The Trough of Craziness Only Gets Deeper

[XLFD]

Things will only get more crazy until insanity is no longer sustainable.

This was a prediction I made this week due to the unprecedented hysteria fostered by governments and the media over the coronavirus scare.  The new round of hysterics has the governor shutting down bars and restaurants effective 3 PM today.  This followed her order to close all state schools, sporting events, and congregations of over 250 last week and various other 'social distancing' tactics in order to halt the spreading of the new pandemic.  

Yet, its more of a pandemic of fear, the virus itself is actually a lot less harmful than the Spanish flu in 1918 which killed 25 million worldwide in just 25 weeks.  If school-age children get this virus, which seems rare, it has very little effect on them.  The only relevant reason for shutting down schools is not to protect the children, but the adults who come in contact with the children.

For non-school age children, the deaths by the 2019-2020 strand of influenza has the highest hospitalization rates CDC has on record for these age groups, surpassing rates reported during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.  The death toll has been over 22,000, but our government and media has their focus only on the coronavirus with much smaller numbers all around.   

Such drastic actions taken by our governor and others without question by most of the media, who seem eager to egg them on to take even more action, has induced panic among the masses which has led to the rushes on stores and the panic buying of toilet paper, bottled water, etc.  This has led to the empty shelves in stores that are generally associated with communist and socialist countries, and this is precisely because the government's actions in this case (and their lapdog media minions) have been in line with strong-arm socialist dictatorships.

Governor Whitmer's latest executive order will close down restaurants, cafes, coffee houses, bars, taverns, brewpubs, distilleries, clubs, movie theaters, indoor and outdoor performance venues, gymnasiums, fitness centers, recreation centers, indoor sports facilities, indoor exercise facilities, exercise studios, spas, libraries, museums and casinos.  Drive-thru and take-out service is still allowed to some degree, for now. 

This is madness.  This is what socialism is.  What you see happening is a direct result of a government usurpation of the private sector under the guise of public health and safety.  These types of 'preventative' actions by our government should not be tolerated in a free society and free market system as ours purports to be.  They act against the public health and safety.

Freedom is befouled with a contagion that we must fight against to preserve the health of our national body.  Neither COVID-19, socialism, nor the inherent insanity that incubated our current state of affairs, will last very long with a host healthy enough to fight it off.

[Freedom Seeker]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/16/woman-buys-sc...

The U.S.A. Today article in the link above talks about an elderly couple in Oregon that were too afraid to go into a grocery store. It's sad.  Is it media hype  or is it a necessary fear for older people?  Why are these restrictions being used in this epidemic and not previously in worse outbreaks, like the regular flu, the SARS or MERS in recent times?

[AQUAMAN]

On Sunday, the news was being alerted every hour or less on several other Governors also going ape on shut-downs, and that's never happened before in my lifetime either. I think the whole situation appears really overblown and getting totally out of control now. Dow is tumbling again, about -3,000 pts. today too. POTUS also had a news conference today, one point was that this curve may not flatten out until July or August, sad. Airlines and many other industries are going to suffer badly during this chaos. I hope it gets under control sooner than later, worst news isn't when you're out doing something, it's on the TV and Internet that most of the bad news is being spread all over.

[Freedom Seeker]

True, Aguaman. Feeling like a prisoner with only bad news to watch on TV. Wonder what the mental depression impact will be during this crisis? Maybe the best thing is to get out and hike in the fresh air and sunshine and turn the TV off.

[Willy]

Good topic X and comments from all. I had host of comments about this virus and was going to post them but I ran across this video and it states basically what I have read about it all along. Why is this common sense and knowledge not broadcast throughout America? Can anyone say, corrupt media.

Paul Casey, MD, chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center, addresses common questions and concerns about the coronavirus

https://www.rush.edu/patients-visitors/coronavirus-disease-2019-cov...

[Willy]

What worries me is that we have just shown China, Russia and our other enemies just how easy it is to shut down America. Not only how easy but how it can be done. I do not listen to or watch the regular media on TV or on the radio. This morning I decided to turn on the morning talk shows on TV. I was amazed. Both NBC and CBS had large banners in the background with corona virus messages. One said "Coronavirus - Pandemic". The other said "Coronavirus- countdown" or something similar. While driving around the State I hear radio stations talking about the "corona virus crisis". Any person who can think rationally should understand that the press is controlling this situation by blowing it out of proportion and using it as a political tool to help the Democrats for the next election just as they have done with the Trump Russia investigation and the Trump impeachment. If this turns out to be a nothing burger how will people take any true future fatal pandemic seriously. When this virus runs it's course with very little damage to the human population but huge damage to the economy the next thing out of their mouths will be," see, if we hadn't taken these drastic measures we would have had a catastrophe". No matter which way it goes they will be covered. My advice to anyone reading this is to "STOP WATCHING THE MAIN STREAM NEWS"
 

[XLFD]

Both China and South Korea seem to be on the recuperative side of the bell curve as regards the coronavirus.  China seems to have had the worst of it after about a month, but have went down dramatically with new cases, South Korea had a cycle of about a month's duration.  I presume this will be a pattern that will continue among most countries that develop precautionary procedures, even if they do not go to the extreme.  

Willy has compared our flu season with COVID-19 season.  China has had 81,000 cases of COVID-19, 3200 deaths in a population of 1,408,000,000 this will likely be close to the virus' full extent.  In the USA with a scant 331,000,000 population, we have had an estimated 44,000,000 cases of flu, with about 40,000 deaths from flu for this season.

Coronavirus is a legitimate health concern, but it doesn't merit the politicization and weaponization that the mainstream media and many on the left have attributed to it, and it doesn't merit many of the extreme measures being taken. 

[Robert Howards]

Hi, by doing the math and using the flu, I get an estimated 782,342 deaths caused by covid19, if allowed to run its normal path as with the flu.

116 deaths divided by overall of 6524 cases in the US equals .017 multiplied by 44,000,000 equals 782,342.

I think this is why, the death rate is higher. it started over .02 in the states but the lowest Ive seen is .017.

782 thousand deaths is substantially higher that 40,000 from the flu.

You and Willy seem to be leaving the estimated deaths out on your estimates.

[Willy]

Hello Robert. I can appreciate your attempt at putting the Corona virus into perspective by using math, however you are comparing apples and oranges. Apples and oranges are fruit but different kinds. The Corona virus and flu are also similar but very different. Even tho they both are viruses, they are very different. Corona virus is a strain of the common cold virus while the flu is of course a strain of the Influenza virus.No matter how you crunch the numbers the two cannot be compared and drawing estimated conclusions is not how to compare them.  My only comparison is the impact that Influenza and Corona virus  have had. All I am saying is that the flu has historically been much more dangerous and deadly yet we have never had the press incite panic like we have seen since Corona virus has hit our shores.

 

[Robert Howards]

Hi, I'm not comparing anything but numbers. The 44,000,000 is a number I used from your example. If this virus is more contagious than the Flu and allowed to spread, with the death rate being so much higher, those are the estimated numbers. It has nothing to do with apples oranges or flu VS covid19. Just the amount of deaths in comparison to the amount infected. Just Numbers.

XLFD is using the total population, which is irrelevant also. The deadliness is determined by the number of deaths divided by the number of infected. If 1 person gets infected and dies, its 100 percent vs 100 infected and 1 dies, then its 1 percent. Nothing to do with total population. Unless you run out of people. That's where how contagious it is comes in. If people aren't separated, it could spread even more quickly than the Flu, or slower. Nobody knows. Everything I've read says its more contagious and by the numbers alone, at this point its more deadly than the Flu. Its closer to .015 today , which is better but that can change fast. The ONLY way to keep the numbers down is by staying away from infected people. The death rate for the Flu is .0009 also.

[Willy]

Robert, are you predicting that the corona virus will kill 782,342 people in the U.S? That's more than the Spanish flu of 1918-19 and more people than the entire population of Detroit. Can you predict what the extent of death will be next year?

[XLFD]

Welcome to the Ludington Torch, Robert Howards.  I've been wary of comparing the flu to COVID-19 as Willy has since COVID-19 has not made its full rounds yet; unfortunately, this very fact has politicians and scientists blowing the impact of COVID-19 out of proportion and taking steps that are ludicrous.  

Here's a video below from the CDC by a wise German doctor who has many years of experience dealing with viruses who can perhaps explain it better than the apples to hybrid-apples argument I made.  The point I was showing in comparing the flu and COVID-19 numbers was that 1 in 440,000 people in China has died from COVID-19 over the last three months, that number will not dramatically increase unless this coronavirus has some extraordinary staying power that previous ones didn't or unless we find that the Chinese government was drastically underreporting.  In the US, 1 in 8275 people died from influenza this flu season, this virus gets no respect.

 

[Willy]

Thanks for that video X. There is at least one sane specialist who is standing firm on the facts.

Wolfgang Wodarg(born March 2, 1947) is a German physician and politician for SPD.