You can take your hysteria -- and your masks -- and shove 'em up your ass. From Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker®: ABSOLUTE FACTS ON COVID19  Fact: Sweden has had 74,333 confirmed cases Fact: Sweden has had 5,500 deaths. Fact: Sweden has approximately 10 million residents, with the largest number by far in and around Stockholm (~2.4 million..) Fact: Sweden did not lock down anything, has not passed any mandatory mask ordinances or constrained the people.  Instead they told their citizens to act like adults, rather than allowing them to be infantile screaming children (as we did here in the US.) Fact: The death rate in Sweden from Covid-19 has fallen to an effective zero. Fact: The case rate in Sweden is also falling precipitously.  On a log chart the case rate is effectively flat. Fact: SWEDEN HAS OBTAINED HERD IMMUNITY AND THEIR DOCUMENTED CASE RATE IS 0.7% OF THEIR POPULATION! What? That's impossible, for a virus with an R0 of 3.0, right? I don't care what epidemiologists assert, or what anyone else asserts: It has happened. When you eliminate whatever is not possible whatever is left must be true, no matter how much you'd prefer it not be.  Your task then becomes to determine why it is true. We know from the CDC that somewhere "around" 10x as many people have had Covid as have tested positive.  This number is somewhat "fuzzy", but that's the CDC's (and everyone else's) "best guess", given the data we have.  Now, in the US, we're pushing people to get tested but we can't feed that test requirement on a reasonably expeditious basis; three months into this it is taking multiple days to get results back.  Therefore the number of alleged "positives" is not only fanciful it's outright garbage.  RT-PCR tests are unreliable to start with; they have a material false positive rate.  But if you won't test people on a systematic and unchanged basis from a symptom (or not) predicate then the data you generate wobbles around and is worthless.   I've detected a number of these anomalies in the data here, and in the early days I called bull**** on the Wuhan data for the same reason -- China was clearly changing the terms to get tested although I couldn't prove it, because I'm not there.  I don't need to prove it; a virus does not "magically" infect people on a step-function basis.  Over a large population that does not happen so when it does you've got a data discontinuity -- that is, what you have is junk. But it's very hard to not count bodies. People get mad if you don't count them -- or try to count them twice. Sweden has had 5,500 deaths.  They have 10 million people in their population.  That's a death rate from this bug of of one in 1,800, with virtually all of them being old and co-morbid individuals. To put in percentage terms it's a rate of 0.06% in the population. Or, if you prefer, since we have about 330 million citizens, about 33 times that is 181,000 deaths in the US. Total. We're at 125,590 total today. That's because we spread it out, but didn't change a thing.  Ultimately, we'll wind up about where they are. I remind you that yesterday their total was one death. One. For them, it's over. For us, it's nearly over. We're three, maybe four week behind them if we quit dicking around. How is this possible? Because we are counting only "positives" that result in serious disease (as were they) and there is a serious amount of pre-existing immunity in the population, which exactly none of the models or any of the so-called "experts" said there was, and in fact today they they say there isn't. Yes there is. We knew this. We knew it was a fact. We knew it in early March. We knew it within a week after Diamond Princess disembarked, when one person in a 2-person cabin got it, and the other did not. They were  not just asymptomatic, as we tested them -- they never got the disease at all. That's impossible, unless they were immune. THEY WERE IMMUNE. A LOT OF US ARE IMMUNE. A LOT OF PEOPLE WORLDWIDE ARE IMMUNE. We don't know what bug caused them to be immune, but they are. And thus nobody knows who is immune and who is not, but the fact that a huge percentage of the population either will not have any symptoms at all or won't get the virus at all is known. That's scientific FACT. Now recompute your "models" for what we know is herd suppression in Sweden among those who will care if they get the bug -- that is, those who will die. Nobody gives a wet crap about someone who gets it and doesn't get sick. UNDER THE MEDICAL DEFINITION OF DISEASE IF YOU HAVE NO SYMPTOMS YOU ARE NOT DISEASED. Being RT-PCR positive for a virus DOES NOT, legally, medically or otherwise make you diseased. You're only diseased if a disorder in your body is produced. In a healthy human adult man there are approximately 39 trillion bacteria.  Right now.  You expel some ten trillion when you take a crap, but they recover -- and quite quickly too.  By the next day they're all there again and the band plays on! If none of them produce a disorder in your body you are not diseased. If you "get" Covid-19 but do not have a disorder as a result you are not diseased. It does not matter if you can "pass it on"; you shed many millions of bacteria and viruses from your hands, mouth, nose and ******* every single day.  Most of the ones on your hands came from one of your other orifices, or someone else's orifices, or from some other organism who left them for you on a surface somewhere, or which were floating around in the air. So what? Folks, we're being stupid here.  You're hiding under your desk when five to ten trillion bacteria are in your body right ****ing now and virons typically outnumber bacteria ten to one in nature so it's probable there are 100 trillion virus particles in your body! It's entirely reasonable to believe that one crap from an average human may expel ten or more trillion virons. And virtually all of them will be replaced within the next 12-24 hours before you take the next crap. AN ASYMPTOMATIC PERSON IS NOT SICK. May I note that IPV, used for polio (you know, the shot you get?) does not stop you from getting it?  In fact you probably did -- and do -- get it. Oh, you didn't know that? WELL THEN YOU'RE A ****ING MORON! The IPV stops you from getting diseased.  That is, having a disorder as a result of exposure.  How do we know this?  Because if you have taken IPV you may still get colonized and expel polio virus -- live virus -- in your feces. Do you know why they give you oral (live) polio vaccine in the third world?  There are a fair number of unvaccinated people and OPV will reduce the shedding from your feces -- since you take it in and the immune reaction is centered in your digestive system -- to an effective zero.  IPV does not do that because it's a shot in your arm. Would we count you as a "polio case" if you had it in your feces but never got sick? ACCORDING TO THE CDC AND COVID TESTING RESULTS, YEP! Guess what?  That's a scam, it's a lie, and you had ****ing better wake up and make them stop this ****. IT'S A SCAM. If you have no disorder in your body you are not diseased. Period. No other definition makes any sense given that if I go take a **** right now I expel trillions of viable viruses and trillions more of viable bacteria.  I, you, and everyone else expel and shed virus and bacteria all the damn time, every single day. Only illness matters. And, in the end, only all-cause death matters. Which, in the US, is now below baseline. There is no longer a threat in the United States. Indeed with all-cause death now below baseline it is quite probable that by the end of the year there will be no excess death at all, statistically speaking. Yes, people have and will die. People die every day. But the rate of death is below baseline for this time of year. Dead is dead, why doesn't matter.  How much virus I have, or which virus, doesn't matter unless that specific virus makes me ill. That specific virus out of the trillions of virus particles that are in my body right now, and in yours, and in everyone else's. These are facts. You can take your hysteria -- and your masks -- and shove 'em up your ass.