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Coronavirus Hypothesis: What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’ve been posting regularly on the progress of the COVID-19 epidemic in Western Europe and the US, so I have the data readily available. Today, David Foster has a post, In a Time of Widespread Craziness, reporting that some people are burning down 5G towers in the apparent belief that 5G causes coronavirus. David was quite dismissive of this hypothesis but did not offer any empirical support.
Fortunately, I have the data available. According to this report from February 2020, 5G is commercially available in the following Western European countries: Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. So I analyzed my data on COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population for the month of March 2020, based on the commercial availability of 5G service in Western Europe. The countries in which 5G is not available are Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal. I grouped countries based on the availability of 5G service (as usual, starting each trend line when the region passed 0.05 deaths per 100,000). Here is the result:
It’s not a huge difference, but it is quite noticeable. By the way, the inclusion of Germany in the 5G group probably skews the result. It is technically one of the 5G countries, but coverage seems pretty spotty. I think that this warrants further study.
The 5G hypothesis got me thinking. Who gave us 5G, anyway?
I’m actually not sure. But I do remember who gave us the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health. That’s right — the Romans!
In a crisis like the present, it is important to think outside the box. So I have a new hypothesis. The Western Roman Empire gave us COVID-19.
To explore this hypothesis, I classified the Western European countries by their historical inclusion in the Roman Empire. The frontiers don’t match up precisely, but for the sake of analysis, I grouped together the following former Roman provinces: the UK, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. The non-Roman regions are Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Ireland.
For the sake of those who are not scholars of ancient Rome, I’ve used the modern names. The Roman provinces and regions included are Italia, Hispania, Gallia, Brittania, Belgica, Germania (Inferior and Superior), Raetia, Noricum, Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicilia. (These are the names prevailing under the rule of Hadrian, circa 125 CE, though in some instances I have combined provinces under a regional name, e.g., Gallia collectively, rather than Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Narbonensis.)
To avoid confusion, it is important to understand the Germania Inferior and Germania Superior are not part of modern Germany. Germania Inferior roughly corresponds to the southern portion of the Netherlands and northern Belgium, and Germania Superior is roughly equivalent to modern Alsace in France. Which is not part of Germany, though it was between 1870 and 1918 1914. That darned Bismarck and the Hohenzollerns. Actually, there is no such country as Germany. The country is Deutschland. It is only the lingering effects of Roman oppression in the former Britannia that results in our English usage of this Latin-derived name. Or maybe it’s a result of the Norman Conquest. That darned William.
But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yeah, whether the Romans caused COVID-19. Back to the analysis. I included the US as a comparison. (For those of you who aren’t scholars of ancient Rome, the US was never part of the Roman Empire.)
The results were startling:
This seems much more plausible than the 5G hypothesis. Numbers don’t lie.
Romanes eunt domus! For those of you who are not scholars of ancient Rome, that means Romans go home!
No, wait. Let me check with John Cleese. Maybe it’s Romani ite domum.
ChiCom delenda est.
Published in Humor
Wet streets cause rain?
Your analysis clinches it for me, Jerry. Who knew?
You might want to submit that to the Journal of Irreproducible Results (is that still a thing?) when it’s all over.
While I suspect the whole thing is simply due to timing, try comparing the northern tier of US states that have a large Scandanavian descent, with the others, eh? Could be interesting, you betcha.
They certainly do. Once a street gets wet, it is likely to get rained on.
Swell analysis. It would have fit well with the April 1st charts I saw posted. The 5G idea is dumb. 5G is not a very specific term and is more marketing that technological.
Jerry,
Your graphics are, of course, brilliant as always. But we all know how graphics can be used by twisted and evil people to dupe the unsuspecting innocent into buying whatever malarkey they’re peddling. In this case, you’re obviously shilling for the Chinese (“purveyors of fine novel viruses since the 20th century”).
It’s obvious that 5G is not itself the problem. It’s simply a cellular signaling technology: it causes cancer in humans foolish enough not to use a wired headset, as all cellular technology does; and it cripples the intellects of young people, as all cellular technology does. But it doesn’t spread viruses, obviously.
However, one particular vendor of 5G, which you conveniently failed to highlight in your criminally misleading exercise in misdirection, is obviously implicated in the spread. And who is that? Why Huawei, of course. Is it a coincidence that their corporate motto is, per their website, Building a fully infected world?
Jerry, I always enjoy your posts, but now am beginning to think you have ‘way too much time on your hands. Great argument, however. Especially your conclusion.
Hey, I’d go out cruisin’, but I’ve no place to go and all night to get there. It’s hard to believe such a calamity. I can solve the world’s problems, without even trying. Is it any wonder I’m not the President?
Who? Me!?!
I’d be fascinated to see the same exercise with the European Union, which is, by the way, a complete bystander in the current crisis.
In a crisis never let a good Monty Python reference go to waste. Well done.
To pull back the curtain — the trick is obvious, right? Italy and Spain are far above all of the other countries in their COVID-19 deaths per capita. Germany is unusually low, and is a very big country. So any category system that puts Italy and Spain together is quite likely to show a big difference, especially if Germany is excluded from the category.
We could have fun with other options — toss out some of your own:
Henry: “However, one particular vendor of 5G, which you conveniently failed to highlight in your criminally misleading exercise in misdirection, is obviously implicated in the spread. And who is that? Why Huawei, of course.”
Henry, I was thinking the same thing, and I thought as I was reading Jerry’s post that it was surely a joke with a Chinese punch line at the end, but it wasn’t joke. I guess?
While, I don’t think the 5G network is in and of itself infected with the Coronavirus, it may be that those countries that have welcomed the 5G Network into their country have exposed themselves to much more incursions into their daily lives by the Red Chinese then there would have been otherwise and those incursions likely facilitated by Chinese immigrants may have given those countries much more exposure to the CoronaVirus than those countries that have not gone the Huawei 5G route.
I was just joking. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a correlation between number of Chinese workers traveling into a region to work on large infrastructure projects and the subsequent concentration of COVID-19 cases there. That’s just common sense.
Except that there’s the strange case of California, which experienced an enormous amount of Chinese and Asian tourism and business traffic and yet seems to be largely unscathed. I’m looking forward to the antibody testing rolling out there.
On a guess – and it is a guess – it might have been a matter of timing versus the initial spread in Wuhan. Accepting that case zero came from the famous wet market – whether naturally or by lab leakage – who is likely to be buying wild meat in such a market? A manager or engineer? Or an assembly line worker imported from a peasant family in the countryside? Which is more likely to be on a plane to sunny California? How many social network hops, and hence days, before the infection gets to the traveler from the worker?
No idea. But the sheer number of flights to/from China from/to California every day makes it hard for me to imagine that California wouldn’t have been hit at least as hard as any other US location. I’m more inclined to think that California got hit earlier, and that a lot of Wuhan virus infections were rolled into the normal influenza season there.
Also what about Wuhan virus within China. Were they really able to successfully contain it to Hubei? Lots of people left that area at Chinese New Year. How as it not spread more within China? I’m hoping @Rodin or Jerry will be able to answer this some day.
What do you mean, “spread more within China?” It has spread a lot within China. Every province has had cases for a long time, now. The weird (or suspicious) thing to me is that they seem to have brought the increase to a screeching halt everywhere.
Note: I edited the main post to correct my error in German control of Alsace, which was from 1870 through 1918 (not through 1914). I knew that. I just typed the wrong date, erroneously using the start of WWI rather than the end.
I’m unlikely to do any analysis of Chinese data. I have no trust whatsoever in the data.
Sigh. I hear you but it just makes me so mad that we cannot get a good handle on what happened/is happening there.
Yes but I don’t think they ever completely locked down the whole country the way they did Hubei. They did sort of shut things down for an extended Chinese New Year but that doesn’t seem like that would be enough. As Jerry says, unfortunately, there is no way to get good data so we’re stuck trying to figure out what they did or didn’t do, the numbers, everything.
maybe herd immunity? or close to it? California definitely has herd stupidity
11/11/1918
11:00 Paris time
?
This is, to me, the single most perplexing question of this epidemic: is it possible that widespread, relatively asymptomatic transmission occurred within the population, given the severity of those hot spots that we know occur and that crowd intensive care facilities? If so, what distinguishes one population from another, say Los Angeles from New York City?
I can easily imagine that California has had a lot of Wuhan virus circulating throughout the urban communities since the first of the year. Indeed, given the traffic between China and California, it’s hard to imagine that that isn’t that case.
But then why did we not see the sudden crisis in ICUs in California, as we did in NYC? I can accept a lot of asymptomatic or barely symptomatic transmission, but I still can’t reconcile that with clusters like New York and New Orleans.
I am very eager to see the results of widespread population antibody testing.
I think covid 19 hit California in November.
We got exposed to the virus earlier.
Also, most people do not use public transit and our public transit is not as dense as the NY subway
I think wuhan/california flights are more prevalent than wuhan/NY
but this is a guess