Has Trump been proven right yet again about the Wuhan virus?
President Trump is an extremely smart man who calibrates his speech to about the seventh-grade level in order to make sure all Americans, not just excessively verbal college graduates, understand him. His uncomplicated speech patterns lead leftists to the erroneous conclusion that Trump is stupid. That mistake, plus Trump Derangement Syndrome, explains why leftists instantly denigrated the predictions Trump made when the virus first broke in America.
Before Sunday, of Trump's three most significant predictions, two proved correct. Now there's news out of England that the virus's low infection rate is making it hard to put together a vaccine trial. This news proves that Trump's third prediction, that the disease would die out as summer neared, was right, too.
Trump's first important prediction about the Wuhan virus was that the virus's mortality rate would be much lower than the 3–4% that the WHO and the "experts" were promoting:
"Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number," Trump said. "Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it's very mild. They'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people."
The CDC just estimated that the coronavirus mortality rate is 0.26%:
The coronavirus fatality rate estimate has fallen, according to the latest estimates of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to 0.26%, far below previous estimates.
The updated CDC figures show a 0.4% death rate for symptomatic cases of coronavirus, down-grading the estimated fatality rate from 1% of symptomatic cases.
With the CDC now estimating that more than a third (35%) of coronavirus cases are completely asymptomatic, the total fatality rate for the coronavirus is now believed to be 0.26%.
Trump also announced his hope that hydroxychloroquine would be a game-changer:
HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents).....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020
The media instantly declared that hydroxychloroquine, a drug that’s been used safely for decades to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, was a deadly toxin. Studies do indicate that hydroxychloroquine alone, or only with azithromycin, or when given to patients who are already in extremis, is not helpful. However, when given with azithromycin and zinc at the first sign of symptoms, it is probably the game-changer Trump predicted.
Trump made one other prediction that had the leftists sneering. He believed the disease would burn itself out by April:
He told the crowd that “in theory” once the weather warms up Coronavirus, which he referred to as “the virus,” will “miraculously” go away. Trump did not offer any scientific explanation to back up his claim.
“I think it’s all gonna work out fine,” he said. “Rough stuff, rough stuff.”
Trump echoed that claim during a speech to governors at the White House earlier on Monday, telling the group that China had given him the confidence that the outbreak would subside in Apri due to “the heat.”
“The heat generally speaking kills this kind of virus,” he said.
The media instantly declared that hydroxychloroquine, a drug that's been used safely for decades to treat malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, Is a deadly toxin. Studies do indicate that hydroxychloroquine alone, or only with azithromycin, or when given to patients who are already in extremis, is not helpful. However, when given with azithromycin and zinc at the first sign of symptoms, it is probably the game-changer Trump predicted.
Trump made one other prediction that had the leftists sneering. He believed that the disease would burn itself out by April:
He told the crowd that "in theory" once the weather warms up Coronavirus, which he referred to as "the virus," will "miraculously" go away. Trump did not offer any scientific explanation to back up his claim.
"I think it's all gonna work out fine," he said. "Rough stuff, rough stuff."
Trump echoed that claim during a speech to governors at the White House earlier on Monday, telling the group that China had given him the confidence that the outbreak would subside in Apri [sic] due to "the heat."
"The heat generally speaking kills this kind of virus," he said.
Trump was actually a little off. The virus apparently is burning out in May, not April. That burnout is why English vaccine researchers are having a problem. It seems that the virus's transmission has gotten so limited that they can't reasonably test a vaccination:
Hopes that a vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready by September are hanging in the balance, as the scientists developing it are concerned that a slowdown in the rate of infection in the general population could invalidate the human trials currently taking place.
Prof. Adrian Hill, Director of the Oxford University's Jenner Institute, has told The Telegraph that there is only a 50-50 chance that the vaccine his team has been developing can be successfully tested.
The team has recruited 10,000 people to test the vaccine, some of whom will be given the vaccine and others a placebo. But as it is unethical to purposely infect people in the trial with COVID-19, participants will be asked to go about their normal routine in the expectation that some will be exposed to it naturally. However, that is unlikely to happen if the virus is not spreading, meaning that no conclusions can be drawn one way or the other about the vaccine's efficacy.
[snip]
"We're in the bizarre position of wanting COVID to stay, at least for a little while. But cases are declining."
President Trump is a very smart man with a lot of common sense. Those who discount him do so at their peril.