One of the few lessons of this episode is that there are almost always unintended consequences of decisions. Sometimes those consequences are worse than the situation we sought to remedy. The other point, relevant here, is that sometimes we ARE the problem and our thinking we can "technologically" get ourselves out of a problem, IS the problem.
As the Last Poets said: The White Man has a God complex.
So lets understand WHY we got into lockdowns in the first place so we understand why we need to get out of it.
The Wuhan virus started in China. The Chinese freaked out. Why? China has a population of 1.4 billion people. China also has a lot of air pollution. Air pollution means that the Chinese people are susceptible to respiratory problems(1,2). Now since the Wuhan virus is a [mainly] respiratory disease that invokes and/or is "attracted" to inflammation, this put the Chinese people at a high risk of severe cases and deaths. In some cases the Wuhan virus had a 10% IFR. If the entire Chinese population got infected and 10% died you're talking 140 million dead people. That's about half the entire US population.
So in the face of a new disease that wasn't understood, China panicked. Due to the internet, this panic went worldwide as people started telling people in other parts of the world. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Over the weekend I posted a video that mentioned that the Wuhan virus was seen in Brazil back in Nov 2019.
So we know that by the time the March lockdowns occurred, seeding of the rest of the world had been going on for at least four months.
In that time we saw China massively lock down a province. Then we saw Italy go ballistic with massive infections and deaths. What was it about Italy? Well turns out the epicenter in Italy, northern Italy was also an air pollution problem location They also have a massive amount of Chinese residents.
This population of Chinese is important because we know that the Chinese allowed international flights to leave its affected areas. So for months Chinese nationals (and other tourists to China) were seeding infections all across the globe.
Back in January I knew something was afoot because I noticed a significant lack of Asians in casinos. Chinese love to gamble. Baccarat tables are usually packed with them. Attendance was way down. At that point I decided on an enhanced disinfectant protocol for my visits. I sanitized every station I used and changed visiting times to when there were less people around.
Once the virus became public knowledge I surmised that it had already been in the US for some time, that far more people had and are infected than the authorities knew and that most attempts to stop it would be fruitless. And this was before it was known to be in circulation in November (note: I was sick in Nov and believe I picked up whatever it was IN a casino).
Soon thereafter NY blew up in cases soon followed by NJ. I was completely not surprised by this. NYC alone receives half a million Chinese visitors per year. NYC alone got 13.5 million international visitors in 2018. In other words, the populations of some countries simply visits NYC. And that's ONE city on a CONTINENT.
So every time I see someone chattering about so and so country with a population less than the number of visitors to NYC, having "beat the virus", I know they are full of shit because there is no way to compare the US with any little island country. By the time Feb rolled around there were already hundreds of thousands of cases, the "contain it" ship had long sailed and disappeared over the horizon. They, being those in charge, just didn't realize it.
So cases piled up and people started dying. Indeed there was little information on how to treat those who got severe cases. This induced a panic mentality. Fair enough, it was early and information was limited. We didn't know that ventilators were essentially death machines. We didn't know that simple things like rolling patients onto their stomachs, helped. We didn't quite understand that the triggering issue for most of the severe cases was inflammation which affects ACE-2 and CD-146 expression. The latter being affected by diabetes and obesity the leading co-morbidity. We also did not know that severe vitamin D deficiency was a factor is nearly all severe cases of the Wuhan virus.
We also were in the early phases of learning that HCQ + Zinc-Sulphate + Antibiotic was an effective EARLY intervention, in the proper dosage. We also didn't know yet that certain inhaled steroids were effective as well.
So with a lot of deaths and little knowledge it certainly appeared that we could have a serious capacity problem. So states started locking down. I get that and actually supported that. What was the goal supposed to be?
We were told, and generally agreed to, that we need to "flatten the curve" Why? Because we needed to expand capacity to treat patients. It was NEVER about eliminating the virus or the spread thereof. It was controlling the capacity. Yes I'm repeating myself because you need to understand this. It was NOT about case elimination!!!!! I cannot stress this enough. a flattened curve only spreads out the cases and deaths.
The goal was to literally buy time (ended tax revenue for the time of lockdown) to expand capacity such as the use of the Javits in NYC, the Central Park hospital, etc. Once this capacity was created the lockdowns were supposed to be over. What happened?
Well a couple of things. Firstly, in the US the virus was politicized as a weapon against Trump. Early on Trump banned travel from China and was called racist. His mistake was also not banning flights from Italy and UK. I'm not going to clean that up for him. Then we had Pelosi in California at a Chinese New Year rally saying there was nothing to fear. In NYC they did the same thing. The only thing to fear, they said, was Trump's xenophobia. You won't hear any of THAT nonsense now and they would more than happy for you to forget that.
The second thing was the god complexes that many of the current leadership has. They liked that they could control so much via "emergency" orders. NJ governor Murphy famously said that the Constitution was "above his pay grade" on a national TV program. In other words, damn your rights, WE (the government) control.
In Michigan the governor went so far as to say you couldn't buy seeds.
Many of these people in leadership positions were also subject to guilt tripping. "You want to kill grandma!!" became the phrase of choice to those who wanted to impose all kinds of nonsense. This was closely followed by "you first" for anyone questioning the extended lockdowns. People who are susceptible to guilt tripping are bad leaders. Leadership often entails making very unpopular decisions. If one is constantly trying to be "popular" then clearly making such decisions is nigh impossible.
So the unpopular decision, particularly for the panic crowd was that once the capacity was created was to re-open the society completely. None of this half-assing. Cases would have gone up (as they are anyway) but the difference would have been that we know more now about mortality and treatments than we did back in Jan/Feb. Those who were sick should stay home (heck, let the government pay them to stay home). Anything other than an N95 mask is useless for those not sick and not in regular contact with sick persons. As a matter of fact I'll go out on a limb and say that if you've been in any enclosed space for hours while NOT wearing an N95 mask, you've probably ALREADY been infected and don't or didn't know it. This is particularly true of multi-family dwellings with central air.
Now I'm not saying NOT to wear a mask. I believe in individual liberty and the responsibility of the individual to protect themselves. If you feel that wearing a mask makes you feel safer for whatever reason, please do so. If you feel that hiding out in your house or apartment makes you feel safe, knock yourself out. If you feel that you're not safe in a mall, movie theatre, etc. 100% stay away from those places. Give people the information, not propaganda and let them do a risk assessment for themselves. Instead we have fear mongering. People getting into fights, killing people over mask wearing. We have various states deploying government agents wandering the streets looking to bankrupt citizens for simply walking around breathing the air no one owns into their body that the government has no power over.
Then you have the people that think that this is some kind of movie where in two shakes a vaccine is going to show up, 100% effective. These things rarely go that way. Worse, many of them say that things cannot go back to "normal" until there is a vaccine. Seriously? If this was an Ebola level virus I could understand this. I certainly would make MAJOR changes to my life if this was an Ebola level event. Yo, you do NOT want any parts of Ebola. The Wuhan virus is nowhere near as deadly. Things can go back to normal right now. The Wuhan virus is one with a current 3% global fatality rate. This means on a global scale you have a 97% chance of recovering from a COVID infection. Of the current active cases (per Worldometer) 99% of the current 6 million active cases are mild (sore throat, cough, low grade fever).
1% of current active cases are serious (pneumonia, high fever, blood clotting issues, etc). 1%. In other words, if you get infected right now, you're 99% likely to have no symptoms whatsoever to maybe a low fever. This is not something you shut down peoples lives and livelihoods for. And most certainly you don't wait for a vaccine.
So we have Sweden and New Zealand as two examples at polar ends of the debate (which we shouldn't even be having). New Zealand has claimed eradication. Fine. They also have locked themselves off from the rest of the world. It means that their population only has whatever natural immunity was present prior to the outbreak. So long as they are isolated, they remain susceptible to Wuhan and every and any other Corona viruses that comes out in the future. They may find themselves in the situation of the Star Trek character. Worse, those citizens may be unable to travel anywhere else in the world, lest they get sick. Also they may be subject to rolling lockdowns as sporadic cases arise from those arriving in New Zealand to deliver goods.
On the other end we have Sweden, Sweden did not do lockdowns. They did restrict groupings. Other than that, no mask mandates, no school closures (official), no locking citizens in their homes under penalty of law. They had a relatively large hill of deaths but are now down to zero and 2 deaths a day depending on the day.
The very fact that Sweden has achieved this without lockdowns undermines ANY argument in the US for continued lockdowns. The only reasons for lockdowns at this point is politics and power plays.
So again, the lockdowns need to stop. Now. The increased capacity should stay online heading into the fall mostly because we have already wasted over half the summer. What should have happened in May the latest, was a full reopening and go the Sweden route. since 99% of people will have mild symptoms and NOT DIE or have long term complications, let it run through the country during the warm weather months when Influenza is largely dormant. If the Sweden model holds, the cases and deaths would drop to near zero by late August and we could avoid a Influenza +COVID winter of 2020-2021. Right now we are on track for not only Influenza+ COVID but another lockdown come Nov-Dec. Don't say you weren't warned.
Now I'll get into the theorizing. I don't think what's going on is accidental. What do I mean? When 9-11 happened the powers that be saw an opportunity for a power grab and took it. The growth of state power after 9-11 was huge. Surveillance of everything you do on the internet, telephony, etc. No one says that what happened on 9-11 was fake or didn't happen. But there are those who saw those as opportunities to gain power while a panicked public was willing to go along. The Wuhan virus has a very similar profile. Yes the virus is real. Yes the risks of infection are real. But the response to it is unprecedented in opportunities for governments to exert more control and private to profit.
Below is a video that discusses this angle: