The Illusion of Controlling the Coronavirus

 The Illusion of Controlling the Coronavirus

The View from the Middle

 

Before I even get into the message of this article, which is that this virus will run its course whether we like it or not, let me emphasize that I do believe that this virus is serious and that we should take all reasonable precautions to save lives.  We have known, almost from the beginning, who were the most vulnerable and we should have taken steps to protect those people even though in some cases, like in the state of New York, we didn’t.  I mourn all those who have lost loved ones to this virus, but “not living” is not the answer to this or any problem that we face as humans.  

Life will never be risk free.  People are going to die in car accidents every year.  The answer is not to stop driving or to ban cars.  The answer is to manage that risk.  People are going to die of cancer every year.  That doesn’t mean we should all put ourselves in a cryogenic freeze until there is a cure.  The answer is to manage that risk as we live our lives. The same is true for this virus.  We should not have put our trust in unscrupulous politicians or a paranoid media or even pompous scientists who suggest that THEY can save us if we just give up all of our autonomy and do as they say.  Of course, these hypocrites won’t follow their own rules because they want to maintain the freedoms they are denying everyone else.

While the media and politicians will desperately try to hide the facts, it appears that the real cure for this virus will be herd immunity, an idea that was scoffed at when this plague erupted.  Every virus has its own herd immunity level based on its infectious rate, and scientists have now agreed that the Coronavirus herd immunity will be reached when 70 to 75% of our population has contracted this disease and survived or has received a vaccine.  In either case, those people, of which I am one, will be immune and can’t be infected.  In that case, the virus will have nowhere to go and will die out.

The CDC has already estimated that this virus has infected ten times the number of people than have tested positive in this country because they have experienced mild symptoms or have been asymptomatic and thus have not even been tested.  That would suggest that over 170 million Americans (over 50% of our population) have already contracted this virus and survived.  Remember, the survival rate for this disease is currently being estimated at 99.8%.  Most, if not all of these people are now immune and cannot be infected again.  Over the next few months, given the natural infectious progression of this virus and the vaccine, another 80 million people will become immune which will bring our country’s immunity level to over 75%.  This is why even the politicians, media and scientists have agreed that Covid-19 will be gone or under control by May or June.

This would also say that all of the machinations our politician put our country through will not have prevented one person from contracting this disease.  We needed 250 million Americans to survive this virus to reach herd immunity and that is what is going to happen and that is what will end this scourge.  

But when this virus is dead and gone, there will be people who will try to take credit for its demise.  They will claim that the economic shutdowns worked even though they have absolutely no proof that they did.  They will exaggerate the estimated number of deaths that “could have” occurred and say that if they hadn’t put us through this hell of regulations and destroyed millions of small businesses (especially in the restaurant community) that two million people would have died.  Of course, that is impossible to prove and it is equally impossible to prove that every element of their plan was successful.  Did we really need to shut down our restaurants?  Did we really need to close our schools?  Remember, nothing we did saved even one person from contracting this disease (except the vaccine).  

And these “scientists” have used a most unscientific approach to evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies.  In a real scientific world, they would have isolated their tactics and compared them to a control group that would do nothing.  They would, for example, have one group only wear masks, another group would only wash their hands, another would only shut down businesses, etc.  And then they would compare all of these results to the control group that did nothing.  In this case they threw everything at this virus, including the kitchen sink and are now suggesting that everything they did was effective.  In reality, since they didn’t have a control group they have no idea how effective their total efforts were.  We could compare our results to Sweden’s, the country that came the closest to employing a herd immunity strategy.  If we did, we would find that Sweden’s deaths per 100,000 people is almost 20% lower than ours.

My point is, we are inflicting so much damage on our country in the name of controlling this virus without any proof that these moves are actually working.  We are demanding mask wearing and social distancing when hand washing and staying home when sick may be all we needed.  We know for a fact that we are destroying lives by shutting down businesses (especially restaurants) and setting our students back by closing schools when we have no idea what impact those moves are actually having on this disease.  But we KNOW that these decrees are having a negative effect on our country.

Is the media giving as much attention to suicide rates, increases in domestic violence or drug abuse?  Are they studying depression and the long-term effects of the social separation that Americans are experiencing?

We will face more influenzas, viruses, etc. in the future.  The 1918 influenza was particularly brutal killing 700,000 people in America (I believe that is a very conservative estimate) and up to 100 million people worldwide.  The Asian Flu in 1957 killed almost 120,000 people in the US and the Hong Kong Flu in 1969 killed over 100,000 people here when our population was less than half of what it is today.  Just two years ago, the seasonal Flu may have killed up to 95,000 people in America and if we had used the same methodology and counting practices that we have used for the Coronavirus, these numbers could easily have matched or even surpassed Covid-19.  We didn’t shutdown our economy for any of these pandemics and we actually fought WWI in the middle of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

We can’t and shouldn’t shutdown our economy and our schools every year or every other year or even every 10 years without doing permanent or at least long-term damage to our country.  Disease is part of life and we all need to figure out how to manage the risks that surround it.  We should use science to develop therapeutics and vaccines that treat these diseases.  BTW – kudos to the doctors and scientists who participated in operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccine that is currently being distributed, and those who developed therapeutics to treat those who contracted this virus.  We can and should protect healthcare workers so that they can care for those who do get sick without shaming the rest of the country who just needs to keep living.

The bottom line is that I don’t believe the draconian steps that our government forced upon us has impacted the total number of people infected in this country.  The numbers actually might even have been lower if we hadn’t applied a perverse monetary incentive to declare everything from gunshot deaths and cancer fatalities as Covid casualties.  

Some will declare victory when this is over, and we should fear them most.  For their own benefit they will try to convince us that this handling of the Coronavirus should become the new normal. They will tell us that we should listen to the politicians and the media, the most untrustworthy people on the planet, and give away our freedom of movement, speech and religion and even our freedom to earn a living, at their whim.  If you are unsure of the potential duplicity of the press and politicians in matters like this, just read The Great Influenza by John Barry about the 1918 Spanish Flu.  It will enlighten you.

If we are to retain any of the freedoms that this country was founded on, we must denounce our city, state and federal government’s attempt to shred our Bill of Rights and control every aspect of our lives.  We must reject people in the media and politicians who will deny millions of people the opportunity to make a living while they themselves continue to cash their bloated checks.  It’s easy to ask someone else to pay the price for their oppressive regulations.  If they try to sell this as the new normal, I plan to reject it.  I will use common sense practices to protect myself and others, but will defy any paranoid, controlling, manipulative regulations no matter the consequences!!