IN the aftermath of the efforts to avoid a crisis of Kung Flu (AKA Coronavirus, or COVID-19), as the nation slowly starts the march back to normal, there’s two things I want to talk about today.
Like many people, I didn’t initially believe anything about Coronavirus. Too much time watching the media scream their heads off for every little thing that happens will do that to you. The sky was always falling, the media always crying wolf. So I admit that it wasn’t until early March that I started to wonder if maybe there was something going on here.
Indiana had it’s first COVID-19 case on March 6th. That would be just a few days over eight weeks ago at the time I’m writing this. In the meantime, as of the time I write this, there have been 1444 deaths from COVID-19.
This is not “just the flu.”
I will give you* half of these deaths, right now. We’ll divide the number in half, just in case Indiana’s health officials were shoving every death from brain cancer, car accidents and people falling into wood chippers into this number. Take half of the 1,444** COVID deaths and we’ll write them off of Indiana seeking to get more money. That means that 722 people have died of COVID-19.
Indiana’s last numbers for the flu show 124 deaths. So far, for the whole season.
In the 2018-2019 flu season, there were 113 deaths. For the whole flu season.
The flu season encompasses the entire winter, and Indiana’s numbers go into May, so there’s roughly six months to spread these deaths over.
Even giving up half the numbers, COVID-19 has killed more people in two months then the flu has killed. In fact, COVID-19 has left the flu behind in the dust. In a mere eight weeks.
Before I accept that this is “just the flu” I need these 700 deaths explained.
And then I need NYC explained away, too. You can argue population density made NYC worse, but the bottom line is NYC did what every protester wanted: in light of this virus, they said they wouldn’t close, and they didn’t. This is what the protestors elsewhere wanted, heedless of what the outcome was. And thanks to NYC deciding to plunge forward, we can have a reasonable idea of what would have happened without a lock down.
Eventually you stop being a skeptic, and turn into a denier.
I have heard, since this began, every argument under the sun, glibly presented by people who I used to think could think things through and correlate cause and effect. Turns out, they can’t.
“It only affect people who are comorbid.”
“Those who are at risk can just stay home.”
Last time I heard something as stupid as “those who are at risk can just stay home” Nancy Pelosi was saying we’d have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it. Many, many people in this country have comorbidities, because thanks to modern medicine, people can be comorbid and still live long and generally healthy lives. You probably walk by people who have these problems every day and never notice it. Why is their life and right to live it less important then your freedom?
I’ve heard lots of crying and and carrying on about “FREEDOM” but the Bill of Rights says “LIFE” first and then “Liberty.”
Your liberty is not relevant if you’re not alive to enjoy it. Your liberty does not negate someone else’s right to life, either. That’s why we have laws against stuff like murder. It’s also why people who engage in drunk driving and kill someone while they do it go to jail.
In the same way that the Constitution restricts the rights of the government, it’s not an unlimited license for the citizen to do whatever they want either. Contrary to today’s popular opinion.
The inane (at best) idea that we could let people who were at risk stay home was ludicrous on it’s face given that these people would have been made to go to work if the lock down hadn’t happened. But the folks I had to deal with never thought that hard about it. They also never thought about those who would have gone to work, been exposed via their coworkers, and would have to come home to an at risk family member and risked giving Kung Flu to them.
“Our hospitals can handle it. Our healthcare system is the best.”
The healthcare system in America is stretched to the near breaking point most days. Why people thought it would be a great idea to crush it under hundreds of Kung Flu patients is mind boggling. This also ignored, when the epidemic began, that many, many medical professionals went public on Facebook and elsewhere and said they don’t want it, and the sudden dearth of PPE in the country.
If you don’t have medical professionals to treat patients, it doesn’t matter how advanced your healthcare system is. None of the people working there wanted to get sick, and they were at higher risk for it.
“But then they were laid off and making Tik Tok videos!”
And?
I consider it a good thing that we never saw a healthcare system crushing glut of patients. Once you’ve decimated a hospital system, they start rationing care. They did that in Italy. Why no one ever thought that could happen here is another mind boggling thing. Just because we’re America, it won’t happen here? Really? And once you’ve chewed up medical resources because of a pandemic, what is left for the heart attacks, strokes, appendicitis, ulcers, and dozens of other problems that modern medicine can generally keep people from dying of?
A lot of people needed to start thinking second- and third- and nth- tier effects, instead of only on what’s happening right this second.
Suffice to say, if an otherwise healthy person with, say, a heart condition, suddenly hauls off and dies because Kung Flu filled their lungs with gunk, it wasn’t the heart condition that killed them. But see Aesop’s post for more on that.
Which brings me to part two.
You don’t have the right to risk people’s lives because you weren’t prepared for crap to happen.
Despite being told, any number of times, the sage advice of Ol’ Remus, to
“AVOID CROWDS”most of you couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Not “Run to the hills” necessarily. Most of you lost your complete shit at being told to simply stay home, and mind your own business. As if you’d been told to fly to Mars in a balloon. No plan. No resources. Little to no forethought whatsoever to that eventuality, judging purely by the pissing, moaning, and caterwauling, both here and a hundred other sites, leads me to believe you’d do even worse if it was anything worse than just going home, and effing off.
Those running around saying they have a right to go to work are asking to risk other people’s lives because they were unprepared.
I have been called all sorts of names and had all sorts of accusations made against me over this because I would not march lock-step with the Open Everything Now Brigade. Meanwhile, I have never seen so many agencies bend over backwards to help people who were out of work.
Question: during the 2009 Great Recession, how many utility companies gave people an extension within which to pay their bills? How many states extended the tax deadline? Did the IRS extend the federal tax deadline? How many landlords forgave their renters the rent?
I remember plenty of stories in 2009 and 2010 about people losing their jobs and then their homes. Not nearly as many about agencies large and small jumping on board to try and help mitigate where they can.
What ever happened to planning ahead for rainy days?
Despite any number of times you might have heard it from me, The Other Ryan at the former Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest, or in Commander Zero’s Notes From the Bunker, or from Selco, or Ferfal, you didn’t – and DON’T – have a multi-month cash float of funds to see you through a crisis even as mild as the one we’ve just gone through.
“Oh, but, But, BUT…!”
Reality doesn’t give a sh*t, Snowflake.
If you aren’t homeless, in a box, eating from dumpsters, literally living hand-to-mouth 24/7/365, you had disposable income, and you foolishly and short-sightededly [sic] got a house mortgage, car payment, credit card balance, or any number of toys, geegaws, and other miscellaneous sh*t that you suddenly found burdensome, because you did not pay yourself FIRST and use those funds to establish a cash reserve sufficient for your normal expenses for three, six, or twelve months with no other means of support.This has been commonsense advice from sites like Kiplinger, Motley Foole, Dave Ramsay, and about 1000 others for effing YEARS, man. […]
Your parents and grandparents, who went through the Great Depression (which was anything but Great) knew this in their bones. Now you do too. The Gods Of The Copybook Headings just called to say “Hi!”
And many, many workers in the workforce today went through the Recession of 2009. This should have been a given. No one should have needed to have been told this.
You don’t get to play Russian roulette with someone else’s life, and lack of preparation on your part does not equal an emergency on mine, or anyone else’s part.
And that is EXACTLY what people in this country wanted to do. Make no mistake about what the lockdown protestors wanted.
It’s just easier to talk about freedom then to be honest about intentions and the outcome that the protestors wanted to volunteer everyone for.
No one’s freedoms are unlimited. If you think they are, go shout “fire” in a crowded venue and then tell the judge that it’s your right to say what you want because freedom. Let me know how it works out for you.
Dave Ramsay didn’t write this book because he had nothing better to do with his time. Apparently, this book needs to be required reading for every high school student in the nation.
I have a contingency plan for my debts, because I got out of college and learned the hard way that there’s no guarantee that I would have a job. Now, to be fair, I expected something more mundane than a plague, like losing my job, or having something catastrophic happen that leads me to have to replace my car. But it turns out the problem you plan for isn’t always the one you get.
You can manage or mismanage your money however you see fit. But when you demand that people risk their lives because you didn’t plan for the worst, I have a big issue with that.
The people who ran around screaming about reopening everything while we were in the middle of a pandemic are no different then the woman who seeks an abortion because having the baby right now would be inconvenient for her. The only difference is that these people who were screaming about reopening everything RIGHT NOW merely wanted to chance someone else’s death, rather then intentionally inflict it. Congratulations on going for manslaughter rather then first degree murder right there.
“But life is full of risks!”
Yes, and the stupidest risks are the ones where you willfully ignore the danger signs and press on into the danger zone anyway, which about two weeks into this was what people wanted to do, because they never thought they’d be told to go home and stay there, and they never made plans for what would happen if the worst came to pass. Intelligent people work to negate as many risks as they can.
When Kung Flu first appeared, the risks were not well understood. They are somewhat better understood now, but things are still changing every day as more and more information comes in.
Kung Flu is more infectious then was first thought.
The R0 for COVID-19 is a median of 5.7, according to a study published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases. That’s about double an earlier R0 estimate of 2.2 to 2.7
The 5.7 means that one person with COVID-19 can potentially transmit the coronavirus to 5 to 6 people, rather than the 2 to 3 researchers originally thought.
Researchers calculated the new number based on data from the original outbreak in Wuhan, China. They used parameters like the virus incubation period (4.2 days) — how much time elapsed from when people were exposed to the virus and when they started to show symptoms.
The researchers estimated a doubling time of 2 to 3 days, which is much faster than earlier estimates of 6 to 7 days. The doubling time is how long it takes for the number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to double. The shorter the time, the faster the disease is spreading.
Here’s a numbers discussion. Here’s a breakdown of the Economist’s report showing that death rates in urban areas have spiked compared to death data in past years, and the only new variable that’s been introduced is Coronavirus.
Bloomberg has reported some new disturbing discoveries, including that Coronavirus may come back again. Patients who have recovered are re-testing positive. No one is quite sure why this is happening yet. We can only hope it’s that there’s an issue with the tests and the patient got a false positive.
Bloomberg also reports that health effects last long after the patient is considered to be no longer infected.
While researchers are only starting to track the long-term health of survivors, past epidemics caused by similar viruses show that the aftermath can last more than a decade. According to one study, survivors of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, suffered lung infections, higher cholesterol levels and were falling sick more frequently than others for as long as 12 years after the epidemic coursed through Asia, killing almost 800 people.
SARS infected 8,000 people. With more than 4 million — and more every day — infected by the coronavirus, the long-term damage to health could strain social safety nets and health-care infrastructures for years to come as well as have implications for economies and companies.
Coronavirus is known to affect the entire body. It is known to cause blood clots in some patients. Children who have Kung Flu and risk a Kawasaki Disease-like syndrome.
And these are the risks that the Open Everything Now brigade decided everyone needed to take.
About eight weeks into this we still learn new things every day. The country is reopening, as it should. The lock down was only ever meant to be means to an end of not crushing the US healthcare system, though based on the people who thought now=forever, you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
Racing to reopen everything in the middle of a pandemic because some people weren’t prepared and thought “that will never happen!” is the stupidest thing I’ve ever had to watch.
We may get another wave of this. It may fizzle out. Hopefully it will be the latter option. I’m not too keen on having to stay home again for multiple weeks.
But I’ll be planning for that possibility, too.
Just in case.
*Metaphorical ‘you’ in all of the above.
**This piece went through several rewrites and revisions. I’ve left the numbers as they were two weeks ago when work on this began because the number of deaths from COVID doesn’t negate the question.
Rhea's Ramblings 