Guest “We gotta get out of this place” by Eric Burden and the Animals David Middleton
Apr 9, 2020
Save Lives And Avoid A Catastrophic Recession
Bjorn Lomborg
Getting the facts straight on how to make the world a better place.The potential impact of the corona pandemic is enormous. But draconian policies to tackle the virus also have colossal costs. Ignoring the trade-offs could land us with one of the worst possible outcomes.
An Imperial College landmark study on death impacts from different policies helped change the minds of both President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson toward the implementation of lockdown policies. It showed that without any policies, the coronavirus would kill half a million people in the UK and 2.2 million in the US.
[…]
Unfortunately, the study also shows that such a successful reduction in infection means few people have gained immunity. So if restrictions are lifted in September, a second wave of infections will once again overwhelm society and kill almost as many.
[…]
Look at the costs first. Most of the early predictions were moderate. But the world’s much more severe policies have exploded the costs. According to JP Morgan, China’s economy will shrink by an unheard-of 40 percent in the first quarter of 2020. For the US, Goldman Sachs envisages a 24 percent second-quarter GDP reduction and Morgan Stanley a 30 percent drop. More than 16 million Americans or 10 percent of the workforce have lost their jobs over the past three weeks.
Moreover, most governments seem to have committed to draconian policies to avoid most deaths over the long term. These will cost much, much more. Economists are now suggesting the costs of continued extreme policies could be comparable to Germany in the 1920s or the US in the 1930s, with massive economic costs, a third of the workforce unemployed and a generational loss of opportunities.
[…]
As weeks of shutdown turn into months, this will get much worse. With many more people at home, this will likely lead to higher levels of domestic violence and substance abuse.
[…]
Long-term shut-down policies can similarly lead to devastation: first destroying the economy, and then with their support withering and health regulations unravelling by September, a huge secondary wave of corona killing indiscriminately.
[…]
This middle ground is more like what Sweden has been doing — recommending people to work from home if possible, and asking those who are sick and over 70 to avoid social contacts. But most people still work, children go to school, most of society is still running. This is long-term sustainable. Shutting everything down is not.
We need to map a middle course that both saves most lives and avoids a catastrophic recession.
Forbes
Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist should be on everyone’s reading list.
As I stated in my previous post, the ChiCom-19 Hostage Crisis will kill more people than the Kung Flu itself. An economic collapse of this magnitude will elevate the suicide rate, it has already started. And suicide is not the only way “high rates of unemployment, poverty and homelessness” kill people and entire communties.
Add all of that to this:
Unfortunately, the study also shows that such a successful reduction in infection means few people have gained immunity. So if restrictions are lifted in September, a second wave of infections will once again overwhelm society and kill almost as many.
Forbes
The much vaunted Imperial College study, says that the lockdown has to last for two years to work. That would kill more people than The Green New Deal as if it was managed by Rachel Carson.
Day 25 of America Held Hostage by ChiCom-19
Our pet T Rex, Teddy, has been social distancing since the end of the Cretaceous Period…
ChiCom-19 cases in Dallas County is now above the Dean Wormer Line (0.0%)… However, the Dallas County Mendoza Line crossing has now been pushed back to March 22, 2034…
| 4/10/2020 | |||
| Dallas County | CHICOM-19 | ||
| Population | Cases | Deaths | |
| 2,637,772 | 1,537 | 25 | 1.6% |
| % of population with | 0.0583% | 0.00095% | |
| % wth, rounded | 0.1% | 0.00% | |
| % without | 99.9417% | 99.9991% | |
| % without, rounded | 99.9% | 100.00% | |
| Menodoza Line (.200) | 22-Mar-2034 | 0.200 |
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WHO data shows that 90% of US cases are asymptomatic, i.e. did not wind up in the hospital or morgue.
That suggest to me that 90% of the herd already had immunity ’cause they had seen it or its second cousin before (even though the “experts” hadn’t seen one exactly like it.) and/or were healthy enough to beat it.
So, lift all the economic nonsense, turn the economy loose, practice good hygiene as you should anyway and bring it on!
If it gets you it gets you.
Last I checked, nobody gets out of this party alive.
Jim Morrison was right.
LOL. In what way? “This is the end my friend”?
“No one gets out of here alive.”
“I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” is a song written by Fred Rose and American country music singer-songwriter Hank Williams, released by Williams in 1952. The last single to be released during Williams’ lifetime, it reached #1 on the Billboard Country Singles chart posthumously in January 1953.
Or perhaps you should quote him as saying:
‘You’re all a bunch of slaves’
Sorry about Jimmy. Punished because of something bad Daddy said. Rest in peace Jim. Justice will be raining holy hell upon the fake mocking bird media soon. President TRUMP has so declared. Patriots in control. Let the indictments begin !!! he who controls the media controls (weak) mind
Nick: +1!
Yes, err on the side caution but not paranoia.
PS Hi, Janice!
Hi, Gunga Din 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to brighten my day.
Nick’s correct. Let’s get on with it. I’m 68, but I’ll take my chances.
Unfortunately most of the rest of the population aren’t gamblers, so being a minority what do you want to do now?
The people that want to stay home and self-isolate can continue to do so and we could use just a tiny fraction of the money being spent right now to prop up the economy on delivering groceries and other necessities to those people. Also, from the sentiment I’m hearing from the people around me, Jim in WNC is not a minority.
Needless to say, all you right wing geniuses are ignoring the fact that stopping the shutdown will overwhelm the hospitals that are already straining to keep up with the caseload. If you don’t mind the sight of dead bodies in the hospital corridors, people gasping for air while they drown in their own lung fluid (you possibly being one of them) then yes, opening up the economy right now is a great idea. What the experts are trying to do is flatten the curve, not eliminate the infections. By the way, the Swedish experiment? What could possibly go wrong with that? Let’s wait and see.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13. Two days out, calamity struck and the mission was in dire emergency. The capsule life-support system needed urgent repair due to a “novel” accident.
Thank God Flight Director Gene Kranz and Director of Crew Operations Deke Slayton acted as they did to solve the problem. “Failure is not an option” was only in the movie, but it was clearly the NASA attitude that led to success and miraculous, safe return of the crew.
Dr Grouchy Fauci is facing his “Apollo 13 moment” and is failing miserably. He wants to slow everything down and start a study – to determine how to study the COVID problem. Time for him to be “jettisoned”.
The numbers of infected, hospitalized, and dead are turning out far below the “model” projections. Clearly, the models are wrong and are actually producing harmful results – through panic, misallocation of resources, draconian stay-home orders, and economic collapse.
Pray for the return of sanity this Easter
“so being a minority what do you want to do now?”
Right, so you’ve done a poll and found that the majority of people want to be under house arrest, lose their jobs and stay at , while they still own one.
Could you post a link to your results and method please, I must have missed this seminal work.
LdB,
Complete hogwash. People gamble with their lives every day. Just living is taking risks, whether it is risking death on the roads, risking death from medical procedures, risking death from workplace accidents, etc. And like it or not, getting sick is just another one of those risks that you can reduce and sometimes avoid, but not eliminate. Nobody has a “right” to be safe from every threat and governments have no responsibility to guarantee safety.
My plan has been to end all of this nonsense and get back to business as usual starting tomorrow. Right now would be the ideal time to catch this cold anyways, considering we aren’t going to extinct this virus by hiding in caves and it will be back next season.
Agreed. But also get rid of the legal liabilities which turn the FDA and CDC into murderous procrastinators by holding back of dozens of therapies, vaccinations and even cures – making the perfect the enemy of the good.
And let doctors sort out what works. We have the info-tech sharing capability to do the “testing” real time.
“WHO data shows that 90% of US cases are asymptomatic”
Source please.
This is probably out of date…
https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-similarities-and-differences-covid-19-and-influenza
I believe this virus is widespread. New evidence suggests the first US cases happened in November 2019.
We don’t know how many have been infected and we don’t know how much, if any, a prior infection provides for immunity against new infections.
What you believe is what you want to believe. It has no requirement to be reality because it is convenient to short circuit reality with emotions.
Patient 0 occurred in Wuhan. At the end of November 2019. If you don’t know who that is, you are not looking for, it and prefer to ignore reality to spread disinformation.
There is no immunity to Wuhan Plague, except from those that had it this year. There will be many people that will have it and never know. They think they are fine, and spread it through the workplace and community.
So how many of you will participate in spreading this around?
There are many that will be sick for a week to ten days. They will get off easy as well.
The numbers say that is how it works. The majority gets to walk away as the previous generation dies of viral pneumonia in large numbers. The generation that provided the lifestyle we take for granted, snuffed out by the reckless actions of a government we should have never trusted. And a government that would like to kill two birds with one stone. One of the birds has no say in the matter. The other does.
China is lying to us. They either are lying about the numbers, or they have a solution to this virus that they are not sharing. Nobody seems curious about why that is, or what it means. I am, and I don’t like what it says about them, and this virus they exported to the rest of the world.
The only to find that out is by large-scale testing for antibodies. If you’re right, then a significant fraction of any given sample of people should have antibodies, meaning they were infected whether they knew it or not.
That’s the only way, IMHO, that we can make rational decisions with respect to this virus and, our strategy for dealing with it in the fall.
It is not currently a large-scale percentage of immunity because this was spreading much faster before the social distancing and stay at home directives went out. Those helped slow down the spread but it is still spreading. We will try to manage a slow burn, instead of a wild fire.
Early detection and quarantine is the only way to stop the spread without wide scale prophylactic medicine distribution. Current confirmed US cases is 500K. Hard to imagine unconfirmed cases would be more than 10x. That gets us to 5 million. Add a million for easy math and you only get 2% of the public.
So that is where we are at. Antibody testing will confirm where we are at, but it is unlikely to help us very much. Think of all the urban centers that have not had NYC type problems. That is what is coming. We can only try to manage it without prophylactic medicine. Social distancing and mask wearing are way more effective than not doing that. But we can’t live like that until a vaccine is ready. We really need a safe treatment that will give us temporary immunity until we have a vaccine. Right now doctors that I know think Hydroxychloroquin is the best chance, but not the only one.
“WHO data shows that 90% of US cases are asymptomatic, i.e. did not wind up in the hospital or morgue.”
We live east of Seattle in the part of Western Washington that had the first cases and fatalities in the USA. My wife is a retired nurse and department head, we have both done volunteer work and been paid by the ill fated Life Care Center in Kirkland WA.
On the fire department that I retired from 11 people tested positive. 10 had no symptoms and 1 had symptoms so mild that he was still coming to work.
Tested positive for the rare CVD-19 virus or for the very common Corona virus?
WHO believes anything the WHO says at this point. Certainly not a skeptic.
I hear a lot of macho bravado when it is other peoples lives you are gambling with.
Nick are you going to go down to the hospital and help out when it is overwhelmed?
Anyone want to help out the elderly that will die alone, with no one to care for them?
Anyone want risk their own safety for the suffering of their neighbors?
It is all fine and good when it is theoretical, that is how it works in China. They got what they wanted out of the workers, and now they are disposable.
We are better than that.
We have a few more weeks to go. Lets make the best of that time preparing for the unknown. Clamoring to let the beast out of it’s cage, because you think you won’t die from it shows a lack of understanding of basic math, and a lack of compassion for those more vulnerable.
“and then with their support withering and health regulations unravelling by September, a huge secondary wave of corona killing indiscriminately.”
I call BS here. Where is the “killing indiscriminately” part? This virus is only really effective if the victim is already seriously compromised. It is patent is fear-mongering to pretend it will suddenly or is an indiscriminate killer. BS!!!!!
We do have to seriously question the test we are using The faster tests simply cannot be doing PCR, which means they must be detecting something less unique to C-19. This means that most tests are simply looking for certain levels of coronaviruses of which there are many out there at any given time, most of them harmless. This is why we come up with 15–50% positive asymptomatic “cases”, because we are not really detecting anything special.
It beggars our intelligence to think that that many people would be Typhoid Maries and should make people wonder what is really being detected. For that matter, they started testing on a Navy ship and suddenly 400+ sailors are Covid positive and few of them have any symptoms at all. As everybody on board are young and healthy, they are not in any danger. However, this morphed quickly into people considering that all 400+ are severely ill. Wow, talk about imagination. Oh, my what a contagion, NOT.
WHO data is an oxymoron – almost always wrong.
Data in the article are speculation NOT based on random testing.
The article is worthless.
“That suggest to me that 90% of the herd already had immunity ’cause they had seen it or its second cousin before ”
Or maybe, these people had LESS “immunity” (immunity reaction programs) as they had less flu vaccines in their lives?
I wouldn’t be the first case where a vaccine makes you more likely to catch an infection.
If that’s so, Americans are very at risk because they LOVE the flu vaccine. Which may explain why they consider the “pandemic” (was not so) “pig” (no pig had it) A H1N1 flu so terrible, and why in Europe it was a joke.
This ignores the old and well tested notion of viral dose. We needed lock down for around one month but we equally well now need a steady reduction in the measures to keep viral load dosage low so people are exposed to low doses of the virus and recover quickly with no long term effects. When over half the intensive beds are free we need to start on the highest value most essential jobs and highest value is far from the highest paid ones which are often of little real social or provision value. NO do not turn the economy loose. Lead it out gently and ensure there is no return of the problem.
Is this going to be death of the blind faith in models?
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/10/latest-models-suggesting-coronavirus-resurgence-upon-reopening-of-america-quickly-collapse/
Read this but replace the models of Wuhan-19 with the climate models which have a worse accuracy than the virus models
No. Religion can never be disproved.
Among many people, YES. But I suspect that they’re the same people who are already skeptical OR who have a lot of common sense. These people also tend to be the people most impacted by the economic shutdown; small business owners, farmers, builders, blue collar producing class people, people who work with their hands instead of a laptop or smartphone, people who can’t “work from home.” This will at least ensure that the GOP remains emboldened and fighting on this issue. These people will be a much larger share of the GOP primary vote the next time around. That’s the realignment.
And the end of the faith in China?
Never forget. They spread this to the world. Wittingly or unwittingly. And they could have warned us.
Actions have consequences. We simply cannot allow the free people of Taiwan to be swallowed up by the murderous Communists on the mainland. That stupid treaty was signed in a different time. The earth belongs to the living. The Communists have already shown in Hong Kong they are not only unqualified to rule a free people, they are disqualified from it.
In the past decades, before that crisis, China’s actions had precisely zero negative consequences internationally.
If anything, historically, the more China lies and cheats, the nicer the MSM is with China.
“Delingpole: ‘Trust the Experts on Coronavirus’. Sure. Which Experts?”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/09/trust-the-experts-on-coronavirus-sure-which-experts/
As a chip computer modeller some of us examined models from other fields. Among them were models on viral distribution and on viral load as well as climate ones. I remember these well for two opposing reasons. The viral ones were solid well done and showed clear cut examples of high prediction success rates a good understanding of the limitations of the study and the models and a totally professional standard. The climate ones were the other extreme. Sloppy data collection with far lower accuracy than the claimed end result. Weather stations at far too widely spaced intervals to be accurate to even one degree let alone the fraction of one needed. No recognition of the extent of the ignored factors in the models and last but not least never even asking the question of whether computer models were relevant any longer given we now have different zones of fossil fuel use and warming for comparison.
The professional forecasters all projected that beds would be a multiple of the beds actually needed.
https://www.targetliberty.com/2020/04/look-at-how-ridiculously-wrong-all.html
PS. How is Belarus doing? I’m not saying ignore it and drink vodka but if their death rate is the same as everyone else’s then there will be trillion dollar egg on everyone’s face who advocated a shutdown.
This is lockdown is ridiculous. Simply lock down people over 60 and let the others develop herd immunity. Some under 60 will die but no more than say car accidents, likely far less. This lockdown is totally ridiculous considering we have an easy alternative. I would like to know Mortality per infection ( NOT per confirmed case ) of those under 60. It appears very low.
“This is lockdown is ridiculous.”
I think the lockdown as it continues, “could be” fatal.
But we needed the lockdown that we already, got.
New York city probably didn’t lockdown quick enough.
Other places, I lack enough data to say whether they needed
the lockdown measures which they have taken, but considering
the Fog of war and other factors, I don’t think any have been wrong
choices.
Or it’s in the future where the problem could be.
It could be useful to get models of what happens if certain lockdown
measures could lifted, and different ways they could be lifted.
And we need these models, quickly.
DON’T aspect that the government will support or fund such models.
I am no good with making models- but others can do it- and should do it quickly.
How about quarantining the sick and letting each state decide beyond that.
Jim,
We can change the odds. We can change rules. But we need to work together. Both sides of the climate change issue are going to get together. We are the brains, they have connections and money.
If we are almost immune to virus, then breaking quarantine would be something everyone would look forward to.
Our half of the climate change groups has found ….
1) A Natural Method to Stop the Virus from replicating
In order for the virus to replicate, it must connect to a specific molecule in our cells.
A tiny amount of Zinc (Z+2) in our cells, makes a specific molecule in our cells, slightly positive which stops the virus from connecting to the specific molecule which stops it from replicating.
This has been proven by in vitro tests (tests in the laboratory with live virus).
And in addition, this is the natural microbiological solution and it is a permanent solution.
A natural virus cannot evolve to defeat the Zinc’s effect on the specific molecule it requires, as the Zinc stops the virus from replicating. The virus normally fights our immune system.
This is also the natural solution as the amount of Zinc required in our bodies is very close to the optimum amount of Zinc, our optimum body requires to function.
i.e. The entire population would need to take Zinc supplements but the amount is slightly more than is currently found in a multivitamin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7F1cnWup9M&feature=youtu.be
2) How to get the Zinc into our cells.
The problem is our cells are slightly negative so to enable the Zinc to get into our cells we need a chemical that has been used for 30 years by millions and millions of people for a range of illness.
The chemical ‘Chloroquine’ have been proven, in vitro, to be a Zinc Ionophore. Chloroquine makes a path that enables a tiny amount of zinc into our cells.
The amount of that Chloroquine we would need to take, to get the micro amount of zinc into our cells, is at the lower range of its prescribed range.
Later we will develop a side effect free method of getting the zinc into our body.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/pdf/pone.0109180.pdf
According to this blog from St Luke’s clinic —
https://swietylukasz.pl/en/2020/03/20/zinc-and-covid-19-infection/
Chloroquine is not the only magic Ionophore. Quercitin, an OTC supplement, and phosphatidylcholine, contained in the widely available OTC supplement Lecithin is also effective as a Zn Ionophore. I have been using Lecithin for years and have slightly upped my Zn supplementation since this Covid 19 scare started. I just started retirement and would like to get back at least a good chunk of the few hundred grand of SS money I and my various employers over the years have paid out. Herd immunity sounds good in statistical jargon and theory, but leaves a lot to be desired if you personally happen to be in the part of the herd getting culled.
“Simply lock down people over 60 . . .”
Nonsense.
Additional song lyrics apply:
“‘Cause if you mind your business, then you won’t be mindin’ mine”
Hank Williams, 1949
The elderly typically have weaker immune systems. Isolating the most vulnerable and letting others go on with their lives while observing reasonable precautions is the right thing to do.
Personally, I’m 2 years shy of 60 and no longer see 60 as particularly old.
John,
If you have underlying conditions putting you at risk and you live alone, or with others (truly informed) who agree with you, then I wholeheartedly support your demand for liberty and self-determination.
But if you live in a community with a large at-risk population, such as a private or public nursing home where “your business” is also impacting many others who do not want to accept the risk, then I’d even go so far as to suggest that you should be allowed to transfer to a temporary government facility where everyone has made the same informed decision.
You would need to have signed forms that acknowledge that you won’t receive care if there is a waiting list of patients who did not opt out of protective quarantine, and will be subject to discontinuation of care if resources you may use become needed for patients who did not opt out of protective quarantine.
Fair enough?
To the extent we need to quarantine anyone, it needs to be first those actually infected, and then those most likely to be at risk of dying. We must stop isolating the healthy population!
Stevek, where do you get the right to “Simply lock down people over 60…”? I am a very healthy 74, with none of the enhanced morbidity factors, I exercise every day (now treadmill and weights in house), play golf when allowed, continue advising political aspects of modern mining permitting, have active gold exploration interests, have accumulated more than enough savings and investments to take care of me and my family under any circumstances, and practice social distancing etc. Maybe you should advocate persons with identified morbidity factors should be quarantined? One clear truth in the above posting is that an economy must remain sufficiently healthy to pay for mitigation activities, and shutting the economy down for extended periods won’t allow that. Stay safe.
Staying safe is easy. Staying sand is the tricky bit… Fortunately the liquor stores are still considered essential infrastructure.
Staying sane? I have a variety of issues to entertain me on a daily basis, and they include visiting Anthony Watts excellent website and refining gold prospect targeting utilizing Google Earth tm and a lifetime of note collecting. I Skype tm with my twin brother daily and we are pretty certain that between us we have figured out the answer to all important questions. Quarantine is social distance for the challenged amongst us. By the way, my two dogs have proven themselves to be great caddies for the foam golf balls I hit in my backyard, and they work for table scraps. Press on AND stay safe.
Ron , yes that was too much to force a lockdown on those over 60. Instead just let everyone know of the risks and suggest to people in high risk groups to stay home and be very careful.
I would say those high risk that still work that govt would pay them to stay home until vaccine.
Please consider my comments above. Paying people to say they will stay home is certain to result in many people lining up at the trough to get free money and claim to have imaginary underlying conditions. Twenty years ago I had mild asthma symptoms. Gimme money.
If people want rights, they must also accept responsibilities. You can’t choose to put yourself at risk and then demand that others provide you with care. If there is a need to quarantine to protect the general public, that need not violate anyone’s rights. They just need to accept the consequences of their choices, if their choices don’t go as expected.
Lockdown in rural remote communities has made no sense at all. The harm to small businesses is completely unnecessary.
Was this intentional?
Sommer
“Lockdown in rural remote communities has made no sense at all. The harm to small businesses is completely unnecessary.
Was this intentional?”
The big question.
Who pushed the horrors of Covid?
Compared it with HK Flu of ’68-69 – which left about 80,000 dead in the UK []population then about 56 million; now about 66-67 million].
Will the inevitable inquiry address that?
Auto
“Simply lock down people over 60 and let the others develop herd immunity”
That is what Sweden has tried to do, and failed utterly. Old people are dying like flies in Stockholm just now. And nobody under 70 (at the moment) can get any treatment, because the hospitals are filled to overflowing with younger people busily “developing herd immunity”.
Swedish per capita COVID-19 mortality is currently more than 50% higher than the US.
As of today there have been 887 COVID-19 related deaths in Sweden (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/). How does that constitute “dying like flies”? Also, I did some web searching for articles on Swedish hospitals being overflowing with COVID-19 patients and came up with nothing. Where did you get that info?
The mortality per infection is probably 1-2%. There is at least one town in Italy with a mortality of 1.4 %, of all inhabitants and even there it is doubtful if everybody have really been infected, and also many are still in a critical condition. The figure for the city of Bergamo (120,000 inhabitants) is above 0.5 %.
Ocean Princess also had a 1.5 % mortality per infection, admittedly on a population over aveage age, but in reasonably good health and with exceptional access to medical care.
Stevek this ignores well tried and tested viral load models which unlike climate change ones have proof by match of prediction with actual real world to back it. Remember the well known words of Richard Feynman “nature cannot be fooled”. With low numbers of infected only the old and unwell get stuffed. As higher percentages get infected people get multiple doses of the virus from contacts so as the number increase so does the dosage and as we see in the UK with high dosage the next tier like our PM get is seriously badly. As poorly protected medics have proved with really high doses no one is safe. If I remember correctly when you are down to 50% care capacity you start slow release and check the case severity does not increase to include stronger people.
The cost side of cost/benefit analysis should be measured in lives, not dollars: Suicides have been mentioned. Here’s another cost:
We examine how deaths and emergency department (ED) visits related to use of opioid analgesics…. As the county unemployment rate increases by one percentage point, the opioid death rate per 100,000 rises by 0.19 (3.6%) and the opioid overdose ED visit rate per 100,000 increases by 0.95 (7.0%).
https://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/29128677/Macroeconomic_conditions_and_opioid_abuse.
Once you understand Progressivism is a death cult, it’s really not hard to understand what’s going on.
Unfortunately the governors have all the power they need to make this happen.
According to Worldometers’ figures, the average incubation period is 5 days and the average time from 1st symptom to death (when it occurs) is 14 days. So, if a lockdown were totally effective, the deaths figures should show a huge drop, close to zero deaths, in around 19 days after the lockdown. If the lockdown is not effective, the graph should show a “normal” bell curve. After checking the deaths graphs for Italy on March 28, Spain on April 2, and France on April 5, the latter seems to be the case.
Of course, we Worldometer shows something in between the two extremes of “complete success” and “ineffective” because not everybody is locked down, like health workers and people working in grocery stores. We are seeing an abrupt flattening of the curve in Italy, Spain, and France at least — no to mention the amazing success of control policies in South Korea. Just because Trump waited about two months too long to recommend restrictions (among other errors) is not a good reason to give up early. We certainly don’t want to see what we have seen in NYC recently in the rest of the country.
When transmission is down and there is a coherent testing strategy and sufficient tests available we can loosen up the restrictions.
Modern medicine can keep people alive for a long time, however very few of these people will ever recover.
“Pro science” (codename for anti Trump) people tell us to listen to the experts. THEIR experts. Or Fauci. Who changed his tune. And the WHO. Who changed its tune ever more.
They tell us to do nothing medically without a randomized study. They also tell us that those who don’t vaccinate their babies (even against STDs) with vaccines that were never proved as useful in any randomized study, should be jailed.
Now they tell that police state measures should be done according to the recommandations (or oukases) of experts. Measures that have not been proven in either randomized studies, or any scientific study whatsoever.
I like The Who…
My God what a band!!!
Did you read this?
https://babylonbee.com/news/researchers-delay-new-vaccine-until-they-figure-out-how-to-make-it-cause-autism
{/s just in case}
Funnily enough in the UK there has been a resurgence of measals amongst the unvaccinated population. Measals has a very high R0 of about 16. It spreads very easily. Some of the unvaccinated have other conditions so can’t be vaccinated and rely on the herd immunity of everyone else. Antivaxxers have caused a problem. There is no need for any randomized study. Just for the unvaccinated to get vaccinated.
If you don’t agree with early loosening of lock down then keep doing what you’re doing. You won’t be forced to shed your protectants. I will keep mine until I think it’s safe for my situation.
Me too.
I reckon I have enough guns & ammo I don’t need to stock up on anything else. 😉
A Smith and Wesson … Python?
Mine’s a Ruger GP-100.
The Python was a Colt.
Smith & Wesson revolvers generally just have model numbers. I have a Model 586 .357 Magnum, 6″ barrel, blue steel.
DOH!!
(Insert picture of Homer slapping his head) 😎
Which one?
The head slap fur sure.
Taurus Raging Bull 454 Casull, among others.
I use that one… A lot… 😎
Python was/is made by Colt.
See my reply to David above.
“The only people it’s safe to ignore are those who won’t admit to maling a mistake.” – Me
TYPO!
That should be “making”, not “maling”.
😎
@Gunga Din
Dang! I thought you were being cleverly ironic!
Well, trying to be.
Guess I made a mistake.
I was out in my local town today and absolutely no-one, especially Asians, was observing social distancing other than store keepers. Sure, may were wearing masks but none of them look like the N95 variety and thus completely useless.
“……completely useless…”
A mask made out of an old T-shirt stops flying sneeze mucous, and droplets from speaking. Let’s do a test….lick your lips, hold your hand a couple of inches from your mouth….say “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”…you can feel the droplets on your hand…..that’s why saliva spewing strangers should wear a face-mask around YOU…and of course vice-versa…any cloth bandana that your breathe passes through instead of around, will do the job. And it will work better than sneezing into your elbow.
Bingo. It may not be perfect but better than nothing is what I hear from contacts in China and Eastern Europe. I wear a mask to protect the grocery store workers and I keep my f-king yap shut when in public. Meanwhile the average moron is out there yelling in aisle 4, spraying spit everywhere…
Some developing countries have followed blindly the western lock down models. The number of unwanted pregnancies are expected to go up. Confirmation should be available from November 2020 to february 2021 births.
Hi David,
You need to state explicitly what value you place on a human life before you can ever start to claim
that the cure is worse than the disease. According to economists and insurance companies the average
value of a human life in the US is about $10 million dollars. So a quick ballpark figure suggests that
2.2 million deaths in the worse case scenario would cost US society upwards of 20 trillion dollars
(less if age adjusted statistics are used). This is the potential cost of doing nothing. In contrast the US
stimulus package was around 2 trillion dollars.
So again what value do you place on a life? What is your estimate of the number of deaths if we do nothing?
And how does that compare to the current economic cost of the lockdown?
When a child is killed by a vaccine, the insurance gives $10 million dollars?
In the US $500,000 for a no fault claim via National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
However you are generally talking about adverse outcomes … deaths are actually very very rare … look up the number rather than me tell you 🙂
Death of babies happen all the time; almost by definition, these babies were vaccinated. Was a vaccine the cause? Nobody knows. And it’s a medical taboo.
Because of that, I fear medical pro more than the virus.
Your serious error is that most deaths are very old people who frankly don’t add any value to GDP because they don’t work or produce. In fact from a cold hard economic viewpoint their lives are worth a negative amount to economy.
You are 100% correct Stevek. Donald Trump is a very old person who frankly doesn’t add any value to GDP because he doesn’t work or produce. His life is worth a negative amount to economy.
Henry Trump is old and adds tremendous value to the economy. His reversal of Obama’s low gear policies proved it.
Stevek,
The discussion is about how much society values a life. Not their contribution to GDP.
Try killing a very old person and then tell the judge they were worth a negative amount
to society. I doubt anyone would listen to you.
If you want to provide a different estimate for the value of a human life please do so
but make sure you can justify it.
Izaak, no it’s not. Not really.
“If it saves one life!” is often used as the justification for actions that end up costing more lives.
My particular job is deemed “essential”. If they went paranoid on all these precautions and made my coworkers and I all self-isolate, then the water that would come out of their taps would eventually kill more people than COVID-19. (And if the wasterwater plants shut down? Nobody picked up your garbage?) Yet we are exposed to each other everyday. We are exposed to the drivers that deliver the chemicals we use to treat the water so it is safe when you turn on your tap. What are our lives worth?
Now I work for a Government entity. They spend money like water.
Many have their water supplied by water plants run by private companies. They can’t spend money like water. What are their workers’ lives worth?
We all need a healthy economy to pay for stuff so we can save lives. (Just as we’ve done before Corona popped up.)
A healthy economy saves lives.
PS I’ll be 66 next month. High risk group. I’ll still be reporting for work.
@ur momisugly Izk W: Try getting that judge to hold for you when you offer zero evidence to prove that not doing a COVID19 lockdown (pick any locality where it has not been done to any significant degree) proximately caused a death.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc won’t cut it.
Neither will “it just must have done it.” (even if shouted while pounding the table)
**************************
Note: using your risk management reasoning, no one would drive down the road
or ride the bus
or pedal their bicycle out of their driveway
or take a Tylenol
or eat at a restaurant
or fire up their lawn mower and mow the lawn
or use a step ladder
or turn on their gas stove to boil water for tea
or … well, just about anything but stay in bed and die — TOO RISKY**
**People have died from doing all of those things. Fact (not assumption as is your bogus IF no lockdown THEN death from COVID19 argument).
Huh?
The average American earns less than $3 million in their lifetime. So I don’t know where your $10 million comes from. Second, any “average” number you arrive it is for someone with an “average” lifespan remaining. The bulk of the people dying are in their 80’s and 90’s, so if you’re going to go through the absurd process of calculating the value of a human life, you’re going to have to downsize your numbers substantially.
Further, I think that trying to put a human cost on fighting a war is an exercise in futility. If we’d calculated the cost in human lives to fight WW2, the obvious outcome would be to surrender and learn to speak German. The question is not how much are the lives lost worth. The question is what’s the best way to win the war because losing is unthinkable.
David,
Have a look at
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-should-the-government-spend-to-save-a-life/
which discusses how much value society puts on a life in the USA. Feel free to suggest a
different value but you need to justify it.
It is clear from the article that you link to that the value being spoken of is how much people are willing to pay to insure their own lives, and for how much. Willing to insure and economic value are two different things. If you’re going to go to the absurd exercise of putting a value on human life in order to compare it to the economic cost, you have to use the same metric from one end to the other.
If you want to go look at it from the insurance perspective, insuring a 90 year old for a million dollars costs WAY more per year than insuring a 20 year old. See the problem with putting a value on a human life from an insurance perspective?
None of which changes the fact that the average person makes less than $3 million per lifetime, and almost all of that in almost all cases well before they are in their 80’s or 90’s.
David,
Surely the relevant quantity is how much people produce not what they earn?
The average lifetime earnings might be less than 3 million but their economic output
is considerably more. Currently the US GDP is about 22 trillion dollars a year and there
are 155 million people employed. So over a typical lifetime one worker would produce about 10 million dollars of output on average, 3 million of which is kept by the worker
and the other 7 goes to running costs of the business etc. Which is a figure that seems
reasonable — for example at a resturant raw ingredients typically amount to about 1/3 of the cost of a meal. All of which suggests that the economic value of a worker in the
USA should be around 10 million dollars on average.
Again feel free to suggest some other figure. If you want to claim the lockdown costs more
than it saves in terms of lives lost then you need to say what price you put on a life.
–None of which changes the fact that the average person makes less than $3 million per lifetime, and almost all of that in almost all cases well before they are in their 80’s or 90’s.
Reply
Izaak Walton April 11, 2020 at 1:22 am
David,
Surely the relevant quantity is how much people produce not what they earn?–
It seems both ways are assuming an average person is a slave.
It seems if average person or a person is killed by accident it’s a pretty low cost counted.
But if there deliberate or malice “intent” the costs go thru the roof.
Or free person can make there own decision, and that includes the chance of death as a result. But if do something that interferes with free person choice- saying one thing when it’s known to something else, one has wandered into a “intention” to possibly kill a random person- and a jury will punish you monetarily for doing that.
3 million of which is kept by the worker and the other 7 goes to running costs of the business etc.
And the 7 million adds to the value of the business. You can’t count that money twice.
But since you want to calculate it that way, let’s use your numbers. How much of that $10 million gets produced by workers after the age of 80? Take all the money made by all the workers active after the age of 80, divide by the total number of people over the age 80, round off to the nearest two decimal places…. 0.00
Mr. Walton:
Please see the Breitbart article linked above by Yooper on April 10, 2020 at 7:09PM.
2.2 million is no longer the generally accepted worse case scenario and, as it turned out, it never was. It was never based on data. It was, EXACTLY like the assumptions behind the failed, unskilled, climate-and CO2 computer simulations,
a drive-down-the-freeway-blindfolded GUESS.
Janice,
the number appears to be in reasonable as a plausible worse case. Suppose 20% of the US
population get COVID-19 (in line with values from cruise ships) then there will be 60 million
cases in the US. Then if the fatality rate is 5% (which is the current average rate worldwide according to the WHO and half that of Italy and the UK) that would 3 million deaths. Now
of course you can make much better estimates using differential equations to model the spread
of the epidemic (the SIR model for example) but they produce a similar result.
Again this is the worst case. Not the most probably case. And this is what the government should
be trying to prevent. The expected number of deaths is a lot less because people are self-isolating which dramatically cuts the rate of infection.
Except you are ignorant of the 5% being a mortality rate for the general public. The world is only testing people sick enough to go to the hospital. I caught covid 19 and was never tested, I know. I just signed up to donate my blood plasma. If they accept my offer, I will get antibodies tested and find out if I can donate them.
You should heed the post by davidmhoffer April 10, 2020 at 8:48 pm. Think instead of trying to be right. You just may learn something.
You need to state explicitly what value you place on a human life before you can ever start to claim
that the cure is worse than the disease.
Not so. See my comment at 7:36.
Hi Juan,
If you want to count in lives, then do you have an estimate for the number of deaths that
would result from doing nothing? And how that compare with your estimates from the
number of deaths due to the lockdown? Estimates I have seen for the worse case scenario
are in excess of one million. Do you reall think a short term drop in GDP will kill more people?
…do you have an estimate for the number of deaths that
would result from doing nothing?
No. Such an estimate would be a questionable extrapolation from limited and unreliable data. As are the estimates for doing nothing. Estimates so far have been all over the map.
But who says we should do nothing? Certainly not Willis. What is questionable is full scale lockdown. Let me share how it is affecting me.
1. Last month my dentist started to replace crowns on my lower incisers. We got to the point of installing temporaries, which have a limited life span and which would normally be replaced without delay. But his office has been closed do to the Kungflu scare. They say they will call me when they can reschedule.
2. Years ago I had a melanoma surgically removed. Ever since I have had periodic referrals to follow up. This was year’s was scheduled for April 15. But they have called and rescheduled for June 16. Could that be a problem? Well, the wife has been bugging me about a lesion that I really can’t get a good look at. Letting it possibly grow for another two months is a bit worrying. I suppose I could push the matter and get in sooner. The real question is why all these medical practitioners should be shut down.
3. A couple of weeks ago, somebody stole my car. It was quickly recovered by the Alhambra police and returned to me–without license plates. I drove it directly to the Pasadena DMV, where I discovered that all the DMV offices are closed. Best I could do was download an application for new plates and mail it in. So the car is now parked on the HOA property. If I didn’t have a second car, I would be dependent on public transportation for anything out of bicycle range. And that wouldbe a health risk. : >)
There are, after all, options between doing nothing or destroying our economic system that is our ultimate life support.
Apologies for this overly long comment.
Izaak and “economists and insurance companies”
Value these:
A well educated 20 year old starting on her first job.
An 88 year old man with congestive heart disease.
A 66 year old neighbor with her own small business, now with zero income.
John,
that is easy. I am catholic and not an economist and I believe that all people have an immortal soul that is priceless.
So I am lucky that I am not a politician who has to make those calculations every day. The
government choose how to value lives all the time. What should speed limits be for example?
The faster they are set the more pedestrians die so you end up putting a higher value on the
lives of drivers than the lives of pedestrians. So how do you choose?
Well, it’s a good job that this immortal soul you believe in will survive death, bring immortal and all, eh? So no actual cost on the life, it’s all god’s will…
and value these:
sewage plant worker
trash collector
Because if we don’t have these, we are all dead of Cholera in 2 weeks.
Lockdown is not intended to save lives. Its intended purpose is to spread out the deaths over time.
Elderly people with chronic disease are the ones who die from this virus. They are already in the process of dying. That is the nature of progressive disease. If they do not get the Wuhan, they might die with the flu next fall, or next year, or the year after that. Social distancing will not give them eternal life. If that is what you want go to Jesus or Mohammed.
Your value of life rhetoric is just nonsense. Are you virtue signalling?
Metabolic syndrome, aka diabetes2 is the weak point here. It causes the low immunity and fatal complications. If you really care about lives, get people to change their diet. Reverse chronic disease. Either Ketogenic or low fat vegan.
Lockdown does not save any lives. It is an argument of misdirection. The virus will have to go through the population eventually.
My prediction at the beginning of this pandemic is that it would wipe out an entire generation of people wasting away in nursing homes. Statistics seem to bear this out.
I have another prediction. A majority of Americans have already been exposed to this virus and were either asymptotic or had a significantly milder reaction than full on Covid 19. Nursing homes were not where the virus originated. These were the most segregated members of society. They are the last to be exposed. Just my theory. This pandemic has already passed.
Billy,
A lockdown buys time. If it takes one year to develop a vaccine and a lockdown can prevent
a widespread epidemic until after that time then it could save millions of lives. Or alternatively
if you maintain a lockdown worldwide (almost certainly impossible) then the disease would
be completely elimiated and again would save countless lives. But having a localised lockdown
while the disease is widespread elsewhere is unlikely to save lives except but preventing an
overload of the medical system.
Izaak’
I stated that it buys time.
The US was already infected before the lockdown. It was too late.
The medical treatment of severe cases is of very limited effectiveness. Overload of the medical system is normal in an epidemic and makes little difference as the treatment doesn’t save the lives of the class of people who are dying. Eighty year old obese diabetic smokers are about to die any time even without an epidemic. The do not enjoy eternal life, lockdown or no.
Dr Fauchi has been working on a vaccine for sars for 17 years. Herd immunity will come before that. Nothing in nature procedes exponentially forever. The death rates are already declining on their own.
Lockdown does not save any lives. It is an argument of misdirection. The virus will have to go through the population eventually.
Exactly. The only advantage to putting that eventuality off is gaining time to build up the medical response to it. Pit that against the economic damage and do a cost benefit study to figure out if it’s worth it or not. The longer this goes on the more likely the “…or not…” answer becomes.
The
countryworld needs to go back to work.Exactly Steve
Cannot do a cost/benefit analysis on this website. Those kinds of things are verboten. How dare you claim that a life might not be worth $200,000,000.
This will likely get censored too.
I read it.
Guess it wasn’t censored.
Izaak,
There is a branch of economics called Welfare Economics, started centuries ago by old friend Pareto (many are familiar with his 80 – 20 rule of thumb). It deals with the problem of trade offs in situations where one side can be defined in money terms and the other valued differently.
“We” currently explicitly or implicitly make trade offs between spending and lives every day, even our own. We know for a fact that if the government mandated all interstate highways reduce speed limits to 45 mph we would certainly save lives (how many would be up for debate). Where and how many intersections do we protect with traffic lights? Did you buy that expensive automobile that had every available safety feature? (Which back in the day, used to be a big Volvo. If governments in 1960 mandated everyone drive a Volvo there would have been fewer traffic fatalities.)
In the question you pose, “insurance value” of a human life is worthless in these calculations (unless you are a National Health Service or Ezekiel Emanuel – excuse the snark).
On the other side the cost of the stimulus package is also worthless. It and it’s successors are filled with spending that has nothing to do either reducing the virus or it’s direct impact, or what is necessary for an economic recovery. (Kennedy Center millions is only one example.)
How do you evaluate the health cost of a prolonged lock down? If it drives the US into a depression with massive unemployment there are clearly going to be situations where more people will die compared to a pre-virus economy. All involve subjective estimates of one side of the trade off or the other.
There is no “formula” that will give you a black and white, numerical answer. It comes down to the knowledge and judgement of those we chose (or will choose) as leaders. In my opinion the US has been doing very well so far.
👍, George. Why is such common sense in short supply?
President Trump has been making a steady series of good (not perfect) decisions as situations and facts evolve. He will soon be making major decisions relating to opening up our society and economy. The decisions will be the result of a supremely complex agglomeration of facts, supposition, politics, mindset and intuition.
Given the prevalence of TDS in our major media outlets, there will be loud wailing and gnashing of teeth, no matter what. The Democrats in Congress will criticize, hold kangaroo court hearings and generally obstruct the President.
Given our Republican form of government, the States and localities will continue to implement any Federal guidance in various haphazard and politicized methods. Meanwhile, they will continue screaming to high heaven that the Federal government is not giving them enough.
History will tell; we can but grope around in finding the path, while ignoring the certitudes and nonsensical questions of the Izaacs among us.
Prior to the coronavirus our economy was doing very well. Trump was proud of that. When the virus showed up the medical experts told the president he would have to do things that would crush the economy or many many Americans would die. I’m sure he hated to squelch the economy but he opted to save lives instead of the economy. I don’t think I can fault him for that.
Also if an effective treatment or cure is found soon then the second wave will never happen.
One. … More. … Time. …
Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University
https://youtu.be/JBB9bA-gXL4
Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, Internist, Pneumologist, Social medicine expert, MD of Hygiene, environmental clinicist and former head of a German Health administration
https://youtu.be/p_AyuhbnPOI
Professor Knut Wittkowski, for twenty years head of The Rockefeller University’s Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design
https://youtu.be/lGC5sGdz4kg
Fascinating! Thanks.
One. … More. … Time. …
Promise?
He didn’t say ‘only’ one more time. Sorry…
syco,
When people refuse to hear the other side, multiple repetitions are in order, in various contexts.
Some might be tired of the other side, because they have already considered it, but, frankly, I’m tired of the fearmongering, so I’d like people to promise to get off THAT wagon.
If fear can have its multiple reps, then so can skepticism. I’m ill from the stupidity, NOT the virus.
I’m ill from the stupidity, NOT the virus.
Now see there, that’s just what I’m getting at Kernoodle. You’re all wound up . . . I can tell . . . and if I can tell, being me and all, well I’m sure the smart readers of WUWT can tell.
I’m worried about you, that’s all. No, “we” are worried about you. That’s why I said something.
xoxo
The “Perspectives on the Pandemic” series is very good. Different view points and it doesn’t matter if you agree or not with them. It is important to be aware of different views. It is healthy.
My main contention with all the views is that they are relying on what I consider unreliable data. Fudging the numbers, plus or minus, is done with the governments agenda in mind. All governments do it. I trust none of the data.
I fully agree
Oh, I trust the data. I just don’t trust what many people seem to think that the data means.
The data seems to be a very good record of the growth rate of testing.
Hey, I’m gonna start testing for people who have blue eyes. The first day, I do five tests, and I find 0 people with blue eyes. The second day, I do 20 tests — no blue eyes. The third day, I do 60 tests — low and behold, I find three people with blue eyes. CONCLUSION: A virus is causing people’s eyes to turn blue. Fourth day, 190 tests — oh God, seven people with blue eyes. CONCLUSION: The blue-eye virus is spreading. By the tenth day, I’m doing 500 tests, and I have found forty people with blue eyes. CONCLUSION: The virus that caused the first three people to have blue eyes has now spread to infect forty people.
Could it be that blue eyes already existed throughout the population, and the increased rate of testing merely showed an increased RATE OF DETECTION of something that was wider spread than the test could possibly reveal? In other words, rate-of-growth-of-detection does not indicate rate-of-growth-of-occurrence.
Do you have transcripts?
Best links by far and Prof Knut Wittkowski gives the clearest summation of the situation. But few listen (even on this site.)
This has to be the biggest ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusion and the Madness of Crowds’( read the book by Charles Mackay) ever witnessed in human history.
Thanks you Robert Kernodle
French Prof. Didier Raoult, a french politically incorrect scientist with sizable experience on the topic concludes that “so far in mankind history, no flu epidemics have survived summer”.
Which, given the colossal political and economic agendas involved in the process, could explain, alike in climate hysteria, the creation of urgency and consequently the need for on-the spot immediate binding decisions.
It’s like the “deal of the day” pre-owned car that would be there 2 weeks later at the back of the parking lot with an even a deeper “sale” price-tag.
Now, I’m not a medical doctor but what I know is that when “stuff hits the fan”, Aviate(keep fifi in the air), Navigate(keep going in the right direction), Communicate(self-explanatory) saves lives when performed in that specific order while panic surely kills all on board and some below.
It even slightly true. They all come back. I believe the Spanish flu pandemic came back twice, and worse than the first time, having mutated.
The Spanish Flu came back twice and worse than the first time?
I’d never heard that before. Was the 1918 (or so) the last time?
I don’t mean to sound like I’m questioning you personally but I do question.
PS A question for anyone that knows, how closely is the Spanish Flu to COVID-19?
(That is, the virus itself, not the effects.)
Dear Mr. Middleton,
..
Dallas is not representative of the United States of America.
…
Friday recorded 1953 deaths in the USA.
…
Elon Musk might need to hire an unemployed geologist for his Boring Company.
Dallas is not representative of the United States of America.
Thank goodness . . .
Amen to that… Nor is Dallas representative of Texas!
Anybody else notice that the further an urban population becomes from the ground that actually produces their food and their energy and minerals their cell phones are made of, the more they want the Government to “Save the Earth”?
Neither is New York City… Which isn’t even representative of New York State.
I think it would be a good idea to make an exception to the large crowd gatherings in Texas when it comes to churches and/or religious services. That way, the virus can spread among the faithful.
Henry, thanks for the drive-by bigotry and death wishes. Do you really consider that a “contribution” to the discussion?
May you have a blessed Easter.
That way, the virus can spread among the faithful.
Hey now! Look at the Hate on Henry!
Now doncha look super skeery in yer red onesie and multi-horned hat?
Looks like the “joke” is on you bubba, you’ve been infected with Middleton Derangement Syndrome for some time now . . . and it really shows.
Dear Mr. Pool,
On average 10,000 people die in this country every day, 365 days per year. Most of them are aged with a variety of ailments (although 2,300 per day are pre-born babies who get aborted). Most of the aged infirm who die have one or more common respiratory viruses present, which may or may not contribute to their final expiration.
This is just a fact of life and death in humanity. Respiratory viruses are ever present. Humans have evolved a host of defenses, and most healthy humans are quite resistant to the viruses. You yourself have had many colds and flus, each a different strain, and here you are, not dead yet.
Your desire to kill off church goers is perverse and disgusting, but in fact exposure to respiratory viruses is constant anyway, builds herd immunity, and would benefit those church goers and the community.
Conversely, acquiescence to authoritarian lockdown social distancing dictats will extend the “pandemic”, and the business collapse will do serious harm to the US and entire world economy. The virus won’t kill you, but the Coming Great Depression will screw your life up royally. You fool.
Most or at least many of the Worlds leaders are in the most susceptible groupings.
Older , travel more, high society socialising with similar people , even the serfs that serve them .
No wonder they want to close everyting down and protect themselves .
The single most critical metric, which is mostly absent from all the stories I have read about the pandemic so far, is, what is the median age of the dead? In Italy it was 78. Why is this statistic being left out of the stories about the pandemic? Because then the story would be, novel strain of pneumonia kills causes minor increase in mortality among elderly people. But no, the story has become, new disease threatens to kill millions of people in {your country.}
In my hometown (Edmonton, Alberta) a woman of 20 died of COVID-19. The medical officer who announced the death said that the young victim had no known co-morbidities. That is of course a long way from saying that she had no co-morbidities. The next question from journalists should have been, why don’t you know if she had no co-morbidities?
One 20 year-old dying of the disease is the anomaly that proves the rule that COVID-19 is fatal in the elderly, but only rarely in the young or the middle-aged. Of course, most people (who can be counted on to be innumerate) will think, see, anybody can die of COVID-19. Which is what the people fomenting the panic want everybody to think.
The only way to restore some measure of economic security to whole populations after this panic has passed will be increased applications of socialism. Look for abrupt rises in marginal taxation rates, for example. It’s not just that draconian shutdowns of commerce will cause economic contraction. The dumping of billions of dollars of gift money into people’s bank accounts will cause hyperinflation. It is not just income that will be destroyed. It will be accumulated wealth.
And what about the unemployed young? Bright, energetic young people just getting out of school will enter a society that has severely reduced opportunities for employment. What will they do? No one is giving that any thought right now.
Greta Thunberg must be loving this. “I want you to panic.” Well we are. She despise fairy tales of endless economic growth. Well, economic growth has been ended, perhaps for years. The coronavirus panic has made Greta’s fondest dreams a reality.
Ian,
There is no reason to think dumping “billions of dollars” will cause hyperinflation. After the
financial crisis of 2008 the US federal reserve printed trillions of dollars and gave them to the
banks, otherwise known as quantitive easing. The UK did the same and neither country experienced
any significance inflation and in fact the main problem was a lack of inflation. So printing a few
billions is not going to cause a problem.
The problem it will cause, and we’ve seen this before, is an over-valued stock market (bubble) that is crash-prone.
Nobody believes you anymore, Izaak. STFU.
Lifestyle factors need to be considered when examining cases of young people. Vaping, smoking, drug use can and do cause severe respiratory illness by themselves, and possibly more so with Corona-chan.
These existential crises will be the death of us.
Lomborg has a poignant point that the economic imperative will at some stage overwhelm the pandemic problem for which we were hopelessly unprepared-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-doctor-who-warned-boris-johnson-about-lack-of-protective-equipment-dies-from-covid-19/ar-BB12rIt3
Lockdown at present is essentially sacrificing the well being of the fit young and productive to save the aged and frail but it’s a double whammy for the former killing off their valuable medicos they need in normal times again. As a grandparent of a 3 year old and a 9 month old along with their parents generation I feel the price is too high and I’m not for mortgaging their future right here and now. OK boomers?
It brings out the ‘looney’ in many people. We currently have some woman going shopping with a plastic bag over her head. The police are more interested in breaking up groups of two than anything else. Reminds me of the song ‘the brave gendarmes’. There will be a reckoning for all politicians after this nonsense is over. A month before reelection is a good time to remind people of the politicians who were complicit in this chaos.
I’m ok in all of this because I own everything I have and am on an age pension with money in the bank, but as a misanthropist (more ‘don’t like’ people rather than hate them), I understand the pain that people feel from losing their jobs,freedom of movement, freedom of association. etc..
Alex, you are in the same situation as myself, and seem to have a similar mindset, and I agree.
One of the problems with ‘flattening the curve’ and delaying transmission right now is that this will give the virus a chance to mutate and perhaps come back next season with a vengeance, and maybe this time for the young. Just like the Spanish Flu did in 1918-1919. All my grandparents got the first first version of the Spanish Flu and when version 2 came the following fall they were immune, while normal healthy young people were dying left and right.
Virus’ tend to evolve to resistance and being more lethal until they burn out due to lack of new hosts to infect. Since this first version of the Wuhan Virus was relatively minor to normal young healthy folk, not allowing them to buildup herd immunity may come back to to bite us, really hard. This story hasn’t had the end written yet, and there is probably more to come, including major political upheaval and major civil unrest, globally. This is a major paradigm shift how the world works. We are still in shock with the economy locked down, and the cure is already much, much worse than the disease.
I feel sorry for President Trump who got bamboozled with models showing excess mortality in the millions. Of course, his out will be that the ‘experts’ said so, and while he would be right, I think he was more right a month ago when he said his gut feeling that killing the economy would be a major mistake. Many of us said here a month ago, isolate the old and infirm with some dignity, and let things unfold as they will. I don’t think we can justify delaying the inevitable, and the inevitable is yet to come. Unless we find a miracle treatment, and stop this beast in its tracks soon. Maybe, maybe not.
It is easy to say lock down and whine that I know that it hurts but it is really best for you. Mean while government the whiners seem to be unwilling to do the hard work of analyzing what works as a treatment for the virus. Write some SQL against a database that has the data regarding patient outcomes and treatments. Show the results realtime! Continuous Feed. Filter anyway the user would like. Certainly this could be accomplished with some portion of a trillion dollars and might indeed save some lives. Blindly locking down not so much.
You can write as much SQL as you like, but if the data are flawed, it’s useless.
Zig
Flawed? Try no data. So far the answer is to wring hands and suggest the sky is falling. At the price that hospitals get from Medicaid one would at least expect a requirement would be a treatment scorecard. So far not a hint of professional management.
Here is an option to remove the dichotomy of whether to save lives or save the economy.
Present data that shows how many people under the normal retirement age let’s say 65 for want of a cut off age, have died from the Sars cov 2 aska Covid 19 virus.
If that data shows the number in the working population who have succumbed is very low, let’s say less than 0.01% of the working population, then remove the lock down, restart the economy and save lives in both the short and the long term.
Those in the over 65 age group and mostly in retirement, can be advised they are at an increased risk if they contract the virus, as per normal with any virus, so they should practice self isolation if they feel anxious. As the vast majority over 65 are not economically active, that self isolation will have a small, probably immeasurable impact on the active economy.
We have climbed onto the back of the Tiger thanks to political “expert based” decisions, we have to find a way of climbing off. The sooner we take that risky but necessary decision, the better it will be for everyone.
Really the question is at what point will we save more lives by opening the economy than we will by continuing what we’re doing now. A dead economy kills just as surely as this pathogen. Despondency, suicides, drug and alcohol use, and crime all increase where there is no hope.