Conventional wisdom was that smoking would be a major risk factor for dying from the new coronavirus.

But so far data from China and now the US shows the opposite (h/t Wael):

The consistent low rate of #tobacco smokers among patients with #coronavirus in China is now duplicated in the U.S. by CDC:
Among 7,162 corona patients with medical records 6,901 were never-smokers (96.3%), 165 ex-smokers (2.3%), and only 96 smokers (1.3%)https://t.co/KAVsvPi1FC https://t.co/NyRrA04ssW

— Klaus K (@KlausKblog) April 2, 2020

Obviously, this is not a valid reason to light up.

But this would be good news for countries where smoking rates are high.

Long-time readers will know that I am a fan of The Nature Index for tracking global scientometrics. Unlike raw numbers of articles published, it automatically adjusts for quality, since only submissions to elite journals are counted.

In my previous longread on the subject, I presented a per capita map of the Nature Index FC (fractional count). However, while it illustrated the dominance of just a few rich, high IQ countries to scientific development, even it could not do justice to the sheer geographic lopsidedness of the world’s distribution of cognitive talent that is devoted to science production.

While the final tables for the 2019 indices are still being compiled, Nature Index has released a database of the world’s top 500 cities by scientific output for 2017. You can open the map directly from your browser here.

If our world was a civilization game, almost all the world’s “beakers” would accrue to just a few metropolises and university towns in Western Europe, North America, and East Asia.

There are small if distinguishable clusters in India, Moscow, and SE Brazil, but otherwise the world outside those “core” areas is a scientific desert.

The leading US scientific centers are New York (1.980), Boston (1,809), SF Bay Area (1,676), and Baltimore-Washington (1,296), with Los Angeles and Chicago considerably behind (~800 each).

Otherwise, as per stereotypes, there’s much less happening in “flyover country”, with most other notable clusters being in the 200-300 range.

Beijing (2,142) was even as of 2017 already the world’s single biggest scientific cluster, overshadowing all other competitors in East Asia – Tokyo (1,194), Seoul (725), Osaka (680) – not to mention China itself.

Curiously, despite its status as China’s premier commercial hub and most “Westernized” city, and its star pupils who ace the PISA tests, Shanghai clocks in at just 1,041 – far below Beijing. Indeed, interior Nanjing (705) and even Wuhan (495), while is heavily populated by xiangxiaren/vatniks – are not that far behind. I can only assume that in Shanghai there’s more vigorous competition for talent from the commercial sector. And despite its status as China’s tech hub, Shenzhen (189) is not impressive at all. I suppose this would be one way in which it’s different from Silicon Valley, which is embedded within America’s third biggest cognitive/scientific cluster. These two patterns are perhaps the only “surprises” I had from the regional breakdown of the data.

As expected, Taipei (189) and Hong Kong (356) clock in modest performances relative to their status (note that Singapore much higher at 596). The result, I suppose, of targeted brain drain.

Although India’s performance is as yet quite modest, what I would note is that its scientific output is very evenly distributed geographically relative to other big countries/blocs. The four biggest clusters – Bangalore, Calcutta, Mumbai, Delhi – are all in the ~100-150 range. My only modest surprise from India is that there is no significant cluster in Kerala, which is the most developed (non-city) Indian state and was the historical focal point of Indian mathematics.

By Europe, we really mean, Western Europe, and by Western Europe, we really mean Paris (938), London (673) and Oxbridge (~500 each), Switzerland, and small German university towns.

The Med is much less remarkable, with Barcelona and Madrid (~275 each) being its only notable clusters

Eastern Europe is a scientific desert, with Moscow (188) – accounting for almost half of Russia’s elite level scientific output – constituting its only significantly noticeable pinprick, if only by dint of the emptiness around it.

There is pretty much nothing in the Balkans.

The Middle East is pretty much just Israel, there being otherwise only two pinpricks.

Tehran (Iran) – despite the sanctions, Iran with its smart fraction even manages to do better than Turkey overall – and most of its output is concentrated in the capital, whereas Turkey’s is split between Ankara and Istanbul.

And Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) – all thanks to KAUST, a lavishly funded institution whose overwhelmingly Western professors were poached with oil money.

Although the idea that “crisis” and “opportunity” are represented by the same Chinese character is “fake news”, it is nonetheless true that the two often go together.

As we stew in our respective lockdowns, let’s think about Corona-chan may make the world better:

• For the first time, many older people will be sufficiently incentivized to finally figure out how the Internet works, to submit utilities payments, order food online, etc. This will make all of our lives much easier.
• Decline in in-store retail thanks to expanded e-commerce will open up more green spaces in our suburbs. Will anybody truly miss GameStop?
• We may realize that many bureaucratic procedures are useless, or may at least be performed just as effectively online, so accelerating the move to lighter, more efficient e-government.
• Accelerate digitization of elections, referendums, political processes will expand citizen influence on city planning and other issues.
• Fewer pointless meetings (but I repeat myself).
• Less cash, more electronic payments lead to reduction of gray economies (particularly relevant to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe) and greater tax intake.
• Less stigmatization of work from home, allowing people more flexibility. Perhaps even a mass transition – right now, we are seeing a mass experiment on how this affects productivity.
• Fewer crowds in city centers thanks to more work from home.
• Recessions are not all bad – one can compare them to bouts of fasting, which clears the body/economy of useless or unsustainable clutter. Purging them regularly is in fact good, as it’s the weaker ones that’ll die first (e.g. bad restaurants without loyal clienteles). Easily replaceable.
• Journalists will have to learn to code. It’s no longer even just a meme.
• Unemployment spike will, in the short-term, produce large pools of native labor that can be hired to upgrade infrastructure and public works. Forward-thinking states should take advantage of this.
• Across Europe and the US, it is almost certain that this will accelerate “reshoring” of vital industries from China. This will increase resilience to future shocks.
• Normalization of the idea of Universal Basic Income – now openly discussed across the political spectrum, from Bernie Sanders to Mitt Romney – will make us better prepared for extensive automation down the line.
• Germaphobes can celebrate as handshakes may go out of vogue.
• Normalization of wearing masks in Western societies may reduce the incidence of the flu and other diseases, as it has in East Asia.
• The world will be much better prepared for a more serious pandemic.
• Gives us space to set up stronger buffers against existential risks, especially biological ones. COVID-19 pandemic isn’t any kind of X-Risk, even in the worst case scenarios. But what if it had the virulence of MERS? Better prepared than sorry.

Finally, there are three more expected changes: One of them is “good”, but won’t happen; while the other one is the opposite – ostensibly “bad”, but inevitable.

(1) Perhaps the most common hope professed by people who overstretch historical analogies such as the Black Death is that COVID-19 will increase incomes if lots of people die off. First, the Black Death killed a third to half the population of Europe, not the <3% that the novel coronavirus will kill even in the most pessimistic scenarios. Second, it happened in Malthusian societies, where most people lived at the edge of subsistence and where land was a constraining resource – obviously not valid since Industrial Revolution! The lesser claim, that COVID-19 will reduce strain on pensions system, is true but only to a very limited extent. Pensions entitlements account for ~10% of GDP across most of the developed world. So assume 10% of retirees die off. That’s a 1% point reduction in that load – that’s hardly a major reversal, and may in fact be partially counterbalanced by future costs of treating morbidities (e.g. destroyed lungs) that arise as a consequence of the coronavirus sweep.

(2) Fears have been raised, especially on the libertarian right, that the crisis will lead to expanded surveillance and erosion of privacy protections. In principle, this is a respectable view. But it presupposes that there is a choice. In the long-term, there will be more crises, and crises tend to select for things that make polities more effective. “Digital Gulag”, as one might call it if negatively disposed, is too useful to not to be introduced and universalized at some point during the first half of this century. I would make the comparison to the introduction of passports. Optional before WW1; compulsory in most states, even non-warring ones, afterwards. Or cryptography. There was opposition in the US to setting up a cipher breaking unit before WW2 on the basis that “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.” Now America’s polities towards the world’s privacy is rather different, as Snowden might tell you. The tools already exist, and it is only a matter of time before they are rolled out on a large scale in the Western world, where they will be used to serve the reigning ideology just as surely as “social credit” in China promotes the “harmonious society” vision of the CPC. In the meantime, it is surely preferable that they at least do some unambiguous good – namely, improve track and trace capabilities, identify quarantine violators, and so forth.

To date and across most of the globe, Corona seems to have benefited the Establishment, whatever it may be at any particular time (with the exception of Brazil’s Bolsonaro, who took himself out of the game at the start and is now unable to even fire his Health Minister).

Although the MAGA people have made a great deal of Trump’s bump in approval ratings ~46% now relative to ~42% in January, in reality the improvement seems to be pretty marginal relative to other countries. Sampling changes in European leader approval ratings over the immediate past 1-2 months, Giuseppe Conte has gone up from 52% to 71%; Macron, previously pummeled by Yellow Vest unrest, has gone up from 33% to 46%; Merkel has gone up from 53% to 64%; Boris Johnson has gone up from 42% to 55%. Incidentally, I can also now confirm that this “rally around the flag” effect is active in Russia as well. Whereas Putin’s approval rating dipped from 65% to 60% after his controversial move to “nullify” Presidential terms, they have bounced back up to 72% in the latest VCIOM poll after his March 25 speech on coronavirus-related economic measures.

But will these bumps last as quarantine weariness sets in? Presumably not – over time, I imagine ratings will come to depend on the effectiveness of national responses to the crisis in both epidemiological and economic terms.

As this process unfolds, which political factions should we generally expect to win out in the world? And which to lose out?

In a Twitter poll, 44% of respondents said “The Right” while 29% said “The Left.” I think there’s a case to be made for both of those positions, though I expect much will depend on national context.

Populist Right:

• Was usually stronger on and earlier to institute travel bans.
• General association with opposition to “open border” policies.
• Can more readily offload blame on China.
• Conservatives, at least in the US, are much more “chill” on the epidemic than liberals. (Might change if/as bodies pile up).
• Predictive failure of liberal media elites and handshakeworthy experts, e.g. masks disinformation (e.g. voxsplaining they don’t work while their founder bought them for himself), “travel bans don’t work”, wide-ranging failure to predict scale of the problem (while pushing woke anti-racism narratives).

I expect this to be stronger in Italy, and perhaps Europe more generally. In particular, Salvini – one of the earliest politicians in the world to call for banning air flights from China – may capitalize on this.

However, this vector is going to suffer a setback in Brazil, and possibly in the US; though it’s hard to say, as Trump seemingly flip-flops from “shut it down” to “but think about the Line!” every few days.

The Left:

• Generous welfare policies proposed generally nicer for working class people than the Right’s preference for bailouts and supporting employers. E.g., note that many or most European countries, including even Tory-run Britain, are going to be compensating most of the salaries of people that are made redundant. Many have expressed support for Universal Basic Income for the duration of the lockdowns.
• As regards the US in particular – Trump Bux are a joke ($1,200 is a single month’s rent for many people), and there’ll be much greater demand for M4A, more sick leave, etc.
• Increase in support for protectionism in context of US difficulties with getting something as seemingly trivial as increasing face mask production. (Though this is at least as much an issue of the populist/nationalist Right).

I would expect this effect to be stronger in the US than in Europe, which already tends to have much more extensive welfare states (while being less “woke” than US leftists).

And, for that matter, perhaps in Russia, where fiscal hawkishness coupled with low personal savings puts the sustainability of long-term lockdown measures under question.

neoliberalism.txt (as distinct from The Left):

• Would seemingly suffer, as Open Borders, Chimerica, and free trade are all classic neoliberal positions.
• Trump (and Bolsonaro) are hardly making a good case for national-populism.
• Despite the failures described above, there nonetheless seems to be something of a “rehabilitation” of the value of experts – especially on the background of “swine righ t” politicians and pundits (e.g. see this Daily Show compendium of very bad takes). According to the polls, Dr. Fauci has become the most trusted voice on Corona for the American public.

Last but not least, note that all of the above speculations involve a general tilt of the population in one direction or another but forego consideration of possible changes in underlying demographics.

However, it is a sad but not unrealistic prospect that some countries – most prominently, perhaps, the US – may mostly or entirely fail to control the epidemic, resulting in statistically significant shifts at the demographic level. In a worst case scenario, something like 10% of the Silent Generation may croak before November. These are predominantly white, Republican voters. Furthermore, we can expect that once the coronavirus is done with its early “cosmopolitan” phase – politicians, skiers, global elites – it will then hit the poorest and less educated hardest. Amongst US whites, that’s mostly Republicans – even more so, specifically Trump voters. Will Trump be able to hold onto, say, Florida after such a major demographic shift?

At the very least, I certainly find it very ironic that in my observations of the comments to my Corona poasts, it the precisely the people who are most obsessed by things like the percentage White share of the US population and the social and electoral implications thereof who are also the most nonchalant about the prospect of these trends effectively getting put on “fast forward” by Corona-chan. Again, speaking of the worst case scenario of several million dead, the broad-spectrum ideological shift towards the nationalist-populist Right has to be very substantial just to cancel out the effect of pure demographics!!

I am not making any predictions. Half a year is an eternity in politics, especially in the midst of a pandemic whose future development is still a mystery. But hopefully even these rather scattershot speculations can spur productive discussions.

When I was in Saint-Petersburg in 2017, I spent a couple of hours at the underground base/gym/Ukrainian war trophy room of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) when I visited SPB in 2017 – the “white supremacist” group that has just been designated as a White Supremacist terrorist organization by the US State Department. Three individuals were also separately designated as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists”: Stanislav Vorobyev, Denis Gariev, and Nikolayevich Trushchalov. I would advise them to keep well away from the US and its colonies for the foreseeable future.

Americans’ idea of a typical Russian ultranationalist.

Although I am honored to have directly consorted with America’s first “white supremacist” global terrorists, the banal reality is that they were and are nothing of the sort. As I wrote back then:

Its nationalism is explicitly based on religion, not ethnicity – you don’t have to be an ethnic Russian to join, but you do have to be an Orthodox Christian. However, they are also considerably more hardcore than the others, having been directly involved in the events in Donbass through their Imperial Legion battalion.

Even so, to add to the irony, their website rusimperia.info is nonetheless blocked by Russian censorship body Roskomnadzor on the territory of the Russian Federation – while remaining accessible in the US, which has just branded them terrorists. If you’re not afraid of getting on the FBI watchlists, you can confirm what I said above by reading their Manifesto, which centers around “God, Tsar, Nation” (in that order). Or check them out celebrating being so “honored” on their Vkontakte page.

Nor are they a particularly large or influential organization. They have perhaps a few hundred “regulars” – enough to outfit a small battalion in the Donbass in 2014-15, but nothing on the scale of, say, Azov in the Ukraine, which functions as an official paramilitary force, hews to an explicitly white nationalist ideology, and does far more extensive outreach and training with European and American white nationalists.

Their lack of clout is not surprising, as the fact that their website is blocked within Russia rather suggests that the Kremlin isn’t all that enamored of them. And it’s not difficult to see why. Their Manifesto claims that Russians do not have a “national state”, and have been divided by “thieving regimes” that are “living out their last days” on the body of the true, historical Russia as it was before February 1917. Since RIM are barely any bigger fans of the Russian Federation than of the UkSSR, it is not surprising that relations between the Kremlin and RIM cannot be anything more than an alliance of convenience.

However, the American terrorist designation isn’t on account of RIM’s adventures in the Ukraine, but on its supposed involvement with “radicalizing” a couple of Swedish far rightists:

RIM is a terrorist group that provides paramilitary-style training to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, and it plays a prominent role in trying to rally like-minded Europeans and Americans into a common front against their perceived enemies. RIM has two training facilities in St. Petersburg, which likely are being used for woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons, and hand-to-hand combat training.

This group has innocent blood on its hands. In August 2016, two Swedish men traveled to St. Petersburg and underwent 11 days of paramilitary-style training provided by RIM.

A few months later, these men and another person conducted a series of terrorist attacks in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. In November 2016, they detonated a bomb outside a café. Two months later, they bombed a migrant center, gravely injuring one person. And three weeks after that, they placed another bomb at a campsite used to house refugees. Thankfully, that device failed to detonate.

RIM does indeed run “Partisan” courses on firearms training, woodsmanship, “military topography”, and similar topics (to the right is an advert for it; note that the gmail is Gariev’s). Bomb construction isn’t mentioned – if the Russian authorities don’t allow them to host their own website, they sure as hell would not look aside on something that wildly illegal. These courses are overseen by a separate organization called “Reserve-Druzhina”, which operates on a commercial basis. They are also open to anyone. If you’re interested, you can sign up and check them out for yourself here.

Swedish authorities were able to arrest the attackers, and they’ve now been tried and convicted for their crimes. The prosecutor who handled their case blamed RIM for radicalizing them and providing the training that enabled the attacks.

I am also not exactly sure how the ideology of Tsar, God, outdoor survival, and reclaiming the Russian lands intersects with removing kebab from Sweden – but OK.

And why now? After all, those events took place more than three years ago.

Here are my, possibly entirely groundless, speculations. Judging from this ThinkProgress report, it appears that some members of RIM were unfortunate enough to establish relationships with Matthew Heimbach – an obese, waddling caricature of a wignat who led something called the “Traditional” “Worker” “Party” while cheating with the wife of his spokesman Matthew Parrott and collecting unemployment benefits from his trailer park compound. This carnival of larping Orthodox freaks disintegrated in 2018, when Heimbach was arrested for assaulting Parrot and his own wife (who was also Parrot’s step-daughter) when they caught him cheating with Parrot’s wife.

However, literally within the past week, Heimbach has “reinvented” himself as a born again anti-racist, recanting his views in a video and article with some ur-Soros vibed NGO called “Light Upon Light: Creating Space Free of Hate.” Now I generally don’t imagine their social rehabilitation services come free. Can one demonstrate true contrition without disavowing and doxing one’s former “comrades” in the movement? At the very least, it is rather strange that a Russian nationalist organization, at least some of whose members had substantial contacts with Heimbach and the Traditional Workers Party, were designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department within a week of Heimbach following in Katie McHugh’s footsteps and pleading with ZOG for forgiveness.

Speculating even further, it would certainly be very convenient for American security agencies with a new, big, juicy list of “white supremacist” targets to reel in. After all, collaborating with foreign terrorists is a serious crime.

Yesterday, Western journalists were like:

This referred to the original state news agency RIA article, which stated that Boris Johnson was hospitalized and would be put under a ventilator.

And earlier today, the British government were like:

• Business Insider: Boris Johnson’s spokesman accuses Russia of spreading ‘disinformation’ after Russian state media claims the prime minister is on a coronavirus ventilator
• Buzzfeed: The UK Has Condemned Russia For Spreading “Disinformation” About Boris Johnson’s Health

Originally, I supposed that the innocent explanation would be a minor error on the part of the Russians, with the Russians mistranslating BoJo being given oxygen (admitted to by the UK earlier today) as being put in the ventilator.

Though considering that the RIA article was printed for Russians, the claim that it was malicious disinformation meant to “undermine” the West (or whatever the latest trope is) was plainly ridiculous even then.

But now things are like this:

Looks like the RIA people really did have a high-placed sourced in the NHS (note that the claim BoJo would be put under a ventilator was stated in the future tense).

If so, it was in fact refraining from publishing this in English that was most notable – not that this will be recognized.

As I speculated yesterday, the UK may well have issued a secret D-notice to prevent the British media from covering the seriousness of BoJo’s situation. Incidentally, that’s a mechanism that “authoritarian” Russia lacks.

Would it also be too soon to speculate on how the Western hacks who have spent most of the past two months inventing fantasizing about a massive hidden epidemic in Russia would have reacted to the Kremlin similarly covering up Putin getting put into an ICU with the coronavirus?

This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain. pic.twitter.com/dLQUVauCKg

— Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives (@BorisJohnson) January 2, 2020

Anyhow, I hope BoJo makes it. He’s certainly not having a “fantastic year” to date.

***

Real lesson to take away from this? When pummeled by claims and counter-claims of dubious worth and provenance, going with the gamblers isn’t the worst bet. He’s now up to 51% there.

***

One interesting thing I observed is that there doesn’t seem be any discernible ideological pattern to the decisiveness/quality of Corona responses across the world.

Right-wing populists

Trump and Bolsonaro have performed atrociously, dismissing Corona as a hoax or a nothingburger before switching to proclaiming its too late to do anything anyway and “What About The Line”, before submitting to reality/becoming ignored by his own governors, respectively. Ironically, their policies – if they were/are followed through to their natural conclusion – will, first and foremost, most negatively impact on their own ageing, less-educated electoral bases.

However, when “right-wing populists” are mentioned in global politics discussions, other names that usually come to mind (quibbles aside) are Modi, Orban, and Putin. Modi has ordered India into a 21 day lockdown, even though – arguably – the relative benefits to lower income nations doing this are far lower than for First World nations. Bold political moves aside, Hungary’s response was nothing out of the ordinary by East European standards, which are so far coping far better with their epidemics than Western Europe. Contra Western propaganda, Russia’s response has been relatively competent as well.

***

Leftists

Mexico’s President has been encouraging his compatriots to go out into the streets, hug each other, and visit the shops and restaurants. And he has also been very forthright about practicing what he preaches, declining to use hand sanitizer and making various bizarre remarks (e.g. “El Chapo protects me”).

Belarus is one of the last countries in Europe with open borders and absolutely no quarantines. Based Potato Dictator: “It is better to die on your feet, than live on your knees.” At least they’re testing quite widely (23,000).

***

Neolibs

European and American libs were agitating against “racist” and/or “ineffective” travel bans, engaging in Mask Denial, and decrying China’s “totalitarian” quarantine measures. Meanwhile, the more outright neoliberal wings posited implausibly law predictions of ultimate Corona deaths (libertarian think-tanker Richard Epstein initially predicted 500 deaths, before revising it to 5,000; too bad he was initiatially the White House’s main authority on the subject) or even offered to sacrifice themselves up in service of the Line (amusingly, one 28 year old had to cash in within three days).

At the political level, their main representatives were the UK, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Their initial plan was one of attaining “herd immunity” while doing minimal mitigation, letting the coronavirus roll through their populations. At least the Brits rapidly backed away from that plan when they realized that their models didn’t include a term for ventilators, and the Netherlands followed soon after (though Sweden is still going strong).

That said, again, no definitive pattern. For instance, low-tax, low-business regulation, and pro-Western Estonia and Georgia have both been doing very well – not to mention a whole bunch of low-tax, free trade enterprepots in East Asia.

***

East Asians

OK, there’s one obvious to poor performance: East Asian states run on MATH (TM). And some other not entirely minor details, like experience with SARS and a bunch of other epidemics, cultural acceptance of masks, etc.

Anyhow. Internal political structure – chaotic democracies, authoritarian technocracies, Communist one party states – doesn’t seem to matter all that much. They’ve all managed very well to date.

For instance, take Sub-Saharan Africa. Median age is ~18 years, and only 3% of the population is above the age of 65 (for Italy, these figures are 45 years and 24%, respectively). Their mortality rates are already very high, so the net impact on their life expectancy will be modest, since age is the single biggest risk factor. Any population loss, even under the most pessimistic scenarios, will be recovered in months (whereas the US will take up to half a decade to recover from a loss of 4.3 million people, which is what happens if the losses in Italy’s epicenter are projected across the entire country; meanwhile, some European countries with declining populations – and, for that matter, White Americans – may never recover their absolute numbers at all for the foreseeable future).

Conversely, lockdowns are harder on poor countries. For denizens of the industrialized world, they may range from an inconvenience to bankruptcy at the extremes (though governments can, and many are, taking steps to mitigate that). However, most assuredly nobody is going to starve, and non-coronavirus related mortality is actually likely to decrease. However, this may not be true for the Third World, where far more people are at the edge of subsistence (child malnutrition rate in S.S. Africa and South Asia is around 40%). Informal economies are much larger, and there is much less state capacity to insulate the population against economic cataclysms on account of both resource constraints and institutional shortfalls.

Nonetheless, the “Third World” – India, Pakistan, even SSA – has been surprisingly conscientious about combating the coronavirus. Many African countries have closed borders. Modi has imposed a 21 day lockdown on India, causing severe hardships to tens of millions of stranded workers.

But should even be bothering? Main potential problem for those of us in the Global North is that this will complicate efforts to contain Corona at the global level. As I pointed out, letting the novel coronavirus become an endemic disease – and assuming it would retain its virulence and subsequently behave like a seasonal flu – would permanently subtract 2-3 years from developed world life expectancy relative to what it would have been otherwise (much less for the Third World, though it would still increasingly impact on them in the future as they age unless it is eradicated by vaccine). As such, First World countries that do manage to deal with Corona, at least for the time being, will impose much stronger barriers to movement from “red zones” that do not contain their epidemics. Will Nigerian elites be OK with curtailing their shopping trips to Harrods? Or they may even want to impose sanctions on such countries (though I think this is a purely theoretical possibility).

That brings us to Iran. It now looks like they’re going to be the first major country to throw in the towel on seriously economically disruptive measures to contain its spread. Median age – 30 years, i.e. in between Europe and S.S. Africa. And they are already living under sanctions as it is – in fact, the IMF has just denied them a $5 billion emergency loan thanks to US interference. Although Iran is hardly Third World, it’s not particularly rich either. I allow that on balance they might be better off letting coronavirus burn through their population with just low-cost interventions to flatten the curve. The resultant mortality spike can be, with substantial legitimacy, be blamed on the US.

Leading intelligence researchers have just forwarded me this graph from an upcoming article on the relation between cognitive ability and sentiment towards Russia that will soon be published in a high impact psychology journal.

We now have the first hard data from regions that achieved “herd immunity” the hard way – that is, by having Corona burn through most of the population.

70% of blood donors from Castiglione d’Adda, in the 50,000 population region of Lodi, the epicenter of Italy’s outbreak, tested positive for SARS-2 antibodies.

There’s just one very minor problem*:

ROME — One of the latest deaths in Italy’s coronavirus crisis is the father of a young man known as Italy’s Patient No. 1.
Italian state TV said the father was one of 62 deaths so far in the outbreak that have occurred in Castiglione d’Adda, one of 10 Lombard towns which were the first to be put on lockdown in northern Italy.

According to Wikipedia, the population of Castiglione d’Adda is 4,659. This makes for a mortality rate of 1.3% and that’s based on numbers from March 21!

And no, it’s not full of old geezers either. Median age is 46.2 years. The figure for Italy as a whole is 44.9 years.

For comparison, the Italian crude death rate is 10.7/1,000. That’s the annual figure. Crudely projecting onto Castiglione d’Adda, that’s about 50 expected deaths per year. That’s what COVID-19 accomplished in just a month – an effective doubling of the yearly mortality rate.

By extension, these figures would translate into 327 million * 1.3% total mortality = 4.35 million EXCESS deaths in the US in one year (well more than a doubling of its usual rate!).

And that’s leaving aside for now that some Corona-related deaths in Castiglione d’Adda have yet to occur!

***

* I have also seen figures in the range of 40-45 deaths Castiglione d’Adda. This is not as bad, but still wouldn’t change anything on the order of magnitudes – not that we can get any more precise than that, anyway.