I mentioned in yesterday’s post my surprise at the variation of reactions and positions on this pandemic. In the discussion at the dinner table last night with the Sister-In-Law I was surprised that she seemed so accepting of the standard media lines about curve flattening, asymptomatic spread, contagion rates and fatality rates.
I don’t know what to say or do about my son’s fear of catching Winnie the Flu. I’m disappointed that a healthy 23 year old man has any concern about catching anything. He’s almost bulletproof at this point of his life.
I was asked last night if I was unconcerned about my parents. Of course I’m concerned about my parents. Everyone who has elderly parents is concerned about them. But… my parents are in their mid 80’s. In my family this is the end of the line. We don’t live much longer. None of my grandparents made it to 90.
I will quote from my March 15, 2020 post titled Day 2 of the Wuhan Apocalypse Addendum (bad grammar, I know):
This is becoming a non-falsifiable event. If nothing happens, the government did its job. If the death toll and severe illness numbers rise. If the hospitals become overwhelmed. If the health care system and the economy collapse, it will be because we, the citizens, didn’t do what we were told.
This from the government that gave us three years of Russia Russia Russia. They gave us an impeachment that was idiotic. They have been losing a war in Afghanistan for 19yrs. They set up the 2008 financial melt down. They monetize the budget deficit to the tune of, oh I really don’t know, but maybe $100 billion a day. This is a completely corrupt and incompetent government. The people involved are buffoons and criminals.
Yet… They want us to believe them this time.
And the media is cheer leading for them.
I know it will be years before someone that can be trusted, someone that is disinterested and has no axe to grind will be able to give a reasonable estimate of the additional deaths here in the U.S. do to the Wuhan Flu. Remember 7400 to 7500 people die each day already.
I think the virus is a real thing. I think catching the virus is really awful for some people (possibly me among them). What I don’t think is that anything that has been done to date by way of government activity has made a damn bit of difference. I especially don’t think any government activity has made anything better. The quarantining of healthy people is wrong, both from the standpoint of disease spread and for the long term good of the overall public health. I strongly believe that the damage done to the economy over the last three months will be paid for by more death than the unknown number of deaths caused by the virus.
I acknowledge that my last claim may never be known. There is the problem of “dying from COVID-19” / “dying with COVID-19” / “dying while suspected of having COVID-19” that will never be untangled.
That quote from my previous post left out a third alternative, the one that actually happened. Outside of a few spots in this country, this virus has really been nothing to get excited about. We were supposed to shelter at home to FLATTEN THE CURVE. Which has been done. In excellent fashion. But there are now two things happening. The first is that people forget that flattening the curve shelter in place was done to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed. That mission was accomplished and we should be back to normal. But then the second thing happened: THE GOALPOSTS WERE MOVED. We are now being told things can’t go back to normal until there is a cure or there is a vaccine.
That the people of this country are putting up with this is really, really disappointing.
But anybody that has been out the last few days can also see the typical American societal response to almost everything. You can’t listen to what they say, you have to watch what they do. I was in one hell of a traffic jam Thursday evening. The lockdown is over. I’ll have to come up with a new name/theme for my posts going forward. Something that is more positive and spends more time on people doing normal things again.
And in closing. I noticed a little bit of surprise last night of my claim of Mass Hysteria. The look I received was as though I was crazy to make such a claim. Oh yeah? Well… let me remind you of all the children that were kidnapped by clowns in 2016.
I was skeptical from the start for my typical reasons. First, I don’t believe a damn thing anyone in the media says. Not because they are liars, but because they are always wrong and the business model dictates that they be wrong to survive. The second biggest reason is Culture. Other reasons include genetics, politics, demographics, etc. Things that our media can’t/won’t talk about.
The U.S. is not China. We don’t shit in the streets here (at least we don’t outside of San Francisco). We also have a tradition of liberty that the Chinese don’t have. We don’t weld the doors shut locking people in their homes. Trapping people in their apartment buildings likely made things worse. The people trapped in those buildings were all breathing the same air as their neighbors.
The makeup of our households is different here than in Italy. We don’t have three and four generations under one roof. We don’t hug and kiss like the Italians. We also aren’t as old as the Italians.
If this virus was actually as bad as made out in popular media why are we not hearing of really horrible disasters in countries that are crowded and poor? Why aren’t we seeing pictures of bodies stacked like cordwood in cities such as Lagos, Calcutta, and, Dhaka?
I fear the permanent damage done to our liberty from this event. People are talking about contact tracing as though that should be completely acceptable. Anyone with half a brain knows that this data will be abused. It is a certainty.