We are now a couple of months into this Coronavirus Crisis and each day we learn more about how dangerous it might be and how contagious it is but all of our decisions as a country revolve around assumptions. The reactions by our leaders have been run more by the press than the data provided to the experts in this field of medicine. We have allowed the media to scare the living daylights out of us in the name of safety but what it really comes down to is the lefts hunger for a sensational news story that will hurt President Trump in the 2020 election.
We have both republicans and democrats passing this huge bailout package that will cost trillions of taxpayer dollars to solve a problem we really know little about. The question that should be asked is do we really need to intensify this shutdown before we actually have enough data and projections to determine how this virus will affect us? This virus was discovered in Wuhan back in November of 2019 so it could have been brought to America and spread throughout the country for a couple of months before it was discovered. Do we know how many cases of the coronavirus were attributed to flu or pneumonia deaths? The answer is we don’t know and have been assuming the worst scenario possible instead of using fact-based information.
Understanding when this virus arrived here is critical in determining how severe it is and how far along we are into the epidemic. If indeed hundreds of thousands or for that matter millions had already been infected with the virus it would have lowered the mortality rate and this shut down would really would have had no purpose as we would know it had already spread countrywide. It was a single study out of the U.K. that caused this horrific panic with projections of 2.2 million dead. The 8.9% death rate in Italy caused further panic making it seem like this virus was even more dangerous than first thought. What we know now is that most of the deaths in Italy have occurred in people 85 years of age and older something that is not being talked about by the liberal media.
The first known case was discovered in mid-January so why would we experience such a serious outbreak in March? It is improbable that this virus started in China in November and we did not find the first cases until January 21st. When you have over 3 million Chinese nationals entering our country a year not including U.S. citizens going back and forth to China for business, you can see how this disease was brought and spread throughout the U.S. so quickly. The months before the virus hit we could have experienced as many as 600,000 Chinese crossing into our borders with who knows how many of them carrying the virus. This virus had to be circulating for several weeks if not months in our country and was being miss-diagnosed as the sessional flu. The more we test for the virus the higher the numbers of those infected go up but at the same time, the mortality rate continues to drop at the same time.
The data available is still limited but should be expanded dramatically as Abbot Labs now has a test that can tell if you’re positive for the virus within 5 minutes and 11 minutes to find out if you’re negative. As testing continues we may eventually find that this virus is no more or less fatal than seasonal influenza. Making the decisions we have as a country to lock down everyone and close many of our business seems a bit extreme but then we don’t have enough data to make rational decisions. The more critical decision for a 2.2 Trillion bailout will be even more costly to our country as we do not have that kind of money in the bank and borrowing it will cost our children dearly in the future. America is built on 70% small businesses and is the driver of the American economy. To shut down so much of it means that many of these businesses may not survive this shut down even over the short term. Not only was this bailout costly in dollars and cents but it provided the democrats with an opportunity to advance much of their agenda by holding the American people Hostage in the house of representatives. They added more pork to this bill than you could find on a pig farm.
There are some bright spots in this quagmire as we are finding that a malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine which has been in use for 70 years with few side effects is showing to be quite efficacious in killing this virus in any number of tests taking place around the world. In fact, in several studies, it has shown to clear the lungs of the virus when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin in a matter of 5 to 8 days. The biggest test for this drug will be in N.Y. which has about 40% of the cases nationwide and has been shipped 70,000 does of Hydroxychloroquine and 10,000 doses of azithromycin. Testing started this week and we would expect some results to be forthcoming in a few days.
All of the dire death predictions by the media and medical sources appear to have been greatly inflated and once we have begun intensive testing we should expect these numbers will drop dramatically. When you consider that 50 to 60,000 Americans die each year of opioid overdoses and medical mistakes kill over 250,000 a year it has to make you wonder why we closed down our country before we had enough information to determine the actual effects of this virus. The right thing would have been to close our borders as President Trump did and warn those who are elderly and had other diseases that would mitigate the mortality of this virus to stay indoors. Unfortunately, the effect of telling Americans to stay home and not go to work would appear to be a misjudgment on the part of our leaders.
While this virus was something that we needed to take seriously it should not have been something that has caused the enormous dislocation of our economy and maybe we will learn from this that it is one thing to fear something it is another to make it worse with bad decisions. In this case, the cure may wind up being worse than the disease itself.
One reply on “Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?”
Very good article. Thank you so much. I have been thinking the same about many of the points you brought it.