Chances are if you consider yourself a Conservative, Republican, Libertarian, or even, a Moderate Democrat, all of us were “on board,” so to say, with the initial fifteen days to stop the spread. Bonded by love of America, our fellow citizens, and united together against our unseen and unknown enemy, we acquiesced to restraints on our rights—for a limited duration. That was over 300 days ago. If you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile, so they say. Worse yet, our rights have not returned in totality; nowhere close. How times have not changed.
That is, unless you’re a Democrat in power. Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, Lori Lightfield, and many more this week have, coincidentally, changed their tune on the validity and efficacy of lockdowns. For government actors, good on them, they have recently discovered a complex subject called “costs.” Moreover, even more coincidentally timed, a “new” international study today, documented by Newsweek, discussed how there is no clear benefit between lockdowns and other, voluntary measures.
As if we needed the heavy hand of government to tell us how to act. Do we really ever?
Since last March, however, we have come to learn more about our unknown enemy. One important factor, not touted very much in the media, is the 98.5% survival rate. Which, and I feel most of us recognize, does not mean that out of every 100, 1.5 die. One important statistic not ever talked about in the media is the deaths per 1,000,000, which is 1,213. Boiled down to the better-known measure, per 100,000, it is 12.
This week, a book came out, which I have been eagerly anticipating for awhile, The New Great Depression, by James Rickards. Just give him a DuckDuckGo to look at his stellar curriculum vitae. To discuss it here would take its own column, one longer than this quick one. However, I recommend all his books.
Rickards details deliberately and accurately summarizes all of what we have witnessed since COVID-19 became the new Black Plague, when discovered in Wuhan, China, since November 2019. This column demonstrates some of the major points, along with further analysis.
Time and time again, we have heard our politicians in power compare COVID-19 to the Spanish Flu of the early 20th Century. Reason by analogy is one of the weaker forms of logical persuasion, it is useful mainly in introducing people to new subjects. There are always holes in the logic.
The major holes in the analogical comparison of COVID-19 to the Spanish Flu are…everything. In 1918, the world’s population was 1.9 billion. This pandemic infected over 500 million. Or around one-quarter of the population. Moreover, it killed over 100 million, according to most estimates. That means the Spanish Flu almost killed 1/20th of the population while infecting one in four people.
As of today, COVID-19 has infected 94,134,261 and, reportedly killed 2,013,875. The 2020 world population was 7.794 billion. That means COVID-19 has infected 1.2% of the population and killed .02%. Actual comparison to the Spanish Flu, what those in media love to tout, is not a comparison at all, when data and facts are brought into the matter.
Sure. I wholeheartedly concede, of course, the improvements in life, medicine, and all else since then would, likely, dramatically improve today’s response to the Spanish Flu. But should not those improvements also convert over to the responses by politicians in power to our response to a pandemic?
None of this is to disparage the loss of life. None of this is to say there should not be precautions—we all take precautions when we are sick. But what are the effects of all the lockdowns, and not just the economic ones? What we have seen since is massive civil unrest, to put it lightly, the beginning of an economic collapse, and much more.
Media has been a major malfeasance in the hysteria that we see all over the country and world regarding responses to COVID-19. Every day, we are hammered with the negative, never the positive, like it does not exist. As more and more comes out regarding the over response to it, none of the media will suffer the consequences—average Americans will. At first, we were told we needed to flatten the curve.
But how come no one in the media talked about the entire curve? Then, it was stated, that if we locked down, we would suffer the same amount of deaths, or more, compared to not locking down and quickly getting to herd immunity—which was the one response that actually showed the ability to lessen death in the long-run and without a vaccine. Why choose the path of more death from a virus, not to mention all the indirect deaths and detriments of locking down.
Due to malfeasance and a botched response on many sides to this pandemic, America has lost over 60 million jobs and three trillion in economic output. Economic output is not just numbers. It is lost jobs, lost livelihoods, people going into depression, dependency on the government, and much more. We have seen the ramifications of this for the last nine months. Crisis centers seeing unprecedented increases in use. Addiction rates skyrocketing. Major massive riots. Demands for total control by the government.
Ironically, a certain three-letter agency likes a playbook like this and has used it for foreign nations to dramatically change the regimes. Civil unrest. Check. Economic collapse. Check. Color warfare. Check. A created crisis not wasted. Check. A new government, well, almost check.
