A Virus of Opportunity
29th September 2020
If we were in a normal situation, and the disease hadn’t been politicized, we could rely on recorded statistics to tell us whether or not COVID-19 should be classified as a pandemic. Unfortunately, this is not a normal situation. Statistics on the infection have been gamed and manipulated to inflate both incidence and fatality rates. I have no confidence in any of the aggregate statistics put out by state and federal governments.
Therefore I am forced to focus on anecdotal evidence and utilize common sense. For the past three or four months, during my very limited social interactions (mostly involving family and close friends), I’ve made it my habit to quiz people about their personal experience with the coronavirus: Do you know anyone who has contracted COVID-19? If so, did any of them die of it?
For myself, I don’t even know anyone who has tested positive for the disease, much less died of it. And the overwhelming majority of the people I asked don’t know anyone who has had it. Out of all the people I have asked, only one person knows someone (a very elderly person) who died of the WuFlu.
If this were a real pandemic, we would all know multiple victims of it. Every family would have seen at least one fatality from it. Every person would be able to give a lengthy roster of friends and relatives who had contracted it, some of whom would have died.
September 29th, 2020 at 08:21
I almost want to respond with, Thanks, Captain Obvious.
The real question in my mind is why don’t more people see that this is obvious. Yes, when it started out, there were all sorts of scary stories and it was hard to tell just how much to believe. Now we are quite a way into it and we should be able to observe the world around us and make decisions based on that direct input.
But there isn’t much input. I do know a handful of people who were officially determined to have had the disease. One was sick for 3 days, the others had no fever and thought the shortness of breath was from seasonal allergies. Somebody’s 86 year old aunt died from it. That does not constitute a pandemic. My family went through the 1918 Spanish Flu, and one died from it. Everybody knew people who died.
Yet we continue to see areas locked down, people being arrested for daring to not wear a mask, people adamantly blaming Trump (exactly how was he going to cure that virus for you?), masks being sold everywhere, and panic of a proportion you wouldn’t expect in a zombie apocalypse.
If you ask the panic fanatics, who do you know that died, they just get mad, cite CNN, and refuse to open their eyes and see for themselves. Walmart has been open since this started. They haven’t had enough people sick to shut down a single store. There are no piles of bodies from college parties or the Sturgis motorcycle rally. How is this not obvious to you??
September 30th, 2020 at 12:04
Based upon the list of symptoms CDC published recently, I had COVID from mid-January to the end of February, for approximately six weeks; and I believe it. I also believe closing down the world has done immeasurably more harm than good. I doubt we’ll ever see honest statistics of the number of deaths thanks to the pandemic having started in PRC (and apropos of nothing, if you’d told me a pandemic could be politicized any time before 2016 I’d’ve laughed in your face).
The shutdown experiment has been tried. It failed. I think it was a dumb idea, and hope we never try it again.
September 30th, 2020 at 14:57
Unfortunately, I think it will be the first thing politicians grab in future scenarios. It offers too many virtue-sigalling and done-something-even-if-it’s-wrong opportunities for the people who are running our country today. When even Governor Abbot can’t shake it off, what hope is there?