We are in the midst of a cold-virus pandemic. As of March 31, its worldwide mortality ratio is 4.9% and 1.9% in the U.S. Both of these mortality ratios lie within the range of mortality from seasonal influenza epidemics of recent years, which range from fractions of a percent (U.S.) to upwards of 5%. Thus, the 1,012 and 451 deaths caused by Sweden's previous two flu seasons accounted for 4.9% and 3.3% of confirmed cases, respectively. The mortality ratio of Sweden's current COVID-19 epidemic falls exactly midway between these flu percentages, at 4.1% (180 dead of 4,435 confirmed cases, March 31 figures). In all these cases, the age distribution of risk of dying from the virus is similar, being concentrated in the elderly and those with otherwise compromized health status.
According to these numbers, we appear to be dealing with a viral infection that, as far as its deadliness is concerned, lies within the range of previous years' flu epidemics, apparently with a more aggressive respiratory profile than we are used to, but not with exceptionally high mortality. Yet neither in Sweden nor anywhere else did the seasonal flu epidemics of past years, with mortality ratios comparable to the current pandemic, lead to lockdowns or other drastic measures.
Were the lives of the elderly and those with otherwise compromized health worth less in previous years than they are now? No, instead, it appears that, unlike the epidemics of recent years, this one has been accompanied by a worldwide mass panic. It drives drastic measures imposed on whole populations, measures that vary from country to country, but which everywhere are adopted without a basis in knowable and foreseeable consequences as far as social disruption and economic devastation are concerned.
At this point, we have no idea whether one or another society, perhaps the one in which we live, is capable of weathering proplonged imposition of these government-mandated measures, because no precedent exists for such a course of action in modern times. In figurative terms, we are in the process of jumping off a cliff in order to avert deaths that only one year ago were considered the regrettable toll of the seasonal flu.
The panic originated in the same place as the virus: China. After having failed to suppress news of the Wuhan outbreak despite trying, the Chinese dictatorship had to save face by showing that it was in full command of the situation. To do so, it resorted to means that only a dictatorship has at its disposal in ordinary times: storm-trooper tactics under imposition of what amounts to martial law. The rest of the world, seeing leaked photos and footage of the rampage, concluded that this must be a terribly dangerous virus because such drastic measures are needed to combat it. As the figures in my introductory paragraph tell us, that conclusion is based not on the behavior of the virus, but on the behavior of the Chinese dictatorship. Rattled by the Chinese example, the rest of the world, acting on a false estimate of the danger it faced, responded as if the bubonic plague were knocking on its door.
Hard on the heels of the Chinese example came model-based predictions from epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and his COVID-19 Response Team at Imperial College London. His "worst case" scenario predicted 510,000 deaths in Britain and 2.2 million dead in the U.S. With the Chinese images fresh in mind, it was Ferguson's worst-case scenario, rather than his caveats and cautions, that gained public attention and helped legitimate drastic and unprecedented peacetime measures to combat the virus. In this climate, the British government revised its strategy to conform more closely with the Imperial College team's recommendations. The day after this was done, Ferguson presented drastically revised estimates of expected mortality in testimony to a U.K. partliamentary committee.
The sudden change from a no-intervention scenario of 510,000 dead to a "current measures continued" estimate of 20,000 dead was not, however, solely the result of the expected effectiveness of the measures adopted by the British government. What non-pharmaceutical interventions could be that effective?
No, it involved a revision of the crucial "basic reproduction number" of the Imperial College model, forced by European data indicating a faster spread than assumed in the original model.
Government policy influenced by models whose predictions can change by a factor of 25 from one day to the next is a reality that is most uncomfortable to contemplate. The fact that predictions from such fickle models find their way into government policy affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions is ominous.
No, Mr. Boomer, We’ve Run Out of God Pills...
by Tom Luongo
Government Overreach Is Taking Away Your Freedom
This also allows the government to ramp up surveillance for the "greater good." The power of fear and propaganda are powerful tools in the manipulation of general consensus. This is one of the main flaws in a democracy, it allows a simple majority to force their desires upon a minority. This is why our forefathers set checks and balances in the Constitution, however, even these do not guarantee freedom will remain. Today, the burden of risk and skin in the game is not equally shared by all. Over time our financial system and institutions have been corrupted by crony capitalism and a political system that panders to the masses by exchanging favors for baubles.
It could be argued that those in power don't have to take away our freedom by force if we are willing to surrender it or trade it for a few paid weeks off work. Nor do they have to be fair in how they go about this if they simply get a majority of the populace to go along with their plan. Call it what you want, a stay at home order or a general quarantine, but it all comes down to the same thing government control of your movement.
If you wonder just how far enforcement of this lock-down has gone, in some areas under lock-down, some law enforcement agencies are using high-tech equipment such as drones to spy on people. When city services apps are getting turned into glorified versions of DHS's tools it is a huge sign we know we have a problem. In some areas, they are now urging neighbors to turn into government snitches by asking residents to report violations of the “stay home” order. The government's role during this situation should be to inform us and provide us with the facts we need to know, this is an area where they have failed. Instead, they have flip-flopped spreading confusion and fear.
In Los Angeles, the Mayor has even announced that the city would reward those willing to turn in violators. Associated Press reports in a recent article that some people are happy, even enthusiastic to comply and report on their neighbors. Sadly, when law enforcement encourages Americans to turn against each other we all lose. We become a nation controlled by fear and suspicion. Over time this sort of action is bound to add to distrust between neighbors and damage social cohesion. It could be argued that stay at home is just "newspeak" or another word for curfew. In his writings, George Orwell warned of the slippery slope towards totalitarianism and if citizens to not push back it is our future.
by Tom Luongo
I can see you using the pandemic of COVID-19 to run the table on holding onto power while your institutions fail.
It is obvious that by either design or acting opportunistically this pandemic has become your casus belli on us, to usher in a new world based on total surveillance, total compliance and control.
You’ve used fear over a bug to induce mass hysteria at a level that is difficult to contain. After more than two generations of marginalizing the masculine and amplifying the feminine the Progressive deification of trained experts which you turned into ‘believe all women’ to push identity politics has reached its zenith.
This has now reverted back into ‘believe all smart people’ in the minds of your useful idiots who retweet exponential growth curves they don’t understand and take as gospel truth your antipathy to curing this virus.
Thanks to this mass induced insanity we have a society that is uncomfortable with the risk of living thanks to a Nanny State that is more Oedipal Mother than the usual Abusive Father.
The riskless systems you’ve deluded us into building for your benefit over-invested in the wrong kinds of insurance; social safety nets that are now overwhelmed to the breaking point and are soon to be revealed as just another failed bribe.
While the kinds we need, medical infrastructure, don’t have a dime’s worth of spare capacity when risk actually rears its ugly head, because you extracted that out in all your laying off the risk.
From the beginning, the threat from COVID-19 wasn’t about the virus itself but about its added strain to already over-strained medical systems. These are the mismanaged and malinvested systems of either full-on state control like in your paragon of Europe or Byzantine regulatory strata designed to eliminate competition and drive up pricing known here as Obamacare.
And now you’re going to use your own failures to scare us into accepting the worst kinds of intrusions into our lives. You’re going to lock out dissidents who refuse to get a medical passport and Bill Gates’ ID2020 chip.
It’s like all of a sudden Gates has emerged as the high priest of Spiritual Boomerism. We need this as the first stage of preparation for the next virus coming our way.
Because, you know, risk.
We’ve gone from a fairly normal world to an episode of Black Mirror in a month. And in your unbelievable hubris you think we’re all going to just go along with it because of a fucking cold and a four-year old TED Talk?
Do you really think we’ve become such ball-less eunuchs to think that this worship of blue-check marked, official smart people is the key to humanity’s future in dealing with the risks of being alive?
Because we can see you crapping your pants on TV, by the way. That is, when we decide to tune in for a few minutes to see if you’re still there.
But looking at the numbers it’s clear we’re not watching your doom porn anymore and we’ve got a whole lot more time on our hands to wonder why in the hell we spend 70 hours a week on a hamster wheel to pay the most onerous taxes in human history for a few leftover slips of green paper you treat worse than people treated toilet paper before the Coronapocalypse.
Faith in government is failing at every level. The continued false thesis that China’s death toll is only around 4000 people because they locked everyone down is meant to be the antithesis to the U.S.’s less top-down approach where now the death toll in New York alone is more than three times those that died on 9/11.
And this full court press for global government in the name of stopping a disease is ludicrous.
Because when you step back from those growth curves and put down the crack pipe full of noradrenaline if we hadn’t named it, if you hadn’t instructed the media to create mass hysteria most people in the world would just see it as another really bad flu season.
Because that’s the reality of the numbers at this point.
And had your financial markets not crapped the bed, you would be lying to us still about the severity of this virus.
So issue your diktats all you want. Push for your post-COVID Utopia of driverless cars, bug burgers, biometric conduct codes and rights-denying vaccination profiles.
Go for it. Honestly, we aren’t listening anymore. You lost your cache with us because your first instinct in any crisis is to lie to us. And now we don’t believe you about frankly anything.
Because after decades of lying to us about everything we’re asking the simple question, “Why would you be telling us the truth now?”
When someone as mild-mannered as Scott Adams is now talking functional anarchy to his millions of followers, you have a real problem.
In about a week, if the government hasn't given us a credible #coronavirus back-to-work plan, we need to make our own schedule with our own criteria. My patience for obeying a government that refuses to inform us of the basics (healthcare supply and demand) is nearing an end.
That’s the voice of the normies talking, not some cis hard-right, racist, libertarian, Nazi, nationalist climate denier.
So, you’d better start wondering just how many button pushers you actually have to shock us back into the bread line.
But you already know in your hearts there aren’t enough.
And make no mistake, no matter how powerful you think your databases are we will never thank you for handing us back the bread you stole from us. They are not your magic God Pills. They are simply second rate Viagra bought from a liquor store in a now-destitute Mexican resort town.
I really don’t think you understand just how much anger there is out there or you wouldn’t be playing this card now. And I’m not talking in Flyover Country but in your backyards.
Government Overreach Is Taking Away Your Freedom
This also allows the government to ramp up surveillance for the "greater good." The power of fear and propaganda are powerful tools in the manipulation of general consensus. This is one of the main flaws in a democracy, it allows a simple majority to force their desires upon a minority. This is why our forefathers set checks and balances in the Constitution, however, even these do not guarantee freedom will remain. Today, the burden of risk and skin in the game is not equally shared by all. Over time our financial system and institutions have been corrupted by crony capitalism and a political system that panders to the masses by exchanging favors for baubles.
It could be argued that those in power don't have to take away our freedom by force if we are willing to surrender it or trade it for a few paid weeks off work. Nor do they have to be fair in how they go about this if they simply get a majority of the populace to go along with their plan. Call it what you want, a stay at home order or a general quarantine, but it all comes down to the same thing government control of your movement.
If you wonder just how far enforcement of this lock-down has gone, in some areas under lock-down, some law enforcement agencies are using high-tech equipment such as drones to spy on people. When city services apps are getting turned into glorified versions of DHS's tools it is a huge sign we know we have a problem. In some areas, they are now urging neighbors to turn into government snitches by asking residents to report violations of the “stay home” order. The government's role during this situation should be to inform us and provide us with the facts we need to know, this is an area where they have failed. Instead, they have flip-flopped spreading confusion and fear.
In Los Angeles, the Mayor has even announced that the city would reward those willing to turn in violators. Associated Press reports in a recent article that some people are happy, even enthusiastic to comply and report on their neighbors. Sadly, when law enforcement encourages Americans to turn against each other we all lose. We become a nation controlled by fear and suspicion. Over time this sort of action is bound to add to distrust between neighbors and damage social cohesion. It could be argued that stay at home is just "newspeak" or another word for curfew. In his writings, George Orwell warned of the slippery slope towards totalitarianism and if citizens to not push back it is our future.
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