by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:

First and foremost, the screech owls are still ruling the day.  Doom sells, in short.

This doesn’t mean that this virus isn’t bad news.  It is.  It is especially bad news if you live in a turd-world nation or a part of a nation that is turd world.

Let me define turd world nation: Any place that does not have “White Man Sanitation” and in which there are moderate or high densities of people on a transient or (much worse) all-the-time basis.

Iran has a problem with the virus near Qom.  Big shock — not.  Iran is full of squat toilets and Qom is a pilgrimage site so it is also full of people in close proximity.  Oops.

Italy (along with much of Europe) has taken in millions of turd-world people who were not required to culturally assimilate to “White Man Good Sanitation” as part of their duty to immigrate.  Note that the Italian outbreak is studiously omitting any mention of the demographics involved in those who are sick.  Gee, I wonder why?  Oops.

In South Korea the outbreak there has been traced to a woman who is a member of a “doomsday” Christian cult and repeatedly attended services while sick, ignoring other attendees requests that she seek medical attention.  Further, this particular church forbids the wearing of things upon the head (like a mask or glasses!) in services and they are held with everyone packed together.  Oh, and large parts of South Korea also use squat toilets.  I’m sure they decided that praying rather than ejecting this chick was the better course of action.  Double, triple, aw-**** oops.

In the United States we have a significant population of turd world people — they’re the illegals from South America.  Many of them have crap for sanitary practices.  We also have a large homeless population, especially on the West Coast although also in places like Chicago and Austin.  The latter tend to be riddled with drug abuse, taking a crap on the street, literal zero handwashing and worse.  Rather than slam the border closed the left screams “racism!” — and has engendered the potential for serious trouble here, at least in some parts of the country.  But — we’re more-insulated than many, as are nations such as Australia.

This does not make us immune.  Less risk does not mean no risk.

My hypothesis, that the most effective spread is not from casual oral vapor interchange, especially from someone who as asymptomatic, continues to hold.  But that’s a hypothesis.  It’s all it is, and the fact that the Chinese won’t let our CDC people in there to run some of this down makes quite clear that they know more than they’re letting on and it’s not good.

If you get this virus and require intensive medical intervention (which, it appears, only is the case in perhaps 10% of the cases) the only way to provide it to you without risking giving it to others is to put you in a negative-pressure isolation room.  There are very few of those in the United States.  The reason is simple — it is rare to require them; most people in a hospital are there due to either trauma or chronic conditions and, if due to something that can be transmitted it’s hard to transmit it (such as HIV.)  Since we have eradicated or greatly attenuated so many easily-communicable diseases (e.g. measles) there’s simply no need for these facilities on a routine basis, and there are damn few of them.

Let me make this clear to you: If you go to a medical facility with an urgent need for immediate care and that facility has people in it who have this virus and are not isolated in said negative pressure rooms — because they don’t have any of them available or any at all — you are risking your life by simply being there.  If you go for some non-virus-related reason you will be begging to get it.

So let’s talk about preparations.

This is US-centric; if you’re outside the US and reading this then you have a different set of problems, especially if you live in a turd-world nation.  There is a huge difference between a location during fire season where there’s some dry grass and one that has chopped up and felled, dry pine trees all over the ground including right up against the side of your house!

At what point do I consider risks like this to be worth specific preparations?  About 10% odds — which I believe we now have invaded due not only to what we’ve done thus far but more-specifically what we haven’t done up to this point and probably won’t until it’s too late, if it isn’t already.  Note that a 10% risk is, frankly, quite low — but if you’re totally screwed if something with a 10% probability happens you’d be nuts not to prepare for said risk.

So what do I think are minimum and reasonable preparations?  Let’s first look at the environment that one should expect in terms of risk reduction that you must be prepared for.

First, you must to the extent possible be immune to requiring serious medical intervention.  If you have a chronic condition that requires monitoring on a regular basis there is little or nothing you can do to reduce risk to acceptable levels because you will be compelled to go places where you can contract the virus.  A stroke or heart attack is always bad news but it’s much worse if, in the course of trying to survive that, you get the virus!

You should expect that in your area you will find out about a local “hotspot” outbreak late or not at all through official channels.  At least two states in the US are already refusing to release data on pure numbers of who’s been tested for the virus and the results.  They’re claiming HIPPA and state law prohibits said release; this is a flat-out lie as numerical counts do not implicate privacy in any way, shape or form.  Do not expect the “authorities” to contribute honest information you can use to make decisions; you must assume they will actively conceal information until they are overcome by events.  As such you need to keep your nose to the ground in your community and pay attention.

Read More @ Market-Ticker.org