New York.

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?

New York.

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.

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?

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.

Moral of the story (as president Trump found out) never joke where leftists are involved.

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?

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?

Yeah, given the 27,000 deaths in NY that would require 2.7 billion people to be infected in that state.

“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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/04/14/rachel-levine-pennsylvania-health-secretary-coronavirus/

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.

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.

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?

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.

“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? 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.”

Now we wait.