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Viral numerology: Coronavirus fades after 6 to 8 weeks due to magic or something

Virus follows fixed mysterious pattern

An Israeli Prof is claiming to be “shocked” to find that tough lockdown quarantines made no difference. He claims the virus fades after 6 weeks in the “exact same way” everywhere —  which it does if you wear a welding mask while looking at the data. When asked why this extraordinary text-book-breaking shift happens he says “I have no explanation” but that doesn’t stop him concluding that hard quarantines are unnecessary.

When asked, he apparently suggested the exponential growth of viruses ends because of “the climate” or maybe “the virus has its own life cycle”. (How does he think this works? Telepathy?)

Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern

Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain.

The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week.

 

It’s no accident the virus peaks after six weeks of rapid exponential growth.  That’s about as long as any free democracy can stand it. After three weeks the bodies are piling up, the doctors are pleading for help, and it’s all on facebook and the nightly news. After four weeks most nations are doing some kind of isolation, and 12 days later, after the incubation period, it starts to shift the results. So by six weeks the isolation starts to take effect. All Prof  Yitzhak Ben Israel had to do was google and he would have found that 12 days after lockdowns start, Coronavirus slows. We see it in Japan, Italy, Norway, Spain,  Germany and Australia. Everywhere.

The countries he glanced at were the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. He seems to think they are independent variables, but the internet and 24 hour news means all these nations are watching each other. All the politicians were hoping to avoid closing down. All moved a bit too late. All ramped up action in response to the curve. The citizens are watching too, and even if they are not ordered to isolate, often they’re doing it anyway, reducing the curve, if not flattening it.

For example, Italy started mass lockdown on March 10th. The growth of new daily cases peaked on March 21, 11 days after the mass lockdown began.

 

Italy peaked 11 days after lock down

New cases in Italy peaked 11 days after lock down

In Sweden, the government forced parents to send children to schools, and asked everyone to be careful. But its numbers now are worse than its Scandinavian neighbours which did a faster-harder version. Norway announced mass lockdowns on March 15 and headlines read: “Norway takes most far-reaching measures ever experienced in peacetime over coronavirus”. New cases in Norway peaked on March 27, exactly 12 days later, and they’ve been falling ever since.’ Meanwhile in Sweden, new daily cases are still not from the peak, there’s no nice bell curve, no magical 6 – 8 week peak and fall.  Quite a lot stayed at home anyhow, so the numbers rose in a middling way, and the peak is later.

Ben Israel has welded twenty variables into one

“Lockdowns” mean many different things. He seems to think they are a “binary” Hard:soft thing. It is a PhD project to estimate the exact level of lockdown in each country, and on top of that he’d need to compensate for population density, average daily temperature, humidity levels, demographics, transmission sources, viral strains,  Vitamin D levels and co-morbidity risks. He’d need to estimate compliance too.  Then, after that, and after the country had actually beaten the disease he might be able to unpack which kinds of lockdown were cost effective, and the answer won’t be the same for every country.

AsiaTimes

Ben-Israel told the Jewish Journal: “This is how it is all over the world. Both in countries where they have taken closure steps, like Italy, and in countries that have not had closures, like Taiwan or Singapore. In such countries, there is an increase until the fourth to sixth week, and immediately thereafter, moderation until during the eighth week, it disappears.”

 

 Singapore is not following the plan: Week 11 and rising fast

Singapore’s first case was Jan 23rd, and it launched into action with obsessive mass tracking and great success. But they’ve lost the plot in the last few weeks as they let students return from overseas and brought in foreign cheap labor. The foreigners who live in packed dormitories make up 90% of  new cases. In a predictable response to the doubling of numbers, Singapore has tightened entry rules, mandated masks, spent lots of money and imposed a partial lockdown. Spot the pattern, it’s not the magic number of the week, it’s the exponential shock, and the predictable reaction to change human behaviour.

Singapore Coronavirus cases

Singapore: 11 weeks since the first case and no peak in sight.

 

It’s fair to ask how hard a quarantine needs to be to be effective, but to conclude that viruses fade out on a “fixed” schedule for no good reason is an all new discovery in microbiology. Call it Viral Numerology.

His words again,  with his graphs:

“… coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way.”

What does “exact” mean anyway?

Anything you like.

Mysterious peak in infections. Six week cycle in coronavirus

Mysterious peak in infections that are “exactly” the same.

 

All of these countries changed their behaviour, and that changed the curve.

h/t Colin.

REFERENCE: This might be the paper ( in Hebrew?)

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