Corona crisis and make America Great. When choosing between two old presidents, both Corona high risk, the American electorate would be inclined to choose the one with immunity to the illness.
— Once elected, Trump will end the Corona Crisis by presidential decree and publish it on Twitter. As all precautionary measures are rolled back, the virus will also stop naturally as it runs out of people it can infect. Trump can use his personal example to deal with the virus.
— China’s Xi also ended the Corona pandemic by presidential decree. It probably also worked once everyone was infected. Otherwise, there should have been a 2nd wave. The Chinese funeral law was amended to speed up cremations and to make it difficult to count the dead.
— As the world will disagree with Trump, they will continue the quarantine, putting America on path to becoming great again.
Sure, there is always a chance the experimental therapies tried on Trump won't work and he will die, or, like the much younger Boris Johnson, stay disabled for some time. Furthermore, Trump is sufficiently annoying to many in the US political scene to, perhaps, justify tweaking his treatment plan so, perhaps, he dies.
It seems sloppy, incompetent management of the Corona crisis is the best strategy: allow the population to get infected as quick as possible and return the economy to normal.
A requirement for the return to normality is that there are fewer cases. This is, in general, only achieved once everyone is infected and the diseases dies out.
No comments:
Post a Comment