“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
- Ben Franklin
Over the course of just a few days, the American people have ceded control of their schools, their sports, their freedom to travel, their concerts, their meetings, their ability to purchase essential goods at the store, and every other aspect of their lives – all the while imagining that this somehow makes them safer. And even worse, a precedent has been set for every future virus.
It was so easy for the powers that be to get Americans to voluntarily give up their rights – permanently.
The government is stopping the spread of COVID by packing thousands of international travelers into small spaces for hours at airport immigration, thus guaranteeing the spread of the disease.
Large numbers of people die from the flu every year. It would easy to create a panic every year with these frightening statistics. Compare these numbers with ~4,000 COVID deaths in China and 61 in Korea.
Stats of the States – Influenza/Pneumonia Mortality
Obviously people need to use caution to prevent infecting themselves and others, from COVID and other infectious diseases. But we can’t shut everything down every time a virus comes around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1FFVWEQnSM
(Disclaimer — I support the Separatists and despise the Republic… :D)
I totally agree with you.
China took extrem decisions to fight this ‘outbreak’
Then confronted to the relatively low mortality rate and very old age of victims, people around the world claimed : look, China did put millions under quarantine, it’s has to be bad.
But China is ruled by a totallitarian regime.
And mimetism isn’t a sign of intelligence.
Indeed, the precedent was after the Boston Marathon Smoke Bombing in which they locked down the whole city because there might be a bad guy out there. And the people just rolled over and passively accepted it. They called it “Boston Strong”. More like Boston Flaccid. This of course is leading up to mandatory vaccination posssibly with a complimentary ID2020 nanochip. They have been eroding 2A incrementally, death by a thousand cuts, but this generalized passivity with the great COVID virtual epidemic may embolden them. This is only a test but the real deal is close behind
I’m not sure if this proves Tony’s point or not but infectious diseases do not care about politics, feelings, or public opinion polls. Its simply a function of science and mathematics, period. The entire world is naive to this virus. Certainly by late January public health officials knew the virus had attack rates ~ 50%, and although we may never know the true case fatality rate due to asymptomatic cases – it was measured at ~ 2.5% in China before entrenching in Europe (now over 3% and near 7% in Italy). The time for a complete travel ban to all countries was in January – and recall the President’s China ban was ridiculed as “Xenophobic” – in reality, it did not go far enough. Its quite astounding that the WHO advised against travel bans until this week, and waited until it was so obvious to everyone that its indeed a pandemic. NIH Director Anthony Fauci said it best, “Chinese travelers seeded the world with the virus”.
Buckle up folks, we are in the beginning stages and this event will not wrap up until mid-2021.
I think you’ll need to wait for more information before you can jump to mortality rates on anything that’s fairly new and make take a long time to cycle. You can reasonably know how many bodies there are but still need to ensure you’re counting accurately the main cause of death and not mis-attributing it.
And then you also need to accurately know the total of those infected with the virus/disease you’re trying to attribute to. Given that this is a new strain and given that testing is still early and still problematic in accuracy and still not wide spread carried out, I would take your mortality rates with a huge grain of salt.
While I hate having to link to CNN, I couldn’t find the original CDC link here, which claims 80,000 deaths in the US alone from the ’17/’18 flu season.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/26/health/flu-deaths-2017–2018-cdc-bn/index.html
I don’t recall a panic, nor do I recall extraordinary govt imposed restrictions. I believe that the MSM now controls the agenda. Frightening and disgusting at the same time.
I’m waiting for the start of a new TV channel – All coronavirus, All the time. It’ll be out of business in a few weeks when people get bored and move on to the next meme.
I agree with Feathers. Tony is good on climate and from this sample not so good on health. What matters is that the older generation voluntarily isolate themselves now, or else health care won’t cope with a deluge of serious cases.
Mortality rates are bullshit in most countries. Only one doing something like random samples with their drive through testing stations was South Corea and they came out at 0.6% But even there the sampling is biased, because mostly people with respiratory symptoms went to let themselves tested.
If an elderly person is hospitalized with a Pneumonia the death rate is around 30%+, the more, the older the patient is. This is completely independent of the cause of the inflammation. At the present everybody who dies and is positively tested for Coronavirus is counted as COVID19 death, regardless if the pneumonia was caused e.g. by influenza, bacteria or too long lying in bed with not enough movement (hospital pneumonia, sorry don’t know the correct english term for it). A typical case of mistaking correlation for causation.
One of the most widespread tests for Covid19, the one developed by Drosten from Charité Berlin, is not at all validated. It was not cross tested for false positives with other virus RNA and not peer reviewed. So nobody knows exactly if it is a good test for COVID19, all SARS type viruses or how big the error margins are in both directions (false positives, false negatives).
The EU has a program for monitoring excess mortality at http://euromomo.eu/ and GBs program can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2019-to-2020
GB is a week further than EU. But in both programs you can see that 2020 is a year which has far less excess mortality than the previous years meaning that neither influenza nor COVID have a severe impact.
So why so much stress on the Health Services worldwide? If this was a run of the mill Influenza A like in 2018 and 2019 people would not be hospitalized and quarantined in the current numbers regardless of the mounting death cases. Sick people wouldn’t be herded together in the current manner, which essentially insures a better propagation of COVID19 itself and the complete assortment of superinfections present in some patentent between people who already show strong to severe symptoms of respiratory illness. And public health workers and doctors would not be quarantined for weeks in growing numbers putting more emotional and physical stress on the remaining and leading to a plethora of mistakes and possible mistreatments which in itself are known to cause large numbers of excess deaths. E.g. : https://www.sidgilreath.com/learn/medical-malpractice-death-statistics.html
Even if you assume some bias in the numbers and halve the lower margin of 210.000 to 100.000 then this means 100.000 preventable death under normal circumstances without the addes stress of Covid19 hysteria.
My mother, in her 80s and scared to leave her home, said she heard somebody say this virus will be bad, but will pass and that itis a dress-rehearsal for a real big bad virus to come down.
I said the reaction to it feels a more like a dress-rehearsal for martial law.
If we use the 1918 pandemic as a guide, we’ll see three waves. During the Great H1N1 influenza (AKA, Spanish Flu), it was the second wave that was the most significant.
But feathers – you are comparing influenza with coronavirus – we can’t do that. Again, this is simply science and mathematics. We do not know the actual attack rates but they appear to be similar to seasonal influenza. Also, everyone that is comparing cases/death rate to seasonal influenza is completely missing the point. The 36,000 average deaths in the U.S. due to flu is an estimate at the END of the flu season – this outbreak is just starting (its like tallying flu deaths in early October).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/1918_spanish_flu_waves.gif
What scares me is the shut down / closures might be worse than the disease itself once the economic repercussions are fully felt across the world economy.
Indeed Stewart; for what it’s worth I agree entirely: eg yesterday American Airlines grounds its entire wide-body fleet; air freight will thus be so affected; we don’t seem to understand what we are doing: no-one seems to be talking of this
Though Global Warming is an excellent tactic to scare populations into slavery, global pandemic is the best. Fear of death from disease, today, not 10 years from now, trumps everything shy of a gun to your forehead. The question is whether the fear is justified.
I think you missed the mark here. Early measures would have been useful. Singapore has hardly any restrictions but stopped the exponential spread. Europe and the US will have overwhelmed hospitals for 3 or 4 months and/or severe restrictions. This is not the ordinary flu.
Let’s compare Singapore and the USA. Singapore is 280 square miles in extent and has 5,600,00o people. The USA is 3,500,000 square miles in extent and has 330,000,000 people PLUS twenty million people here illegally who live outside our moral, health care and legal systems. The illegal population of the United States is about four times the entire population of Singapore.
In 2018, Singapore was ranked 151st out of 180 nations by Reporters Without Borders in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index. Historically, the government has restricted freedom of speech and freedom of the press and has limited some civil and political rights. Americans would not accept the level of state control exerted by Singapore’s government.
In the last several days, Singapore has reported new Covid19 cases, and has tightened its borders even more and adopted rules similar to those in the US.
Here is a good page comparing influenza and Covid19; they have similar means of spread, similar disease presentation. It is generally believed that Covid19 will be a more deadly disease overall, and we don’t have the equivalent of a “flu shot” to mitigate its effects and spread.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200306-sitrep-46-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=96b04adf_2
Still, I think it is worthwhile to look at influenza hospitalization and mortality rates.
“The 2017-2018 flu season was severe for all US populations and resulted in an estimated 959,000 hospitalizations and 61,099 deaths. [Wikipedia]”
This was the highest number of hospitalizations and deaths… since the 2009 flu season.
I like your work on climate change, is very good, but the line between a smart person and a smarty is too thin. It is clear that the potential number of deaths is not staggeringly high but sadly is not low either, this is subjective, of course. The comparison you make is incorrect. The real comparison is between deaths by flu and deaths by covid AFTER the flu/covid season not the death rates of flu after the flu season and the death rates of covid after 3 months and contention measures. We do not have the numbers still, just estimations.
Tony
I see those clever Swedes are ahead of the curve. The government have decided to stop publishing the figures of infected people.
Problem solved!
My earlier comment was lost apparently.
This piece is wrong. There is a role for community, enforced if necessary. You may not like the execution, I certainly don’t, but equating enforcement with totalitairianism is wrong.
Similar restrictions were imposed during the polio epidemics of the 1940’s and 1950’s although these were handled on a local city by city basis. Generally speaking local government is more answerable to the people, so they make a better decision with regard to the value of interference, as balanced against reducing infection.
Interesting in the case of polio, historically almost all children were exposed to it and became immune relatively safely, thus keeping them protected as adults (think of it as a natural vaccination program). It was the reduced infection rate that made the disease so dangerous, when adults would get a nastier dose of the stuff, having never been exposed as kids. Thus, society improving overall hygiene levels had had made the disease worse, not better. Eventually science and medicine developed an artificial vaccination program that replaced the previous natural vaccination program.
The British strategy for dealing with the next viral pandemic was laid out in 2011.
Here are some illustrative numbers in that report:
(i) “given known patterns of spread of infection, up to 50 per cent of the population could experience symptoms”
(ii) “during one or more pandemic waves lasting 15 weeks”
(iii) “we should plan for a situation in which up to 2.5% of those with symptoms would die as a result”
Not only do those numbers sound plausible for our new visitor but the authors add:
“A pandemic is most likely to be caused by a new subtype of the Influenza A virus but the plans could be adapted and deployed for scenarios such as an outbreak of another infectious disease, eg Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)”
I see a good case for running with a well argued strategy thought out in calm times rather than responding to political and popular pressures in near-hysterical times. Just as many people showed bone-headed complacency just a few weeks ago – it’s just a cold, it’s only a flu – now many people are panicking. How many of these are the same people I don’t know.
Hi there dearime;
despite your warning shot across folks’ bows: “bone-headed complacency” ….. I will still maintain a stance that the hysteria is overwhelming; but that the counter-measures will do the most damage: use your phrase on me if you so wish!! I stand vilified.
I guess in climate change too; one calls folks names; and attempts to shut them down; I had naively thought on this site that name-calling might be kept in check!
@deariemi ..
interesting !
I think a link to the document = https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/225869/Pandemic_Influenza_LRF_Guidance.pdf
The “death rate” column in this table represents deaths per 100,000 of population so shift the decimal point 3 places left and you have a percentage death rate, giving, for example, 0.0156% deaths in California from influenza (seems low – I’ve seen 0.1% quoted as a global figure). The WHO reckons that Covid-19 will probably have 3% to 4% death rate. In Italy it is currently over 7%. In Lombardy alone there are well over 6000 hospital cases due to Covid-19. Covid-19 is very infectious. The point of the lockdowns is to slow the spread of the virus so that health services can cope. If nothing is done the spread would be very rapid and the death rate would escalate, not just from Covid-19 infections but from a lack of healthcare workers and facilities to look after the sick in general. Rather than the 7% that Italy is experiencing the death toll could double due to collateral effects on healthcare. If two thirds of the US population were to be infected, say 200 million, that would mean 14 million dead from Covid-19.
Although I am very concerned about my rights being infringed upon. I don’t know for sure if your comparison is fair. Here are some things to consider. Using Washington state comparison 1st case vs. Italy the second most problematic country. Also Seattle is hub and major populus with condensed living. In your graph it combines Flu/Pneamonia deaths for 2018, the longest flu season in history according to CDC at 21 weeks long. Washington state had 930 deaths from flu/pneamonia 2018. If you compare Italy Coronavirus in 30 days they had 1806 deaths from covid 19. 2 days ago Wa state had nearly identical numbers to Italy 2 weeks ago. IF and I mean IF drastic measures were not taken is it not possible that Wa state deaths “could” have be similar two weeks from now. Which is not quite like the flu. At this time making comparisons to the flu I believe is unfair. And the only thing we can do is guess. Making assumptions of what data we know. Using exponential doubling every 4-6 days and death rates we do know. This has “potential” to be something we don’t know how to address “appropriately” I am. The other concern with this is the lack of knowing if China slowed as a result of Government restrictions or is it from short season. Lots to learn ahead.
c’mon man, the Seattle outbreak was centralized to ONE nursing home (aka compromised elderly) which caused the vast majority of early deaths and the AVG age of Covid death in Italy is 80 years old!
yes many 80 year olds, in any country, will be facing a serious medical condition when contracting a respiratory-comprising virus.
you’re willing to hand your govt complete control over your life because of this?
‘The government is stopping the spread of COVID by packing thousands of international travelers into small spaces for hours’
But here in spain it is now forbidden to drive around even on a bicycle or have a walk on the beach. But you can still leave the house to walk your dog and they don’t say how long or how far that walk can be.
https://www.rt.com/news/483158-spain-pm-wife-coronavirus/
https://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/new-emergency-measures-in-health-transport-and-defense-in-force-in-whole-of-spain
The current flu season.
************
… hospitalization rates … for children 0-4 years and adults 18-49 years are now the highest CDC has on record for these age groups, surpassing rates reported during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Hospitalization rates for school-aged children (5-17 years) are higher than any recent regular season but remain lower than rates experienced by this age group during the pandemic.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.ht
Pure scare mongering again by the MSM . Coincidentally Gates of Hell ran a pandemic preparation meeting in October 2019. “Remember Y2K sheeple
“If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question”.
Ronald Reagan, IIRC.
Agreed, Tony. The world is engaging in gross over reaction.
Some, such as Michael Osterholm, approach criminal exaggeration. Claiming 480,000 likely deaths in the U.S. from CV is irresponsible.
it is sort of like statins: everyone will die if they don’t take my statins for the next 40yrs;
warning; shock; horror;
statins don’t extend life: they just drag out the misery!
I appreciate the quote from Ben Franklin but I think there is a quote by Abraham Lincoln that is even more important:
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
This too will pass. This hysteria has been generated by the left and is designed to damage Donald Trump and especially the world’s best economy that developed under his leadership. One thing I love about Fox News is their replaying the leftist news media during the H1N1 outbreak during Obama’s presidency. They lavished praise on Obama who did nothing for six months. Trump had to react aggressively or the leftists would have destroyed him. The voters will remember that while the Democrats were staging a fake impeachment trial, Donald Trump and his administration was already working behind the scenes to protect this country. He issued a travel ban on flights from China at the end of January and that was immediately called racist and xenophobic. Even today Biden and Sanders say they would not restrict flights to this country.
I’m sorry that some people are inconvenienced by these travel bans but thank God Trump won that battle in the Supreme Court. The voters will remember this in the next election and the Democrats will be disappointed. In the end Americans will retain their freedom and independence.
The globalists don’t give a damn about right or left, or whose arse is planted in the Oval Office. Have a look at Event 201 videos from last October.
I have a question for Mr. Heller: I wonder if you have tried to graph the probable number of cases, mortality rate, etc., based on past epidemics and available knowledge of this virus (assuming the Chinese are being honest). I would have tried but my knowledge of graphing and advanced mathematics isn’t what I’d like it to be. I have forgotten a lot.
By the way, I agree with everything you’re saying. I studied science in college, and I do remember enough of my scientific education to know this is mostly irrational hysteria designed to destroy the economy and bring down Trump. The Democrats and the newsmedia are out of control, and they’re trying to scare people. We’re now living in a police state over a not very lethal virus. And, I’m also worried that this is setting a very dangerous and easily repeatable precedent for future viral epidemics.
During this crisis the government has decreed that all you have to do is drink more government approved Kool-aid and all will be well again.
Yes, it would have been better to have a society-wide discussion, should we have a national lock down or let the very sick die. Mostly I disagree with the premise here, because (1) the transmission rate is greater than the flu and (2) death rate (probably about 1% with treatment) is greater than the flu. Also, it looks like the serious cases may require longer term intensive hospital care. If we had no flu, the health care system could take more cases, but my understanding is we have little capacity for ICU/serious cases above the normal background of disease/flu. That is the problem. This new virus is the one that breaks the system. I imagine most people, including those who believe the climate crisis a hoax and enjoy civil liberties (me), do not want to see 30+ deaths at every assisted living facility, nursing home, senior center etc. across the country.
Operation CSS has begun! …which is just a drill in preparation.
What is CSS?
The people are Cut-off, Separated and Sedated.
Smile for the camera!
we’re all learning to be gamers and stamp collectors
Tony, an incisive take on our ongoing frenzy. Recently I’ve felt it gives fresh meaning to the observation (from a long ago Democrat!) that
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Put a dog onto sheep who think it is a wolf and they are easy to herd.