The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Perfect

Refusal to accept the prevailing COVID-19 narrative would probably result in ostracism by the most fearful among us, except no group is allowed to gather so physical ostracism is out of the question. Refusal to accept the dishonest garbage that pretends to be accurate reporting on COVID-19 should result in a serious public debate, but the media refuses to give voice to any view that opposes their catastrophist narrative. And the degree to which those in favor of a continuing national shutdown are very often members of a particular political party, should make any thoughtful person ask whether their objections to reopening the country are less about the damage that the virus can do and more about the damage a continuing shut down can do to their hated political opponent.

R.R. Reno comments:
We need to be told the truth about COVID-19’s effect. It is not a uniquely perilous disease; for people under 35, it may be less dangerous than the flu. We have every reason to take prudent measures to protect vulnerable people from the disease, but we cannot reasonably expect to contain the coronavirus. The high proportion of asymptomatic carriers defeats strategies of testing and tracing contacts. In all likelihood, it also defeats such radical measures as lockdowns, as the example of Sweden seems to suggest.

These truths point toward clear and urgent action. We need to allocate resources for protecting vulnerable populations. We need rigorous testing of nursing home workers (a five-country study in Europe reported that 50 percent of coronavirus fatalities occurred in elder-care facilities) and others who care for vulnerable populations. We need to allocate funding for at-risk poor people to move to hotels or other places where they can self-isolate.

We can do this without closing every restaurant and bar. We can do this without locking churches, without requiring everybody to stay at home, without throwing tens of millions of Americans out of work. The lockdowns can and must end.

But I doubt that truth will guide decision-making. There is too much fear. Fear of the virus is compounded by the (reasonable) fear of experts, policy-makers, and politicians that if they change course they will be exposed as poorly informed, reckless, and cowardly. Our entire ruling class, which united behind catastrophism and the untested methods of mass shutdown, is implicated in the unfolding fiasco.
Those of us who have been on the record for some time now opposing the draconian measures that treat all of our country like New York City (a legitimate hot zone) are very worried that the "cure" proposed by "experts, policy-makers, and politicians" will indeed be far worse than the disease. We are also concerned that these same "experts, policy-makers, and politicians" refuse to adapt and/or change course as more and better data are collected and analyzed. The new data simply do NOT support the early claims made by these elites and yet, a corrupt and biased media acts as their praetorian guard, protecting a very flawed narrative.

Are these elites (e.g., government, media, health experts, politicians) afraid to admit that they might have been wrong? If that's true, their refusal isn't a sign of leadership or intellectual strength or expertise—it's a sign of insecurity and incompetence. In my experience, the very best of us are quite willing to admit when they've made a mistake. They have the confidence and experience to recognize that no one and no policy is perfect.

UPDATE:
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J.D. Tuccille describes all of the many ways the federal, state and local bureaucracies screwed up early in the COVID-19 response and then writes this about the damage that has been done to our healthcare system:
Rules closing businesses, limiting gatherings, and even restricting outdoor excursions were supposed to "flatten the curve" to slow the spread of COVID-19 so that hospitals didn't get overwhelmed. But the virus didn't hit the same way everywhere. Instead, New York City and a few other hot spots got slammed. Elsewhere, most medical facilities found themselves tending empty beds, pondering the fate of patients whose "elective" cancer, heart, and back surgeries are deferred to some uncertain date in the future, and watching cash reserves dwindle for lack of patients to treat.

"Mayo Clinic is furloughing or reducing the hours of about 42 percent of its 70,000 employees across all of its campuses in an attempt to mitigate the financial losses from the COVID-19 pandemic," reports the Rochester Post-Bulletin of the famed medical system. "About 60 percent of Mayo Clinic's business comes from elective procedures of the kind that are now on hold."

Furloughs and pay cuts are "a function of clumsy, if well-intentioned, federal and state directives to halt all non-emergency procedures," writes Rick Jackson of Jackson Healthcare, a medical staffing company. He wants the government to get out of the way so doctors and patients can decide for themselves.

Idled doctors and untreated patients are the consequences of rules intended to help the healthcare system. Stay-at-home orders take an even bigger toll on people and industries that are collateral damage.
A majority of Democrat leaders and their trained hamsters in the media insist that the destructive and ill-conceived COVID-19 shutdown should continue. They keep changing the criteria for re-opening the country in a blatant effort to keep it closed for reasons that are political. As they watch businesses fail, breadlines lengthen, and workers lose their jobs, it's really quite remarkable that they simply don't give a damn. Tuccille notes this:
If you can assess the conduct of government officials [an leaders of one political party in particular] through the pandemic and conclude that what we really need is more of that, then we're probably going to cure the novel coronavirus long before we find a treatment for whatever it is that ails you.
No question about that.