Category: COVID-19

Some countries and other local political entities are developing ways to deal with the Wuhan corona pandemic, without government-dictated formal lockdowns causing so much economic disruption and trampling on peoples rights as individuals. At the bottom of these posts are some links. I will try to keep this post updated regarding status and new developments for non-lockdown developments. Please send me or post in the comments any other relevant links.

There should not be, but there is a political aspect to this. Leftists and anti-Americans may not have a problem with the prospect of the economy collapsing and more government control, while American patriots want to see the economy remain strong and our individuals rights upheld at the same time.

The argument for total lockdown is that the health care system could become overwhelmed and collapse if COVID-19 spreads to quickly.

Those against lockdowns, say only the high-risk persons should isolate themselves and those at low risk should go about their daily business, pretty much as usual. In that way group immunity, aka “herd immunity”, would build up faster.

The pandemic will not stop until about 50-60% of the people have been infected and have immunity, achieving group immunity. An outbreak is like a fire and group immunity means that there is not enough fuel (people without immunity) to sustain the fire and it will die out. It will not be totally eliminated, but will become more like a seasonal flu.

The health care system and insurance companies, themselves, depend on the economy. If the economy collapses insurance companies and hospitals will go bankrupt, too, and that can also contribute to collapse of the healthcare system. The $2 trillion dollar bailout, which we already cannot afford, could be the first of many required. We have to borrow the money and even our national credit has limits.

In the absence of a vaccine there is no simple and easy solution, but all the possibilities should be considered. Millions of people around the world will die, before a vaccine is ready, if one even becomes available. Different approaches may be more suitable for different areas of the country and the world. As faster and easier testing becomes more available, it may be easier to lift lockdowns and avoid future lockdowns. Coming increased production of ventilators will also help avoid lockdowns.

South Korea “flattened the curve” without any lockdown by developing their own quick testing method. They did contact tracing and widely tested and then quarantined those who tested positive for COVID-19. Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are also taking or attempting to take a no lockdown approach.

Coronavirus: Japan shows our faith in lockdowns and working from home is misplaced

Belarus Pushes Aside COVID-19 Fears To Hold Victory Day Parade

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds pushes back on Dr. Fauci advice for states to shelter-in-place

Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble

WHO backs easing coronavirus lockdowns in some areas if able to test and contact-trace

Sweden’s resistance to lockdown raises questions about our own tough approach

How South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down

Tokyo Streets Remain Crowded as Japanese PM Resists Calls for Lockdown

Governor Rejects State Lockdown For COVID-19: ‘Mississippi’s Never Going to Be China’

Caught Between Herd Immunity And National Lockdown, Holland Hit Hard By Covid-19

Belarus becomes only country not taking measures against COVID-19

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.

Chinese police check drivers for corona virus infection.