The Russians are a stout and stolid people – quite literally in many cases, given their heavily potato- and bread- and vodka-based diet – and they are not easily given to panic or hysteria. They have a rather grim sense of humour which you can see reflected in their writing and film, as well as a propensity for considerable verbosity. (Yes, I know, pot, meet kettle, etc.)

They are also known for their pithy aphorisms, which they trot out from time to time when the occasion suits. One of these is the old grandmother’s saying, Надежда умерает последней – literally translated, hope dies last.

Well, there is good reason for hope now in a time of plague.

The global infection rates are still rising. Corona-chan is far from done with spreading misery and pestilence. But it is rapidly becoming clear from available clinical data that the entire world MASSIVELY overreacted to this virus.

Yes, it has resulted in nearly 17,000 deaths as of this writing, and there are nearly 382,000 people infected worldwide. And yes, those numbers WILL rise over the coming days. There is no question or doubt about that.

However, the clinical evidence that we have in front of us tells us that most of the people who catch the virus have such mild symptoms that it never even dawns on them that they are sick. They might sneeze or cough a few times, they might feel a bit of a sore throat, but overall, they’re just fine.

That in turn leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the much-ballyhooed mortality rate of this virus is vastly overblown.

The global mortality rate is around 4.338% as of this moment. In certain areas it is much higher – in Italy and Spain, for instance, it’s touching 9.5% and 6.6%, respectively. But in most other countries, it is much lower – between 1% and 3% – and many countries it’s basically zero.

To those of us with a mind for numbers, this means that there are a small number of countries that have very high mortality rates, which are skewing the global numbers hard to the right and distorting the overall average. And that is before we get to the fact that between 80% and 90% of people who are infected, don’t even show any symptoms.

In the current context, there could be as many as 2.8 million people infected worldwide (rough estimate) – which means, again, that the actual mortality rate is maybe 0.61%.

And suddenly, in the face of that number, the global reaction to shutting down EVERYTHING in order to fight a virus that actually kills less than 1% of those it infects, seems like a bit of an overreaction.

There is more reason to be hopeful as well. Here’s Andrew Bolt of Sky News Australia to explain it:

It is early days yet. We simply do not know whether Italy’s crisis is easing, or whether a new burst of secondary infections will catch them by surprise and kill more people. Nor do we know whether the combination of hydrochloroquine – an anti-malarial drug designed to kill the parasitic protozoans that cause that dreaded disease – and azithromycin, an antibiotic, will actually work on a broader scale. All that we have right now is anecdotal evidence that says that it MIGHT work.

But we’re going to find out pretty quickly whether hydrochloroquine actually does work, because New York state, where the COVID-19 outbreak is worst in the USA, is going to start a mass trial of the stuff today.

Most importantly of all, His Most Illustrious, Noble, August, Benevolent, and Legendary Celestial Majesty, the God-Emperor of Mankind, Donaldus Triumphus Magnus Astra, the First of His Name, has made it quite clear that he intends to get America back up and running, and out of lockdown and back to work, as soon as possible.

This is absolutely vital. The destruction wrought by an economic depression upon America will be VASTLY greater than anything that the virus can do.

Consider: fewer than 600 people in all of the USA have died from anything related to COVID-19, as of this moment. By contrast, a bit over 46,000 people die every single year in the USA from fentanyl-related complications. That’s roughly 126 people every day – far, far more than the worst single-day death toll from COVID-19 in the US.

Why does this happen? Because in some of the most economically depressed areas in the US, where manufacturing plants have shut down and entire towns have been economically destroyed by outsourcing to – surprise! – China, and the jobs have gone and will never come back, well, people find themselves with no escape, and no hope.

And when people have no hope, they have nothing to live for.

The current raft of massive government interventions to try to keep the US economy afloat and alive are well-intended, but utterly misguided. In reality, the economy does not need huge amounts of government spending – though the tax incentives are good ideas and lowering taxes on business and personal activity can only be a Good Thing from an economic standpoint.

What people need right now is hope – and stability. The rest will take care of itself, as it did in the past.

Most people today have never heard of the Depression of 1920-21. That was an extremely sharp recession in the wake of the removal of extremely tight government controls over production and economic activity in the US following the end of the Great War. It is estimated that unemployment increased anywhere from three to ten times its 1919 level by the end of 1921; prices and production collapsed; and the economy entered an extremely sharp recession.

Yet it was all over in about six months. And it gave way to the Roaring Twenties, one of the greatest periods of wealth generation and prosperity in all of human history.

What, exactly, did the government do to solve that particular problem?

As it turns out, not a whole lot.

There was virtually no government stimulus. The New York Federal Reserve did tighten interest rates quite a bit, but the Federal Reserve system as a whole had not yet started performing open-market operations to control the entire money supply for the economy, so the impact of the New York Fed’s interventions was limited.

That crisis solved itself because the country was able to find certainty and stability very quickly. That is exactly what businesses need. In order for capitalism to work, it needs a stable environment in which to transact business. Ensure this, with transparent laws and regulations and not too much monkeying around in terms of governments taking things from productive people, and the people will simply get on with doing BUSINESS.

That is how it works. The fact that the business environment was stable and steady and transparent in 1921 enabled the American economy to recover quickly. By contrast, the Roosevelt Administration’s insistence on meddling in every sector of the economy, setting wages and prices, and nationalising industries, turned a short and sharp recession in 1929-30 into the Great Depression after 1933. (The US economy had already begun recovering in 1930 and was doing pretty well by 1932, until Franklin Delano Roosevelt started messing with it.)

And that is also why the never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed Obarmy Administration turned the Great Crash of 2008 into an eight-year failed recovery. It took someone like the God-Emperor to come along and sort that bit of stupidity out.

The core message here remains: do not lose hope, brothers.

We are going to get through this. The God-Emperor has shown himself to be a highly effective crisis manager who knows how to lead in times of stress. Have faith in him – and have faith in Him who guides him. Have faith in your friends, your families, and yourselves.

Hope dies last, because it is extraordinarily hard to kill. Things will get better. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon – but do expect that there will be an end to this madness, and that we will come through it stronger and wiser than we were before this happened.