s get attached to it. But it's the national press that decides what's the story and they have decided it's not good for their personal careers to emphasize any racial disparity in crime and so they don't. And so therefore that story of the tragic story of the child who got murdered by the neighbor doesn't tie to a national story. So if you think you should that would be fair to say. But if you're wondering hey why are these being treated differently that's the reason. It's just not tied to a national story and that's the way it always works.

Coronavirus deaths, I think there are over 175,000 for this country. Predicted at least another 24,000 in the coming month. So we will easily it looks like pass 200,000 dead. That's a number which I had asked people who were saying it's just the flu early on, I said well if you think it's just the flu can you commit to a number beyond which you'd say oh God that wasn't just the flu? And one of the, what would I say, coronavirus, I don't want to say skeptic but skeptic in terms of how bad it would be had said 200,000 would be the number at which you'd say okay all right for 200,000 deaths that's definitely not the flu. Especially since the 200,000 you only got to because of the shutdown and the severe punishment of the economy.

So does anybody still argue it's just the flu? Has that population of people now shrunk to the point where it's a different conversation? A conversation about how to handle it but not so much that's just the flu. So I don't know if that transition is going to happen but I don't hear the "just the flu" people being as loud on social media anymore.

Speaking of statistics, do you believe that we will ever know, no matter when, at any date in the future, whether the U.S. did worse or better than other countries? Do you think we'll ever know that? If you said yes, oh yeah we'll definitely know. I mean once it's all done we'll look at the data. Lots of researchers will dig in. They'll find out what worked what didn't and we will know if President Trump did a good job compared to the other leaders. If you believe that can be known you've never been involved in this kind of work meaning data analysis of any kind. We can't know that. It is completely unknowable unless it was some major obvious thing that anybody could tell. But if you tried to suss it out of the data and the only thing you're doing is saying I'm not going to look at the decisions he made, I'm just going to see how it turned out, you're never going to be able to do it.

And here's why. Would it be most appropriate, I saw this yesterday, for the U.S. as a whole to be compared to the other wealthy countries? Would that be a good comparison? Well I would argue that you need to take the islands out of it. I think you need to take your Taiwans, your South Koreas which is effectively an island because of the DMZ, your New Zealands and maybe your Australia. That's a pretty big island but I think you need to look at the islands separately and say okay these have the most in common with each other because of the island element of it and see how the islands did. So if you're throwing the islands in with wealthy countries, well already that result is less credible. Okay that's just one problem.

Here's some more. The United States is really 50 different entities, you know 52 if you count Puerto Rico and Guam or whatever. So should we say that the average of all those entities is what the United States is or should we treat each of the states like a country and say all right how did New York State do compared to Europe? Right because actually New York State's doing pretty well. They had a tough spot. Wasn't their fault for the most part. You could argue about the old people being put back in their senior care places. That looks like a mistake in hindsight. I don't know if it was as obvious when it happened. Obviously it wasn't obviously a mistake when it happened. But wouldn't we find for example that we have let's say just guessing probably more than 40 states who are doing better than Europe? Would that be true? Would we have 40 of our states doing better than Europe? Maybe. But then those European countries would say wait wait wait if you get to cherry pick your states we're going to say if you take, I'll just pick a random, all right we'll do the same thing we'll take Frankfurt out of our equation. I'm just guessing that Frankfurt had bad coronavirus. I don't know if it did. We'll just take that out of our equation. How about that? And then we beat you again.

So basically everybody who wants to look good is going to have an argument. Well don't count the senior care places. You have to take those out. That was just tragic but if you're really going to compare that was just one event that had a big impact. You got to take that out. So people argue about whether that should be in or out, whether the state should be compared, whether you're on the same curve. We don't know.

And then here's the thing that's so completely unknowable and the thing that's going to drive me freaking crazy for the next five years. And it goes like this. As far as I can tell Sweden did the dumbest strategy and it worked out the best. Now that of course creates a situation where you can say that they didn't have a good strategy or that they did. You could just spin it any way you want.

So here's why it was the dumbest plan. When Sweden went for herd immunity the assumption was they'd have to get to 60 or 70 percent infection. Turns out it's probably closer to 20 because people seem to have some natural immunity. And if Sweden had known it was going to be 20, well they're geniuses. Oh they're geniuses. We'll talk about Italy in a second. But Sweden thinking that they were heading toward herd immunity of 60 or 70 which by any measure would have been quite a big death toll, probably would have crashed their health care system. They probably would have ended up closing more stuff. They would have had to more aggressively close down because the public would say too many people are dying or health care is dying.

So if Sweden's plan had worked the way they thought it would work, here's the key part. If Sweden's plan had worked the way they thought it would work, if it had gone exactly the way they wanted it to, it would have crashed their whole economy. Because they thought it was 60 to 70 percent for herd immunity. They got incredibly lucky I think. Now I think we'll probably have to wait to see if this is real. But the only way that Sweden got down to basically something like zero deaths lately is because herd immunity was a fraction of what everybody thought. Nobody knew that. They did the dumbest strategy and hit a home run. It was like they were blindfolded and they were up to bat and somebody threw a ball and they swung really hard and they hit the fricking ball and they got a home run. And it wasn't because they were good batters. They had a blindfold on. Right? That's what happened.

So it's going to drive me crazy that we will ever be compared to Sweden like look how smart Sweden was. No they were the dumbest country but they got the luckiest. That's what it looks like to me. So if it turns out that 20 is herd immunity and it also is true that the United States has rampant infections where Europe does not, who's the smart one? Right? Because now we've seen Sweden. If we'd never seen Sweden hit herd immunity we would also think it was 60 or 70 percent. But now that we know it's closer to 20 and we know that in all likelihood, I'm not sure you can say you know anything but it seems very likely that the reason that New York City and New York State are doing well is that they have so many infections that they got to herd immunity. And we might be the next one who hits herd immunity simply because we didn't control it that carefully. Same as Sweden.

So if it turns out that we get back to a functioning economy and fewer deaths because we had herd immunity faster than Europe, who is the smart one? Would we be the smart one because our economy would be kicking back into gear, our deaths would be zero, we'd be on the other side of it like Sweden while Europe is still trying to tamp down every fire? I know we better close down again. Better close down again. Better close down again. And they're going to end up in the same place.

So my basic point is that we will never know who did better than anybody else because everybody was guessing. We all have good hindsight. None of the data is reliable and nobo