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From Teeka Tiwari’s Palm Beach Daily, the Palm Beach Research Group

Chaka’s Note [editor]: Like the majority of Americans, we’ve been following the mainstream media for updates on the coronavirus pandemic. And the headlines look scary, with predictions of hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. alone caused by the disease… But here’s the thing – many of these headlines are based on worst-case scenarios. Now, we subscribe to the old mantra: “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” So it’s rational to look at the worst possible outcomes. But fear sells… And that’s why the media often ignores the other end of the spectrum. So today, we’re turning the reins over to trusted colleague and longtime PBRG friend Jeff Brown. For years, Jeff has been at the forefront of investing in cutting-edge technology. But he’s also plugged into the biotech space. And in today’s must-read essay, Jeff says the data on coronavirus is more optimistic than the media would have you think.

By Jeff Brown, editor, Exponential Tech Investor

The insights about COVID-19 and its spread published in the past week have been incredible. The increase in data and transparency is allowing us to better understand this virus.

The University of Oxford just published some excellent research outlining how quickly the team from Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease believes COVID-19 has spread.

I think the results will surprise you…

The assumptions used were all reasonable and backed by data already collected about COVID-19 and its basic reproductive rate (how fast it spreads). The team also assumed that COVID-19 first reached the U.K. by mid-January, which is a conservative assumption.

The research models determined that COVID-19 has already infected somewhere between 36% and 68% of the U.K. population.

That’s not a typo.

It’s highly likely that a third to more than half the population has had or has COVID-19… And most are asymptomatic. They don’t even know they have it.

This data is consistent with research just out of Iceland. Iceland is unique because it has tested nearly 5% of its entire population for COVID-19. On a percentage basis, this is more than any other country in the world.

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It found that half of those who tested positive for COVID-19 are asymptomatic, and the other half display “very moderate cold-like symptoms.” Only 30 have been hospitalized out of the country’s 1,135 confirmed infections, with two deaths, as of this writing.

Additionally, Italy’s National Institute of Health released data that confirmed more than 99% of all COVID-19 fatalities were people already suffering from underlying medical conditions. Only 0.8% of the fatalities were healthy adults.

To put that in context, only 99 healthy adults have died from COVID-19 there.

Given the research out of Oxford and the basic reproductive rate of COVID-19, it’s not difficult to determine the exponential growth in the spread of COVID-19.

On March 1, I spoke with an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University who stated that the actual number of cases was likely 100–200 times larger than what was being reported.

But we don’t see those cases for the same reason as the research out of Iceland shows… The cases are asymptomatic or too mild to justify testing for it.

And here is why this latest research over the last few days is fantastic news for us all…

Johns Hopkins University reports that there are more than 883,225 confirmed cases. The reality is that there are almost certainly more than 88,322,500 cases.

That may seem scary, but it means that the actual mortality rate would be 0.049% or less. Compare that to the mortality rate from influenza in the 2017–2018 season (0.14%).

Every day, the data is giving us a lot to be optimistic about. The world is quickly building immunity to COVID-19.

Veritas in numeris.

Truth in numbers.

Regards,