Panic Vs Reason, What’s Going On?

2.2 million US citizens were estimated to die from coronavirus, not counting the impacts of an overwhelmed healthcare system. That was the prediction from the Imperial College of London report. That’s concerning, but so is the panic and response to this report.

As we should know, knee-jerk reactions are a recipe for disaster. Yet I fear this has been our response regardless, emotion and panic. It unfortunately leaves little room for reason and rationality.

Even if the doomsday predictions are alarmingly accurate, we must remain calm and continue to discuss strategy. We must continually ask questions of our decision makers, of which I have plenty.

Carpet Bombing or Precision Airstrikes?

Dr. David Katz NY Times column made reference to what we’re calling a “war on coronavirus”. In it, he used the analogy of carpet bombing versus a precision airstrike. He wisely favors the latter, if possible, which produces less collateral damage.

We’ve had time to analyze the efficacy of his strategies. And good or bad, he raised important concerns about the widespread lockdown strategy. It may fight the coronavirus, but not without significant cost.

Consequences to Massive Unemployment

The focus is on the virus, and deservedly so. We’ve seen it spread through communities quickly and bring the whole world to it’s knees. By all means, take this serious.

But as Tucker Carlson mentioned (to his credit), coronavirus isn’t the only danger we face. Unemployment skyrocketed (to 17 million in some estimates) less than a month into the lockdowns. This is unprecedented and may bring unimaginable consequences.

Weekly unemployment claims, after just two weeks into mass shutdowns. Source

To impoverish a whole nation solely to slow the spread of a virus could create greater suffering than the virus itself. We must be extremely cautious, as impoverishing millions will leave decades of lasting repercussions. I don’t want to get sick, but I don’t want to revert back to a 19th century standard of living either.

Remember, impoverished nations suffer from poor health. When wealth is absent, so is good health. Nutrition is poor, diseases are high, and deaths from treatable ailments exist in large quantities.

The unemployed also lose healthcare. What happens if they are laid off and get sick? Now they have no income, savings, food, or health insurance, with potential hospital bills in addition.

At what point does the cure become worse than the disease? When does mass unemployment create its own panic?

You May Be Fine, But Many Aren’t

Maybe of you haven’t lost your job, but many have. Millions of your fellow citizens were forced into unemployment with no options. Many are poor or lower middle class. People with low incomes and savings. The well off may “weather the storm” just fine, but tell that to them…

We must realize the danger and suffering this poses to the unemployed and community at large. Delays at unemployment offices will further hurt these people. What happens when checks arrive too late or not at all? How long before hunger and desperation take over? Italy offers some clues as their citizens start to panic over basic survival.

Mental health issues are on the rise as well, incited by panic and hopelessness. Indiana for example, has seen their mental health and addiction hotlines skyrocket.

Are Lockdowns Really Our Best Option?

The goal of lockdowns is to prevent overloading healthcare systems. Italy shows the somber truth of insufficient capacity. The death rate has spiked as doctors now have to choose who gets treatment. We are trying to control hospitalizations, not deaths. Low deaths is the end goal, but controlling hospitalizations is how we get there.

The lockdowns are based off IHME and Imperial College of London models though. Doomsday models, in my opinion, and not the first from the Imperial College. We’re also now seeing consistent inaccuracies by orders of magnitude, even after post-lockdown revisions:

This is the @IMHE_UW model for #Covid_19, the new US standard. It was put out SIX days ago (post lockdown). It projects New York State will have 50,000 hospitalizations TODAY. Instead NYS has 12,000. Wrong by 4x in under a week. What on earth are we doing? https://t.co/zdRwaS4UJr pic.twitter.com/bRroolmKgw — Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 1, 2020

Furthermore, numerous epidemiological experts disagree with the predictions and current strategy. Why are they not a central part of the discussion? Why are Dr. Fauci and Birx, the only expert voices on television? And why does Bill Gates have seemingly so much control over public health policy, including the IHME models?

Why have lockdowns continued despite a reality much lower than projected (excluding a couple NYC hospitals)? Do these medieval tactics actually work? Developers of the doomsday models may ultimately say social distancing and lockdowns saved us, but how do you prove that? And if that’s the case, why was the post-lockdown revision still orders of magnitude higher than reality? Could the same be accomplished just with social distancing?

Comparisons

I also wonder, why model our strategy after Spain and Italy? They’re a mess right now. As time passes, it seems more likely their lockdowns haven’t significantly slowed the virus.

What about Sweden, who has taken a much less authoritarian approach to the matter? Aside from a few cancellations, they have mostly gone on with daily life. Is it so hard to believe we couldn’t mimic their response and results?

Even if their unique response doesn’t work, they’ll just end up with a situation like most other countries. Everyone will be in the same situation irregardless of lockdowns, further questioning its efficacy. Sweden however, will not have the added destruction of livelihoods.

Data, Data, Data

There’s just so much information we’re lacking right now. Important data points. We have no idea the true number of infections, past and present. This is important to understanding the true CFR (Case Fatality Rate). Several epidemiologists estimate below 1%.

For this reason I would think antibody testing should be a higher priority. Several experts hypothesize coronavirus has been spreading since late 2019. Antibody testing would prove or disprove and help estimate the true CFR. If half the population has already been exposed, the projections in the doomsday models become more or less garbage.

The lack of data comes in addition to misleading or inaccurate figures, further exacerbating the situation. In a recent press conferences, Dr. Birx openly admitted to a liberal approach when classifying COVID-19 deaths.

This is remarkable. Dr. Birx says here very plainly that anyone who dies “with COVID-19” is being counted as having died from COVID-19. She admits this is a “liberal approach” to recording mortality. The suspicions many of us had are now confirmed.



pic.twitter.com/NxmfwyfjTC — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 7, 2020

Meanwhile heart attacks, strokes, appendicitis, an so on are mysteriously absent. With the added stress and panic, I find it incredibly difficult to believe heart attacks are suddenly down. This raises more questions.

Are people with heart attacks afraid to go to the hospital? I hope not, but it’s likely some are. Also, Dr. Birx’s comments suggest a heart attack death is counted as a COVID-19 death, simply for a positive test result. Is that really an accurate categorization?

What if they are admitted to the hospital for a serious condition, let’s say a stroke. They catch coronavirus while admitted, and later pass from stroke complications. Is it proper to count as a COVID-19 death, simply for testing positive?

Misleading News

At this point I trust few media sources, not without first verifying the facts. Especially those from any “news” organization with Washington, NY, or a three letter acronym in their name. Much of their reporting, if you want to call it that, has been proven overwhelmingly false or misleading.

It is at a time like this I am so glad I read Overdiagnosed*, by H. Gilbert Welch. (The information is beneficial far beyond this topic.) He discusses how the media scares you with misleading health information. One tactic in particular is using relative comparisons instead of absolute.

For example, one estimate suggests our risk of dying in the next two months doubles due to COVID-19. That is the relative risk. The absolute risk shows that our risk of dying is the next two months is already low, say 0.5%. So doubling this number is really not as frightening as you’re led to believe.

Final Word

A lack of epidemiological expertise shouldn’t disqualify anyone from questioning the experts and authorities. We all bear the impact of their decisions, good or bad.

Many of our decision makers do so without any fear of unemployment. Hence why Dr. Fauci referred to the lockdowns as merely “inconvenient“. I doubt government bureaucrats understand the pain to those damaged by these policies. Their panic and desperation is more than inconvenient. It’s real, and bears real repercussions.

We can’t continue on this path forever. It is insanity and national suicide. To stay locked down until a vaccine arrives will be chaos. The destruction of such a policy would overwhelmingly do more damage than COVID-19 could possibly do.

I do want to protect public health. It’s why I’m doing my best to distance from people and protect the high risk around me. At the same time, I refuse to accept that indefinite lockdowns are the best solution. It may be good for a short, two week period to buy us some time, but we’re now well beyond that.

I want to see the public calm down and end their state of panic. To see the discussion turn from “shut everything down” to “ok, how do we get back to normal?”

There has to be a better plan. Let’s figure one out quickly, before we cause irreparable damage.

[Image credit: Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash]

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