A Few Thoughts on the Way to the Cemetery
A pandemic does not mean we must choose between panic and recklessness
This is a new disease; there are no experts
Politics is inseparable from the disease
The numbers are largely useless
There are options besides panic and recklessness
This was written in the early days of COVID-19 hysteria. Unsurprisingly, it was taken down almost immediately and without explanation. Being me, I reposted it, only to see it again disappear.
It’s now abundantly clear that a lot of extremely powerful people were rooting for COVID. And while most of us schlubs regarded it as a disease, for both those opposed to individual liberty and those in favor of depopulation (often the same people), COVID was, in fact, a cure.
A few things to keep in mind while the reporters breathlessly proclaim our doom:
This is a new disease; there are no experts.
This fact is borne out daily as today's recommendations and projections contradict those from yesterday, which themselves contradicted those from the day before, and so on. The demand for reliable information so greatly exceeds the supply that we will uncritically accept statements made by anyone dressed in a lab coat. Consequently, we now have an informational pandemic greater than its viral counterpart.
And because this disease is new, literally no one knows about its long-term effects. Are there multiple strains? Do those infected develop antibodies or can they be reinfected?
If infection does result in antibody formation, self-quarantining and social distancing are likely preventing "herd immunity," which may be the best way of preventing the virus from continuously ravaging humanity. Are we therefore doing more harm than good with such safety measures?
Is it wise to "flatten the curve?" While doing so may prevent hospitals from becoming quickly overwhelmed for a short period, it may also require them to operate at high capacity for a much longer period at the expense of every other condition normally treated in a hospital.
Politics is inseparable from the disease.
As we head into an election year with a president whose reelection is (or was) pinned to the country's economic performance, a total collapse of the economy obviously has enormous political implications.
More significant, however, are the potential international ramifications. This virus has revealed a massive vulnerability (one of many) in the world's sole superpower, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the significant collection of countries, ideologies, foundations, agencies, and individuals who have for so long been salivating at the prospect of eliminating the United States as a world power.
And now, as we respond to this pandemic by committing economic suicide, releasing criminals while arresting pastors, and exchanging our hard-won liberties for politicians' promises of safety, it seems these nefarious entities may at last have the moment for which they have so long waited. We would be fools to think they will sit idly by and allow this opportunity to pass.
Further obscuring the truth is the WHO (World Health Organization), which is more invested in politics than health. Never a friend of the United States, this organization is utterly in the pocket of communist China, and has acted as its propaganda outlet since the outbreak began. Information from the WHO is so tinged with politics as to be a net liability.
The numbers are largely useless.
As stated previously, the projections continue to be revised, which is to say that they continue to be proven wrong. This should surprise no one as such projections are generated by models that are operating on bad data.
Because it was the virus' point of origin, China initially served as our primary source of data, and those data are still being fed into many (if not most) of today's models. But being a Communist government, all public information is nothing more than propaganda, which means the data are invalid and are therefore corrupting our projections. We are making the same mistake by trusting figures from Iran, whose regard for truth (and human life) is no greater than China's.
Furthermore, models are easily manipulated by ideologues and politicos. Those desiring a predetermined outcome will be able to produce it with sufficient manipulation of data and/or the assumptions inherent within the model itself, a fact recently alluded to by Dr. Fauci.
But one needn't have knowledge of or access to a computer model in order to manipulate statistics to fit an agenda. Doing so has been a staple of politics since time immemorial, and it is by no means absent from the present crisis. Conflation of reported infections (positive tests) with actual infections, for example, is just one glaring example.
For detailed analyses of the current statistics, see: "A Fiasco in the Making?" and "Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless."
There are options besides panic and recklessness.
Panic is no good. It turns rational people into wild animals who almost invariably lower their likelihood of achieving safety by pursuing it mindlessly. At the opposite end of the spectrum is recklessness which is equally mindless and self-destructive. Both approaches not only risk one's own wellbeing but also endanger the lives of others, so, clearly, neither is a good choice.
Fortunately, these are not the only options. In between the two poles of insanity lies a broad swath of possibilities for acting responsibly, and it's within this context of responsible living that we can have a healthy, productive debate about how best to live wisely in these times.
As a nation whose prominence is largely due to its ingenuity, we can doubtless find creative ways to contend with this crisis without sacrificing the lives and liberties of ourselves and our children. We are certainly more likely to emerge intact by relying on the incalculable knowledge and experience of 330 million citizens than by relying upon the guesswork of a few hundred politicians, whose primary skillset consists of public speaking and hand-shaking (both of which, incidentally, are completely useless during a pandemic).
Unfortunately, the reasonable path of creative self-reliance is not left open to us by politicians who, for reasons varying from caution to deviousness, seem to believe they have a greater claim to our lives than we ourselves do.
In summary
Finally, it's worth mentioning that there are an awful lot of people invested in promoting panic. As a result, groupthink abounds, and anyone with a dissenting view risks being labeled a "science denier" or some other equally meaningless term intended to prevent inquiry and debate.
But truth isn't scared of labels. It doesn't care about being cool. It's not influenced by fashions or swayed by sentiment. In the immortal words of Winston Churchill:
Truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
We're not likely to have the truth simply handed to us. If we really want to find it, we must go looking.