There’s nothing new about COVID-19 itself. The equally “novel,” equally “infectious” Asian flu of 1957 had similar fatalities in Britain: scaled to equal today’s population, the equivalent of 42,000, while the UK’s COVID death total (untrustworthy death total) now stands at 46,000. Globally, the Asian flu was far more lethal, causing between two and four million deaths. The Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 also killed up to four million people worldwide, including 80,000 Britts. Yet, in both instances, life went on. What is unprecedented: never has a virus been so oversold.
Want a few examples?
- In a recent poll, British respondents estimated that nearly 7 percent of the UK population has died from the coronavirus. That would be 4.5 million people.
- Scots thought that more than 10 percent of the UK population has died. That would be seven million people.
- Americans believed that COVID-19 has killed nine percent of their fellow residents or almost 30 million people! The real US total has crossed the milestone of 150,000, but for pity’s sake, “only” 20 million people died in World War One.
True, your average man and woman are not statistics-wizards. Nevertheless, broadcast news has pounded audiences daily with COVID-19 death totals. And a populace ought to have some idea of their country’s population. So folks convinced that in five short months they’d lost an eighth of their fellow “inhabitants.” But then, the public is never good with zeroes — a “citizenry” characteristic which nations in deficit count on.
Many worldwide “scholarly” writers are not immune to COVID-19 Hyperbole Syndrome. One British national writer stated this virus is “killing millions worldwide.” One would expect a plethora of editors and fact-checkers would have jumped on that claim immediately. But it was published, and millions read it. But the true worldwide death toll at the time was about 650,000.
I’m not one to “excuse” US or British editors for allowing something so ridiculous to scare to death millions of their citizens and millions more around the world. So let’s instead take those exaggerated numbers as proof of a grandly successful propaganda campaign. The UK is just ONE government that has destroyed their country, and need to keep ramping up the hysteria the better to keep destroying it. Honestly, several world leaders are doing a good job.
Do you tire of hearing groans from politicians and media “experts” that “nothing will ever be the same again?” Think about those complaints: have you heard any world leader on a national or international stage say, “COVID-19 is horrible, it is lethal, and it IS killing our citizens. But, if we work together, communicate constantly, and refuse to weaponize this horror for political purposes, we can get to the end of this?” If you have, you’re more fortunate than I.
When I was a kid, there was no MMR (“measles, mumps, rubella”) vaccine, and children were expected to get measles, mumps, chickenpox, and rubella: it was just going to happen. And I did! My parents or teachers never took cover or hid under desks. There were no school or business closings. Every kid I knew and I didn’t think much about it. It was just something that happened to kids. I know NOW that each of these was MUCH more serious than my parents made each appear. Today, things are much different!
Naturally, in my house, we also contracted flu and colds throughout my life (no flu for me, Thank God!) and I’ve been resigned to the fact that these disagreeable ailments were due to contact with other people. Abstractly, I’ve known that other people could also infect me with more deadly pathogens: whooping cough, meningitis, and TB, to name but a few. Yet before COVID-19, it’s never occurred to me that I should, therefore, wrap myself in cling film, tie a sanitary towel across my face and lock myself in a cupboard.
The more relentless these micro-managing policies of “social distancing” (an expression I’ve come to loathe), mandatory masks, continued closures and arbitrarily restored regional lockdowns apparently on the basis of a miserable uptick of 14 extra cases, the more we relocate what had lurked far at the back of our minds to the front: other people are sources of contagion — or so the EXPERTS say. We used to live with that fact. But this on-going risk of mixing with other human beings we’re now, apparently, to find intolerable.
Have you checked on New York’s current COVID-19 status? The medical paranoia is doing live and well at “full throttle,” and social life is nearly nonexistent. In the Big Apple, no one is visiting friends. Everyone is afraid of everyone else. If you see anyone coming out of an office or someone’s home or apartment, you can see the distress of “I may have caught COVID-19 from those in there!” I’d say you could see it on their faces except you cannot see their faces: that sterile-mask, you know. Of course, they grab that hand sanitizer from a pocket or purse and do everything but drink it to kill that crazy COVID-19 virus they picked up! It may not be any different next summer. Google, for example, has already advised its employees to work from home for the next 12 months.
The graph of new cases in the US roughly leveled off through August 9th and has even declined after a peak July 31, 2020, of 290,100 confirmed cases. Daily COVID-19 deaths leveled off on July 23 at just under 10,000 each day. Daily deaths have daily declined since by 50%: 4951 on August 9.
What Next?
So what should we do knowing all these numbers? Go back to school and work, lockdown once more, or just to “give it a go” being careful with social distancing, masks, and slapping sanitizer on everything around us? Usually, Americans would have been able to just turn to the experts, get the proven best practices to beat this virus, and valiantly go forward. Nope. We can’t do that now. Why? The “experts” agree on VERY little! And even what they all agree on has changed at least once but, in some cases, multiple times.
In trade for this valiant vigilance on our behalf, we merely have to sacrifice: our friends. Any new friends. All live performances — music, plays, restaurants. (ever try to drink wearing a mask?) We’ve lost all occasions, like proper weddings, funerals, birthdays, and extended-family celebrations, travel, and our friends. Any search for love in this environment is little more than Russian Roulette.
Our states have made taboo any moving communal experience, like festivals, sporting events, and church services. Casinos are fine as are marijuana dispensaries and abortion clinics. I almost forgot: Black Lives Matters in New York City have full permission to march, protest, and demonstrate, however, and as much as they wish. Dentistry. Honestly, with just a few exceptions, the bulk of our economy is pretty much at “full-stop.
What scarily remains on our nation table is another total national lockdown. Why on Earth? The one constructive conclusion to draw from this debacle is that extended, indiscriminate national lockdowns to suppress infectious diseases are a catastrophe. Yet the most horrifying consequence of COVID-19 could be that lockdown — which once applied only to prisons — becomes officialdom’s established knee-jerk response to any new contagion.
There will be a new contagion, too, and a new one after that. How many times can you send the national debt soaring, devastate a small business, paralyze government services — including healthcare — and cancel for months on end the civil liberties of an otherwise “free people?” In preference to this repeated carpet-bombing, a literal nuclear option might at least get the agony over pretty quickly.
Summary
Have you stopped to consider just how much money the federal government is spread around during the COVID-19 pandemic? Without having the numbers for the “nickel and dime” spending, we’ve “know” about $5-$6 Trillion in direct aid to Americans and American companies. Trying to find an accurate number that the pandemic has cost the nation’s overall economy. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers have not yet been published for the third quarter. So, for the sake of this conversation, let’s assume in dollars and cents COVID-19 has cost American businesses close to $4 Trillion. Let’s be “spending-generous” and add the COVID direct aid of $6 Trillion and the $4 Trillion of business and personal losses and say, just for grins, “COVID-19 has cost American taxpayers $10 Trillion through July 31, 2020.
Stay with me: I am headed down a VERY interesting path here — a really short path!
How many COVID-19 deaths have occurred as of July 31, 2020? 145,425 is the published number. For our purposes today let’s add another 55,000 deaths before we stop this death-spiral. That’s 200,000.
Where are we going with this?
Let’s do some math:
- 200,000 total U.S. deaths from COVID-19;
- $10 Trillion of U.S. taxpayer money spent in COVID-19 relief and stimulus;
If you factor the per/death cost to American taxpayers, the value is mindboggling: $50,000,000!
Think what these numbers do NOT include: the cost of healthcare for the extremely COVID-ill Americans that have fought for days and weeks and finally lost the battle. Hospital bills easily total $150,000 in many of these cases.
“Wait a minute, Dan: are you trying to put a price tag on any of these peoples’ lives to justify physician-assisted suicide somehow?”
I AM NOT!
What’s my purpose for publishing these numbers? I think it’s time for Americans to know EVERYTHING that goes into the costs of operating this country in every area: the REAL costs.
These stimulus and aid packages for Americans are not funded by transferring dollars in some “holding” account owned by the federal government. Two or three or four trillion dollars, when spent by Congress, are funded by little more than pieces of paper. For lack of a better term, we’ll call those pieces of paper “IOUs.” Someone will be required at some point in the future to pay the bill.
I am not a “Debt-Hawk.” I’m just a businessman that knows the trap called “Debt” kills more businesses and people than most diseases. I’m 67 years old. There’s no way in my lifetime I see any scenario in which this country buys back all those IOU’s plus paying the purchasers interest due. The repayment burden then falls to our children and grandchildren, then THEIR children and THEIR grandchildren.
How far will repayment fall? Will it get paid? CAN it get repaid?
All are questions that must be considered in situations where government deficit spending is under consideration for anything at any time.
I’ll finish by saying this one thing: if my Congressman heard that I was diagnosed having COVID-19 and my case worsened to the point of hospital intensive care treatment and called my wife and said, “Mary Ann, the medical professionals have advised us that Dan IS going to die. Did Dan express wishes to you in this case?”
Honestly, my wife already knows my wishes: I don’t want to live in a vegetative state and would instead move on over “to the other side.” I’d rather her hear from the Congressman, “Mary Ann, because Dan said he didn’t want to live in this situation, the government will pay you forty percent of the per person death cost to taxpayers for each COVID-19 death or $20 million.”
I know, I know, that’s REALLY extreme! Let me be clear: I DON’T believe in death panels, I DON’T want anyone to commit suicide. And I certainly don’t want any “Death Panel” empowered to determine when my life “should” be over. That’s not my reference here. What I am pointing out is the outrageous dollars our government has and will spend on COVID-19 in total during this pandemic is FAR beyond any acceptable amount. And there is NO similar historical pandemic in which such drastic financial measures have been taken anywhere on Earth.
I’ll wrap this up by simply saying that somebody needs to be paid a really generous sales commission for successfully foisting the biggest scam in history on the entire Earth. There is no doubt this virus is mysterious and unknown in many ways. It’s deadly and it has killed and will kill millions more. But so has numerous other historical pandemics. And in none of those did any government take actions as has this government during this pandemic.
Who is the “COVID-19 Circus Ringmaster?”
I have no idea. But I guarantee that there is one.
He or she have put together a really GOOD circus!
