The response to COVID-19 will probably go down in history as one of the greatest mass panics and hysterias of all time. It’s a hysteria like the Y2K panic, but with much worse consequences than Y2K had. Government officials are forcing everyone to stay at home to avoid the virus, but they risk creating another Great Depression, if not worse.
People also die when they don’t have a job and can’t afford to feed and take care of their families. (Starvation has a 100% fatality rate.) National, state and city governments should stop the insanity of lock-downs and allow people to go back to work, unless they belong to one of the categories that are at high risk of dying from the disease. Those at high risk should just isolate themselves at home for a few weeks. The spread of the disease will be over in a few weeks, when the population develops a herd immunity. That would be when about 50% of the population has been exposed to the disease. Then the high-risk people can come out of isolation again and we can all go back to a normal life.
If you remember, people thought the world was going to stop when the new millennium rolled over on New Year’s Eve 1999, because all the computers in the world would go haywire, due to the date change, they claimed. All of our defense systems were thought to be at risk of going down and leaving us vulnerable to a nuclear attack. In the end virtually, nothing happened. Our leadership was virtually all wrong.
The corona virus as a cold virus. COVID-19 is producing more deaths than a standard flu season, because it is somewhat more contagious than the flu, though not nearly as contagious as some other much worse diseases, like smallpox. Humanity did survive smallpox for centuries, without shutting the world down.
The impact of COVID-19 is being much overestimated, because no one knows how many people contract the disease, but never go to a doctor, because they have only slight symptoms or no symptoms at all. If a person reports that he has the disease he will be quarantined for several weeks and that is a big incentive for many people not to report that they have the disease.
The fatality rate is often said to be about 2%, but that would be 2% of the number of cases that have been reported to doctors. Probably the real fatality rate will be much less than 1%, because most people with the disease do not go to a doctor, but just recover on their own, as most do when they catch the flu. That would mean it would not be so much worse than a normal flu season.
They talk about not collapsing the health care system, but the system will not collapse, if the most vulnerable people shelter at home for a few weeks. Everyone does not have to be forced to stay home and the economy does not have to be put in a depression.
This cannot go on for long. Citizens need to rise and stop this insanity as quickly as possible. This means by voicing your opinion, not anything physical. All of these politicians who are currently strangling our economy due to irrational fear, should be turned out of office and their political careers ended.
Hanlon’s razor states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Whatever their motivations, if the economy collapses, it may bring on a much more authoritarian system in the U.S. and globally. We know that some of or our political elite would like to emulate the Chinese dictatorship.
The Trump administration is already reportedly requesting that they should be allowed to detain persons in national emergencies — such as we have now — indefinitely without due process.
This whole thing is a non starter, and when compared to what we have now call the common flu (which kills 18-20 thousand a year in this country), is pretty much driven by over-hype and media disinformation on a huge scale.
When we have essentially ignored the flu, which kills almost 20,000 people a year, for over the past 100 years, and we haven’t gotten terribly excited about this unfortunate situation, I am really, really puzzled by our reaction over this present “panic”. I keep asking, what about the common flu? How come it gets ignored and this does not?
Here it says 80K Americans died of the flu in the 2017-2018 season. Why wasn’t the country put in lockdown then?
If you changed the name and called the “flu” something else and the media started obsessing all the new cases of the flu and every death from the flu, I’m sure there would be just as much concern. The politicians would trumpet the dire warnings or experts and declare a police state, just like now.
“There are now THREE international studies — China, Australia and France — that found that Chloroquine with Azithromycin Shows 100% Success Rate in Treating Coronavirus in 6 Days!”
Totally agree. It’s difficult for an politician to take this stand, however. With the current snowflake mentality of the people, including conservatives who are mostly fearful, any politician that remotely takes this approach will be deemed heartless and cold.
Exactly, but they are likely to look very bad after this passes. They follow the path of least resistance. The public has to make them do it. As they run out of money, there is going to be a lot of angry people.
One ironic aspect of this is that it’s mainly blue cities and states that are destroying themselves, at least at this time.
I’d like to hear from CV patients who have taken “CQ” with or without a doctor’s prescription.
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/fda-announces-two-drugs-approved-for-compassionate-use-in-treating-covid-19
pharmacytimes.com : “FDA Announces Two Drugs Given ‘Compassionate Use’ Status in Treating COVID-19” (3/19/2020)
Thanks for that link. There are supposed to be millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine available soon, over the next few weeks.