Regardless of what you personally think about all of this, I hope you are "woke" enough to understand that you don't "beat" a virus through social distancing. There is only one thing that beats a virus: an absence of hosts. You only create an absence of hosts through one, or a combination, of three ways: (1) a vaccine; (2) all potential hosts develop natural immunity; and/or (3) all remaining potential hosts get sick and die. That being true, are you really espousing that the current craziness should continue? For how long? Until we get a vaccine in 14 months? What happens when there are rebound spikes, do we lockdown the country again? We are already precariously close to the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which is no more America; just 300+ million wards of the state.
"Flatten the curve!" That rallying cry was never intended as a way to beat the disease. It was sold to the American people as a way to give our healthcare workers sufficient time to ramp up perceived necessary supplies; it was sold to the American people as a way to lessen the number of people who died at once...not to significantly lessen the number of people who ultimately died. For the most part, most of us complied with what was asked of us despite the economic, emotional, and physical toll that we knew we would take. For much of the country, it has now been four weeks of this insanity (give or take a week.)
We are seeing reports from Italy that 99% or more of their deaths were of people who had a serious underlying health condition. About 25% of their deaths were of people with at least three serious underlying health conditions. In Sweden, where a much more measured approached was taken, there is no question that the number of deaths is higher than neighboring Denmark. However, the deaths are nowhere near as high as prophesized by the fear mongers. With each passing day there is more and more evidence that the infection rate is far greater than originally believed, and that the disease existed in America far longer than originally believed. If true, those two facts substantially reduce the perceived mortality rate.
Hospitals across the country are reporting record lows in the number of emergency patients related to heart attacks, appendicitis, strokes, and other similar emergencies that require immediate treatment to prevent death or debilitation. It's not that people are NOT suffering these maladies. It IS that people have been made so scared of the hospital that they won't go get treatment. Many are, without a doubt, dying because of that fear. If they die in New York though, they will be counted as a Covid death. I wonder how many cancers are going undiagnosed right now because most Ob/Gyn's are closed except for emergencies? Will those be Covid deaths too?
Eddie has posted up about how few cases there have been in most of the counties in Nevada. He is right. In my county of approximately 471,519 people, there have been 18 deaths...18! As of noon yesterday, there were just 44 people in the entire county hospitalized related to Covid. There are so few patients in my county that some of our doctors are leaving to go help in New Jersey. I commend them. They are going to where the need is, and as medical professionals they recognize where the need isn't.
Despite all of that, many people are calling for continued, nationwide shutdowns. Those same people are now also demanding that all supermarkets should be shut down and forced to operate by delivery or curbside only. In my own state of Nevada, I am sad to say that fear and absurdity are still ruling the day even in the absence of empirical support of risk.
The autocrats...from Trump, to the Governors, to the multitude of federal, state and local administrative bodies...are swelling up off of the collective fear like ticks feeding off of the blood out of a horse. Nevada OSHA is using a drone to monitor constructions sites from a distance (that, by the way, is illegal for a number of reasons.) Just last week, a $15,000 fine was given to a local contractor because two workers, both wearing respirators, worked together to move several hundred pounds of MDF panels across a three foot wide scaffolding. They did not maintain the "required" 6 foot separation. Multiple contractors were fined that day, and fines have been increasing ever since. According to Nevada OSHA, our Governor's social distancing proclamation somehow negates longstanding federal and state OSHA requirements about safe team lifting. Nevada OSHA and our Governor are wrong, and I am hopeful that I get the opportunity to prove it in a court of law.
The type of incrementalism that is going on destroys freedom. I truly hope that people wake up before it is too late.
