Lock down failure
First we were told that it was necessary to impose “social distancing rules” and shut down the economy for a few weeks in order to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by a sudden influx of COVID-19 cases, predicted to possibly be in the millions. From a typical panicked news report on March 16:
Health officials take for granted that COVID-19 will continue to infect millions of people around the world over the coming weeks and months. However, as the outbreak in Italy shows, the rate at which a population becomes infected makes all the difference in whether there are enough hospital beds (and doctors, and resources) to treat the sick.
In epidemiology, the idea of slowing a virus’ spread so that fewer people need to seek treatment at any given time is known as “flattening the curve.” It explains why so many countries are implementing “social distancing” guidelines — including a “shelter in place” order that affects 6.7 million people in Northern California, even though COVID-19 outbreaks there might not yet seem severe.
Fortunately, the prediction that millions would become sick was so wrong it is now considered a joke. Moreover, it was quickly obvious that the healthcare system was not going to be overwhelmed.
So of course, we can now end these stringent social distancing rules and the lock downs, right?
Hah. Now we are being told that the new social rules and the government-imposed economic shut downs are necessary to stop the spread of the disease, to protect us from further infection, to make us all safe from coronavirus, forever. And if we do have to ease the lock downs at all, we have to do it as slowly as possible, and to change our behaviors forever. Masks must be worn, businesses can no longer serve as many at a time, and we must change and limit our freedoms, just because we might possibly save one life!
Consider the fascist Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and his demand that the state remain locked down for as long as possible.
In a letter to the Legislature sent last week, Secretary of Health Rachel Levine [of Pennsylvania] advised lawmakers against broadening guidelines for what constitutes an essential business, and said it would have a “devastating impact” on public health in the state.
“Encouraging increased social movement of Pennsylvanians at this time by reopening a significant amount of businesses would be reckless and irresponsible,” Dr. Levine said in the letter. “The decision to shutter non-life sustaining businesses that support families across this commonwealth was a painful one, but before we can save livelihoods we must save lives.” [emphasis mine]
Just like the first set of lies to justify these new fascist rules, these new lies are as self-serving, and as dishonest. As admitted in the first quote above, we cannot stop the spread of the Wuhan flu. Any claim that says the lock down will do so is a lie.
It now seems however that the lock downs can’t even slow the disease or flatten the curve. The evidence:
- Do lockdowns save many lives? In most places, the data say no
- Minnesota: Highest COVID-19 death rate, highest unemployment rate, and most severe lock down, compared to neighboring states
- Sweden did not have a lockdown; Predicted deaths by May 1: 40,000. Actual number: 2,769
- Sweden’s minimalist response to #WuhanVirus may have worked amazingly well
- Germany’s Bild newspaper says ‘Lockdown was a huge mistake’
- Lockdown is killing more patients than the coronavirus
The last link is especially horrifying, as it outlines the many people who have died because they could not get normal medical treatment because their hospitals were forbidden to treat anyone but Wuhan flu patients.
[T]he surge in hospitalizations never materialized in most places; most other procedures were shut down by edict; and the remaining emergency care plummeted by 40 percent in most states because people were so terrified to go out, thanks to the over-exaggeration of the case fatality rate of COVID-19. Hospitals were left with the worst of all worlds, both financially and for the health of their patients.
It’s therefore no mystery as to why Oregon had twice as many excess deaths this past month as deaths from COVID-19. While the article’s author gropes in the dark to discover the culprit, he lets the cat out of the bag when he reports, “Nearly all the above-average deaths occurred at home, among Oregonians both receiving and not receiving hospice care.”
With Oregon’s hospital system at a 40 percent reduced capacity, it doesn’t mean that there has miraculously been a 40 percent reduction in any health problem – from cancer and stroke to heart attacks and hypertension – other than from car accidents. It means that, as Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford warned on my podcast last week, many cancer surgeries, transplants, and heart procedures are being delayed, and many people experiencing emergent health conditions are too scared to go to the emergency room. That is likely why they are dying at home.
The New York Times actually reported this earlier in the week. “Emergency rooms have about half the normal number of patients, and heart and stroke units are nearly empty, according to doctors at many urban medical centers,” reported the Times. “Some medical experts fear more people are dying from untreated emergencies than from the coronavirus.” The new Oregon data corroborates this theory.
I know that some will argue that the number of deaths from COVID-19 would have been far higher without the extreme measures taken in the past two months. They might be right, but they will be basing their argument not on data but what they feel is the case. The evidence above suggests otherwise.
What is clear however, and what I am going to note with some anger, is that there is no doubt that the lock downs have destroyed millions of lives, and appear now likely to have caused far more hardship and death, across the entire population, than COVID-19 could ever have done.
The shut downs must end, now. People and businesses must be allowed to resume their lives, now. And we must let freedom and individual liberty determine the best way to respond to this disease, now.
Arbitrary edicts from petty dictators, either in the bureaucracy in Washington or in the governors’ offices nationwide, are not the answer. In America they never have been.
In America, we have always left such decisions to the people, for the people, and by the people.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The proof is there that COVID-19 has infected “millions of people around the world”, the evidence is there that it’s primary method of spread is as an aerosol borne contagion and that such contagions spread from person to person when people are in close proximity, the more often people are close, and the closer they are, the higher will be the rate of transmission, to deny that I think delusional. The evidence is there that social distancing slows the rate of spread and that lock-downs can be dramatically more effective at slowing the spread than just social distancing. Wearing masks and good hygiene practices also contribute to reducing transmission.
The most interesting aspect in Mr. Zimmerman’s post is that it’s a great example of the message Dr. Haidt gives in his book The Righteous Mind. Human’s have an enormous ability to create their own reality and believe in it no matter the evidence stacked against them. Confirmation bias is alive and well.
Here is another failure for the uber controlling, identity crisis, multiple name changing, Leftist, “Progressive”, “Sandinista” mayor of NYC:
https://nypost.com/2020/05/12/blacks-hispanics-majority-of-nyc-coronavirus-related-arrests/
Minorities don’t all go along with the mandates of the mayor, and this 90 percent number will have to be looked at because of the racist nature of these arrests by the police.
What is a “Sandinista” mayor to do? (His wife and Al Sharpton are not going to be happy)
Andrew W:
What do you propose the government do with those who will not submit and do as they are told?
Forced isolation? Jail? Guantanamo?
You did propose that they should be charged with homicide, life in prison?
Cotour please quote me, do not paraphrase what i say, you usually change my meaning when you do.
What’ll work in some cultures will not work in others. Lock-downs are effective when there’s popular support and when governments pick up the tab for the loses those government imposed lock-downs have caused.
In the U.S. there is widespread opposition to lock-downs, this reduces their effectiveness, evidently to the point of them not being justifiable. The U.S. has not gotten infection rates down to the degree that other countries have through lock-downs, though I think even in the U.S. the effect has been better than would have been achieved without them. So in the U.S. the disease will run until it’s stopped with a vaccine or through 200 million people gaining natural immunity, of whom about 2 million will die.
Ok, so no homicide, and 2 million will die.
In what time frame? How long will it take for 200 million to become infected? 3 years? 5 Years? More?
Bob wrote “What is clear however, and what I am going to note with some anger, is that there is no doubt that the lock downs have destroyed millions of lives, and appear now likely to have caused far more hardship and death, across the entire population, than COVID-19 could ever have done.”
Absolutely true! The experiment of Sweden negates the lock-down narrative as being false.
There is no need to play the freedom and civil liberties card here because Anyone with a functioning brain can see that the draconian actions taken are only relevant to a serious pandemic like GMO smallpox; as I have said before.
To say that Dr. Fauci has an anti-Trump agenda would be an understatement IMHO.
Now some perspective from CDC data as follows:
Data from the National Vital Statistics System, Mortality
In 2018, there were 67,367 drug overdose deaths in the United States, a 4.1% decline from 2017 (70,237 deaths).
We do not hear the liberals among us advocating cutting the drug supply off.
My question is: How many politicians have monetary ties to the mob of Mafia and drug money?
“My question is: How many politicians have monetary ties to the mob of Mafia and drug money?”
I strongly suggest people check out one of the “Bootleggers and Baptists” videos. There are several versions.
Yeah, at the current rate of transmission in the U.S. it would take about 3 years, if Mr. Zimmerman’s prefered methods were used it would take less time as there would be more contact between people than there is now.
OK, so 3 years and 2 million Americans dead.
Now we wait.
“..governments pick up the tab for the loses those government imposed lock-downs have caused. ”
Are not the funding sources of “governments” our own wallets? And, do not costs incurred by these “governments” require these same “governments” to journey forth into our wallets, by any means necessary, so to cover those costs? Finally, why would people refer to this process in such a clinical, disembodied way when we all endure the pinch and pull of that “government” at every transaction, every pay stub arrival, on the ides of every April and now during every seasonal cold/flu event?
To quote a Walt Kelly’s character, Pogo; “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
“Economics vs. the Civilization Wreckers”
The Tom Woods Show Ep. 1649
May 12, 2020
https://youtu.be/z_GWrmujKAI
55:53
“Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, invited me to be a guest on the Human Action podcast, which has been exploring each part of Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action with a different expert each episode. My episode was the final episode: part 7. Here Mises reflects on the place of economics in society, the struggle involved in overcoming popular ignorance, and what hangs in the balance of this intellectual battle.”
Are not the funding sources of “governments” our own wallets?
Of course, but all people are not adversely affected to the same degree by these government imposed measures. If you own a piece of land that the government decides it needs for a road, should the government have the power to seize it without compensation because you’re a tax-payer and the money the government would have to pay in compensation would have come out of the tax-payers wallet anyway?
Andrew _W
Vocal(on line) and limited public protests about social distancing do NOT mean the vast vast majority of America is not doing just that, Social distancing. We are doing it.
Please stop making assumptions about us.
How about that rate of infection in Africa? Is it better or worse since they are obviously not social distancing over the whole continent?
Did you know that one of our states actually never shut down. Never did a thing the other states did. And not one news agency is following this story because the infection/death rate is the same as the rest of the nation.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8222483/South-Dakotas-coronavirus-cases-rise-1000-no-lockdown.html
https://covidusa.net/?state=South+Dakota
https://covidusa.net/
And here is a question for everyone.
What would the death rate be for the normal flu if we had NEVER seen it before and obviously didn’t have any vaccine or treatment?
My guess is it would be identical to this Covid 19 outbreak.
Oh and stop calling it a pandemic. Unless you normally call a new flu virus a pandemic also.
Because the flu crosses national boundaries which is the basic definition of a pandemic.
Andrew_W has openly advocated for mass murder by terror-famine.
Andrew_W has supported Nipples Cuomo and Fascist Murphy’s acts of mass murder (forcing nursing homes to accept infected patients).
pzatchok: I would like people to stop using the fake bureaucrat panic word “pandemic.” It was invented by the Washington/global governmental bureaucracy to add fear and terror to any epidemic to make it seem worse than it was.
The word epidemic covers this situation quite accurately. Why should we play their game?
Tom asked: “Are not the funding sources of ‘governments’ our own wallets? And, do not costs incurred by these ‘governments’ require these same ‘government s’ journey forth into our wallets, by any means necessary, so to cover those costs?”
It seems that we get to pay the price twice. We are paying now, in lost income, lost liberty, lost lives, and lost livelihoods, but then we get to pay for the bailouts, plus interest. And with fewer people left in the workforce, the cost to those still employed is that much greater. Oh, plus the cost of caring for the families of the newly unemployed, so we pay three times.
I’m not the first to compare the Great Oppression with Atlas Shrugged, but from John Galt’s speech near the end of the movie Atlas Shrugged Part III: “… as factories closed, goods became scarce, jobs disappeared. Your lives are becoming more difficult … Have you noticed that as everything around you seems to decline, one thing still grows? It is the power of your rulers. None of their plans and directives have solved your problems or made your life better. The only result has been their increased control over you at the cost of your freedom. Do you know why? You gave them the power. They called for your sacrifice, and you thought it was noble. They said if you worked for yourself and your family, that you were selfish and uncaring. And they made you feel ashamed.”
“If you worked for yourself and your family, that you were selfish and uncaring.” Didn’t that judge in Dallas, Eric Moye, say essentially the same thing to Shelley Luther, the hairdresser the judge sent to jail for a week? Because feeding her child was an act of selfishness. But she had sense enough to not be ashamed. She knew that there is no shame in working at a productive job in order to feed her family and for her workers to feed theirs.
In the pat two months, factories closed and food processing plants have closed, and meat products and soup are getting scarce on store shelves. Jobs are disappearing by the tens of millions.
There are a few differences between today’s reality and Rand’s novel. Some factories have started to reopen, sometimes in violation of government directives. Some shopkeepers are engaging in civil disobedience and reopen their shops in violation of government, hoping to keep feeding their children and avoid insolvency.
From the article about Pennsylvania’s governor, Wolf: “Dr. Levine said in the letter. ‘The decision to shutter non-life sustaining businesses that support families across this commonwealth was a painful one, but before we can save livelihoods we must save lives.’”
The nationwide shutdown was supposed to save 40,000 lives. According to Dr. Fauci, rather than losing 100,000 lives without the oppressive lockdown, we would only lose 60,000 with it. We have now lost 82,000 and still counting. The Great Oppression was unnecessary for its primary purpose, flattening the curve to prevent overwhelming the hospitals, and extending the Great Oppression is proving to be useless for the secondary — mission creep — purpose to save lives.
Add to that the revelation that there may be twice as many people dying in lockdown as Wohan flu kills, because they are locked down in this Great Oppression. We may have lost 160,000 people in addition to the 80,000 that lockdown didn’t save. And still counting.
What a cluster bleep.
Welcome to Obama’s America, land of the formerly free and the oppressive government.
Vocal(on line) and limited public protests about social distancing do NOT mean the vast vast majority of America is not doing just that, Social distancing. We are doing it.
Please stop making assumptions about us.
Fair point, though I don’t see anything in my comments above to suggest I don’t think American’s are doing social distancing, quite possibly I’ve given the impression that that’s my opinion. A while back I asked Cotour what people were doing in NYC and he was clear that people are not doing “nothing”, I don’t think I’ve said anything intended to question that.
The main reason for my skepticism is that the rate of decline in Covid cases has not been so fast as to knock it on the head in a month or so, lock-downs for a month I think western economies will survive, 2 months I think unrealistically long to be maintained.
Looking at the US as one jurisdiction in fighting the spread of Covid is wrong though, and the different states have wide variety of trends in covid infection rates, NY is getting numbers down, as are many other states, but in several states (Texas, California, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona and others) the daily numbers are still increasing. I think these different trends will undermine Nationwide efforts and make the unified policies I think necessary, impossible. So there’s no big win for a state in eliminating the virus when it’ll just keep on coming in again on the interstate.
A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν, pan, “all” and δῆμος, demos, “people”) is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of people.
The Atlanta Center for Disease Control defines epidemic broadly: “Epidemic: the occurrence of more cases of disease, injury, or other health condition than expected in a given area or among a specific group of persons during a particular period. Usually, the cases are presumed to have a common cause or to be related to one another in some way (see also outbreak).”[1] The terms “epidemic” and “outbreak” have often been used interchangeably. Researchers Manfred S. Green and colleagues propose that the latter term be restricted to smaller events, pointing out that Chambers Concise Dictionary and Stedman’s Medical Dictionary acknowledge this distinction.[6] wiki.
Pandemic is undoubtedly the correct term to describe the global spread of Covid-19.
Once again, Andrew_W touts fake infection rates (the confirmed cases rate is fake due to asymptomatic carriers) to justify his communist terror famine.
I don’t know about other states, but in VA, the big increases are mainly in Northern VA.
1 city, Fairfax, has almost 1/3 of the cases in the state. Add in the immediately adjoining counties and it’s 1/2.
North Carolina has numbers that are increasing daily, but at around 5% of daily tests.
In both states, areas that don’t have mass transit have negligible numbers.
I see where the UK is trying to get people back to work, and telling them to avoid mass transit also.
PA’s current Gauleiter Dr. “Rachel” Levine is a devotee of science ‘cept for the part that says being born with a Y chromosome means you’re a man:
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/04/14/rachel-levine-pennsylvania-health-secretary-coronavirus/
And here in Ohio, our sometimes-batty Medical Officer just announced that antibody testing has revealed confirmed cases in the state as early as January 8th. Since the experts seem to agree that the virus is highly contagious then this means the virus was probably present before January and raged for almost 2 months throughout the citizenry of not only Ohio but other places one traveled to or visited. And the inflated death rate reported here is just over 1,200. 85% over the age of 80. 60% from nursing homes. The rest either had treatable-at-home-recovered symptoms or no symptoms at all. Our jails in Ohio were 100% tested and the rate of infection was in the low 80% while 96% of those were asymptomatic. So this indicates that contract tracing will be futile and massively costly as a growing population already has contracted the virus. But it also indicates that the lock-down was well past the outbreak.
Of course, none of this was known at the time of the lock-down, so I’m not blaming the Governor for over-reaction, although said Medical Officer has made some atrocious claims with no facts throughout the past 2 months. But I do give credit to Governor DeWine for re-opening most of our economy, albeit slower than I had hoped. Hospitals began doing surgeries and procedures again May 1, Construction, Warehousing, Manufacturing and General business re-opened May 4. Retail opened yesterday and restaurants get to re-start outdoors May 15 and indoors May 22. Salons and barbers also on May 15. Masks are recommended but not mandated. Restaurants need to keep tables 6 feet apart, or put up physical barriers between dining parties Indoors. Some ingenious places are using shower curtains, as the can be quickly sprayed down with disinfectant between seatings. They are allowing parties up to 10 together at a table. Bars too are opening with the same dates. Salons and barbers have a little stricter set of rules for stylists, manicurists, and customers, but sensible ones. Not all stores are opening yet, not all restaurants, but that’s their prerogative. Wifey and i are all set for a May 15 outdoor patio dinner at our favorite restaurant that we have been supporting weekly with take-out orders. I believe the reason this all seems palatable and workable is the Governor actually involved industry leaders from each category in the decision making and challenged them to present “best practices” to him and the Department of Health that were discussed and revised. Our golf courses had been open since April 6 with strict social distancing policies, but they are now being relaxed a little more in light of new evidence about surface contamination, sunlight effect, temperature affect, etc. But we still have the nay-sayers, mainly in the news media, who say it’s “genocide”. It will be interesting to see what Michigan does since it borders us to the Northwest, and who’s going to prevent those citizens from coming to Ohio for a dinner or to shop? Anyway, it brightens my days until I open my computer and read the stupid comments from the likes of out chattering class, our governing class, and especially the idiot-in-chief Fauci.
Here is a bit more about Rachel:
https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pennsylvania-rachel-levine-mother-nursing-home/
She likes nursing homes, but not for her mother in an Epidemic / Pandemic, choose one.
That picture in the above post by RDittmar is a shock this early in the day.
No amount of therapy or fish tank cleaner will help anyone unsee the picture in the link in the above post by RDittmar. For all that is holy I implore the moderator to disable that link.
Im sure she is a very nice lady.
I found Andrew’s math a little off. There is not a 1% fatality rate. There is not even a .1% fatality rate. For certain segments of our population it is of course higher. But as more testing discovers more and more asymptomatic people in our population some epidemiologists are suggesting an even lower rate approaching .001%. For the population below 60 or 65 the mortality rate essentially approaches zero. That is math using the CDC’s inflated death numbers (even Dr. Birx doesn’t believe their accuracy).
The fact is this is a virus, less lethal than the flu, but with some interesting quirks to it we are still figuring out. Like our standard vent protocols that actually probably killed people, and which are now rapidly being revised. Social distancing had the opportunity to help stem the tide when we were afraid that the hospital system would be overwhelmed. But it didn’t become overwhelmed, and is currently laying off staff and bleeding $$. There is no scientific justification for any social distancing or stay in place orders in the US. Even NYC has cases falling rapidly. It’s almost summer. Sunlight and heat kills this virus. If the reality is the virus will make its way through the population anyway, how about we start that before the next flu season starts. That would be the scientific approach.
What appears to have happened as indicated by testing is the virus has been here for some time, several months, at least since Dec (?, maybe before?) and had already gone through a significant segment of the population, and then it hit the more vulnerable all at once more at the end.
That being said and what we see before us being what it is, Andrew W proposes that there will be 2 million dead in America due to the virus in 3 years.
An update from the real world:
Spoke to a NYC nurse the other day who was shifted from her regular job in the operating room to the ICU to deal with Covid patients. She is now back at her regular job, everything is normalizing. And she expects a second wave of some dimension soon after the governor loosens up (?), we will see.
I also spoke with a NYC medical examiner on Mothers Day, she had been very, very busy but has very limited Covid subjects now, back to murders and suicides. See, there is a sunny side to this whole thing, back to normal in NYC.
Every nation no matter what will have a second peak of cases.
It will happen after they let their people go. Its just natural. All those isolated uninfected people now coming in contact with every one else.
When the US sends its children back to school guess who will get infected? Everyone associated with the schools. And the kids will bring it back to the home.
Don’t you think it would be better to infect those kids before they reopen the schools? Reduce the second peak.
We should have begun opening back up as soon as the rate of infection flattened out. if it went up again we could have reclosed everything and done this cycle until we were fully open.
People are refusing to go to the hospitals, the death rate for people whose illness can be prevented if they were hospitalized at the time of the symptoms, is climbing higher than the illness coronavirus itself.
“People are dying from fear of coronavirus”
A Utah news source reported on this just last night.
https://kutv.com/news/coronavirus/people-avoiding-utah-hospitals-for-fear-of-covid-19-are-dying-of-other-ailments
Jim: But as more testing discovers more and more asymptomatic people in our population some epidemiologists are suggesting an even lower rate approaching .001%.
Yeah, given the 27,000 deaths in NY that would require 2.7 billion people to be infected in that state.
@Jim fatality rate … some epidemiologists are suggesting an even lower rate approaching .001%.
Really? Please provide a link, as I’d love to read about their calculations.
Taking JHU’s New York state death toll at face value, a .001% Infection Fatality Rate would imply that everyone in the state has been infected 140 times over! Alternately, that everyone in New York has been infected and they over reported the death toll by a factor of 140. There is a lot of legitimate discussion to be had about the accuracy of reported case and fatality numbers, but are you seriously suggesting that less than 1% of all reported COVID-19 deaths are legit?
@pzatchok Don’t you think it would be better to infect those kids before they reopen the schools? Reduce the second peak.
Exactly. Time for summer camp!
This is where Tump suggesting we will have 100 million vaccine doses by fall (in time for school!) and 300 million doses by the end of the year — a time frame not suggested by anyone else — works against reopening. Not that we could stay locked down that long without suffering economic ruin, but such fantastic promises gives ammunition to those arguing for continued lockdown until we have treatment or vaccine. Does the guy ever realize when he is speaking against his own best interests?
An Alberta government employee created a farce for Covid-19 parking protocol and distributed it. The next day, government employees were following without question.
Moral of the story (as president Trump found out) never joke where leftists are involved.
Here is a statement by the mayor of Los Angeles saying the city will never fully open again.
https://www.oann.com/los-angeles-mayor-says-city-will-not-fully-reopen-until-we-have-a-cure-for-covid-19/
Well, he said not until a cure for Covid. That will never happen as with the flu and colds.
Data coming from Alberta (it has the most testing done of any area) that supports the argument that this is no worse than normal flues; not near what the other epidemics like the Hong Kong or Spanish flues.
Data coming from Alberta . . . supports the argument that this is no worse than normal flues
Looked, but didn’t find anything to support that claim.
New York is a filthy city.
Pretty much just like other large urban centers.
Its no wonder that they had the highest rate of infection.
They NEVER shut down mass transit.
And has anyone noticed that a week after they finally decide to sterilize the buses and subway cars their rate if infection finally starts to drop?
I was amazed when New York closed restaurants, and allowed packed Subway and buses to continue.
Combine that with seeding the nursing homes with infected patients, and it seems like they were trying to get people sick.
My personal opinion is the dems realize they have to kill the economy to have any chance of beating President Trump at the poles! So the more people they can put out of work, the more people are relying on government handouts. While keeping abortion clinics open and say they are trying to save lives is rather preposterous.
Some are thinking we should be managing the virus. The role of government is to manage the system! Any solution must be aimed at the system, not the disease.
How mucked up can a state and a city be?
By policy, for five weeks or so, New York sent patients ailing with active Wuhan flu into nursing homes, the places where we would expect the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable people. Most nursing home residents are elderly, and most are there because they are already ailing of something.
After recommending that everyone attend the crowded Chinese New Year parade, New York recommended that its citizens exercise social distancing — plus cowering at home — and to regularly clean often-touched surfaces. Simultaneously, the city reduced the number of subway trains, causing the riders, those deemed essential workers, to be more crowded than had the regular number of trains continued to run. Recently, the city discovered that subway surfaces could be cleaned — as though this were a newly realized concept that never occurred to the transit authority. The rest of the citizenry had to clean their own surfaces, but not New York City.
Now our rulers say that if the rest of the U.S. ends this Great Oppression too soon (whatever “too soon” means) then the whole country could end up with the same high death rate as New York. Presumably because the rest of the country would suddenly expose its nursing home residents to actively ailing Wuhan flu patients, would more densely pack riders on public transportation, and would stop cleaning their own often-touched surfaces. What rubes the rest of us turn out to be.
How mucked up can a state and a city be?