Posted on 05/03/2020 8:45:37 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
We’ve watched the way colleague Tom Dyson takes the time to reply to reader mail in his Postcards From the Fringe e-letter, calmly answering objections… helpfully providing more details, as requested.
Readers seem to appreciate it. Indeed, they prefer it to our unrelenting sarcasm and mockery.
So, we’re going to do the same. That is, we’re going to take the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism… and respond forthrightly and constructively.
And today, we begin with the most recent kvetch. When it comes to the coronavirus, many readers don’t think we know what we’re talking about.
And of course, they’re right. All we know is what we read in the papers.
Some readers think we should defer to the expertise of Doctors Fauci and Birx; with their years of training, surely they are better judges of how to deal with a virus!
As for the experts, we learned long ago that they have their bugaboos, prejudices and axes to grind, just like everyone else. And sometimes, their expertise is simply false. Or even negative.
In economics, for example, the more expert you become, the more you are willing to believe things that couldn’t possibly be true… such as that a small group of technocrats in the Federal Reserve headquarters can do a better job of setting interest rates than millions of borrowers and lenders in the free market…
…or that you can “replace” real wealth with fake money… or that Donald Trump knows when the price of oil is too high… or too low…
…and that the wise men and women of the Federal Open Market Committee know when prices are rising too fast or too slow, or when the economy ought to be growing or contracting (never!)…
Paul Krugman, with his “noble” prize, is about as expert as you can get. But his views are nothing more than sophisticated claptrap.
Ultimately, that leaves us no choice. We have to try to connect the dots ourselves… and make sense of the news as best we can.
But let’s look at the criticisms of our COVID-19 views. Here’s one Gary M., who thinks we should defer to the authorities:
I am pretty disappointed in (Bonner’s) response to the way the Trump administration has handled the covid -19 problem. I think they have done a great job … Thank God Bill wasn’t in charge !!
Reader Vicki L. elaborated Wednesday on why the lockdown is necessary:
In case you haven’t read, many people are dying and there are mass graves. The hospitals are overwhelmed. Human lives are important. Old, fat, and sick people matter. In fact, many people who die are young and healthy, it is not just those who are old, fat, or sick. The lives of front-line workers matter. They are put at risk when so many people come into the hospital sick.
Having covid patients in the hospital takes away from others who need hospital care or procedures for other reasons. We do not need to selfishly put anyone at higher risk — including old, fat, sick people, young, healthy people, existing patients, and healthcare workers.
Stop the disinformation. Put people before profits.
Well, we have some questions for Vicki.
Almost all traffic deaths involve speeds over 31 mph. We could save 37,000 lives a year by reducing the speed limit to 30.
And as many as 60,000 people die each year from seasonal flu. Presumably, those lives could be saved by locking down the country every year… 12 months of the year.
Why don’t we make the lockdown national… and permanent… and reduce the speed limit to 30 mph?
All lives matter… but we drive 70 mph. We eat things that may have peanuts in them. We drink. We quarrel. We make love. We go to war. We weigh the risks and take our chances.
The shame of the lockdown policy is that it imposes the costs of trying to save every last old, fat, diabetic codger on everybody, including lean, young college students.
People who have contagious diseases are often quarantined to protect the rest of us. But lockdown policies quarantine healthy people, those who should be free to live their lives as they see fit.
It is a little like putting women in jail to protect them from rapists.
Justice matters too. And freedom. And many other things we can’t begin to put a price tag on.
Wednesday came news that Donald Trump has ordered Tyson Foods to keep working. Spare ribs are hardly essential for the defense of the nation.
So, if the feds can use an infectious disease to force some people to work… and confine others to their homes… what can’t they do?
Can they take our money away to protect us from inflation? Can they terminate elections to protect us from civil unrest? What next?
Also came news yesterday that Mayor De Blasio of New York threatened to lock up mourners at a funeral:
My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.
But keeping people from attending funerals doesn’t necessarily save lives. Many epidemiologists believe it makes no difference at all.
The disease moves fast. Lockdowns are too slow and too imperfect to have any effect. Just look at the difference in the results…
California and Massachusetts both have similarly strict lockdown orders in place. But Massachusetts has 10 times as many fatalities.
And it’s not just about saving lives. We’re all going to die. It’s how we get there that matters.
It’s one thing to live well… with courage, dignity, common sense… and honor.
It’s another to cower in our lonely homes, terrified of a bug… forgo the common pleasures of life… and then have the mud thrown down on our faces without a mourner in sight.
In early March, “flattening the curve” seemed like a good idea. Faced with the sober scientists on one side… and the howling media on the other, we might have been tempted to lock down the nation, too.
We’re not really criticizing. As far as we can tell, the policy of the federal government was an honest mistake; we don’t know that we would have done any better.
But based on what we know now, it appears that our first impressions were wrong, and that the Trump Team, as well as most state governors, were bamboozled by the “experts” into making a terrible blunder.
The virus helpfully targets a very narrow segment of the population — the old, the fat, the diabetic and those with heart/lung conditions.
Your editor fits part of that description, so we’re happy to be socially distancing ourselves. But that’s no reason to shut down everybody else.
But wait. If we allow young people to go to work… and kids to go to school… when they come to visit us, we’ll die, right?
Well, just yesterday, yet another report undermined the case for a universal lockdown.
Bloomberg:
Children contract the coronavirus less often and with less severity than the general population, and there doesn’t appear to be cases of a child passing Covid-19 to an adult, according to a new report.
Besides the financial losses (estimated in the trillions worldwide), God knows what personal suffering a lockdown causes — bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness, loneliness, wife beating, depression, suicide, etc…
But those of us most at risk number only about one out of 20. So, rather than shut down the entire economy, a better course of action would have been just to shut down us!
Focus on the most vulnerable people… especially in nursing homes… making sure they are properly isolated and protected while the rest of the population goes about its business and acquires its “herd immunity.”
Subsequent revelations and analysis may prove this wrong, too, but that’s the way it looks now.
yes but thelibs and others saw it for the tremendous opportunity it provided them and used it to maximum advantage
It wasn’t a blunder. It was a planned attack on our economy.
It appears the Trump/Fauci/Brix strategy was a failure. We shattered the economy and the Coronavirus spread anyway. We got the worst of both worlds.
“It wasn’t a blunder. It was a planned attack on our economy.”
Or it was an experiment / dry run for them to assess how difficult or easy it would be to control the peons for something bigger later on. Turns out it was very easy.
But, but, but... in two weeks all of our ER’s and hospitals were going to be overwhelmed, and we would all be as bad off as Northern Italy!!!
Subject:: It was not about your health!
“When the State tells you it’s safe to go to Home Depot to buy a sponge but dangerous to go and buy a flower, it’s not about your health.
When the State shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee, it’s not about your health.
When the State bans dentists because its unsafe, but deems an abortion visit is safe, it’s not about your health.
When the State prevents you from buying cucumber seeds because it’s dangerous, but allows personal lottery ticket sales, it’s not about your health.
When the State tells you it’s dangerous to go golf alone, fish alone or be in a motor boat alone, but the Governor can get his stage make-up done, and hair done for 5 TV appearances a week, it’s not about your health.
When the state puts you IN a jail cell for walking in a park with your child because it’s too dangerous but lets criminals OUT of jail cells for their health- It’s not about YOUR health!
When the state tells you it’s too dangerous to get treated by a doctor for chiropractic or physical therapy treatments yet deems a liquor store essential- It’s not about your health!
When the State lets you go to the grocery store or hardware store but is demanding mail-in voting, ITS NOT ABOUT YOUR HEALTH.
WAKE UP PEOPLE — If you think this is all about your health you’re mistaken! Please open your eyes! Stop being lead like blind sheep.”
Wow! Great list Grampa! Nailed it.
Thanks.
Please use it here and with your email lists and ?????!
Yes Sir, will do!
Depressing but true.
To all the Monday morning quarterbacks:
When I voted for Trump I did it with the full knowledge that he might disappoint me down the road. I remember that betrayer named Bush. And his son. And the Florida Bush who backed Common Core.
But back to Trump - he has really impressed me with his ability to navigate each disaster that is sent his way.
I think he got the handling of the Covid-19 situation right. So go ahead and whine and moan about how those two dopey doctors outmaneuvered him. But I think Trump is smarter than you. (And I cannot even spell Q.)
YES!!!
Yes, I can remember when we were “just a week behind Italy.”
When I read that, I instantly realized this was a piece entrenched in generational bigotry. We were once a nation that respected human life of all ages. We had a deep respect of the older generations for their great value to society. Evidentially, there is a mindset that believes the plague is a godsend that will weed out the older generation to make way for the younger population. They hope the pandemic spreads wide and hard so that it does its work thinning the herd. The herd immunity strategy gives them the incentive to make the virus spread. Human life is just another herd of animals. They will do their part with a fever, a cough and a little spit to make sure the fat old diabetic farts are eliminated. If anything, this should be a test of ones moral fitness, and God shall be the judge of that.
Trump was suspended over the abyss of a phony model showing 2 million deaths, and had to cave.
But the lockdown as a concept is fallacious with simple reasoning:
As By quarantining the healthy (first time in history?), you guarantee that there is no possibility of defining that point when it is safe for the healthy to emerge again. There is always a lingering chance the healthy will be infected, and what constitutes a “safe” level of risk has about 330 million opinions. Therefore the only answer is the bureaucratic “treat every person the same.” This, in turn, leads ultimately to paralysis, because the only way a bureaucrat can get into trouble is by saying “Yes.”
I think he got the handling of the Covid-19 situation right. So go ahead and whine and moan about how those two dopey doctors outmaneuvered him. But I think Trump is smarter than you. (And I cannot even spell Q.
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Darn Straight! POTUS did not “lockdown” anything. He issued some guidelines for individuals that would be helpful for any contagious disease—common sense in my opinion.
He also stopped the fights in from China-and how they screamed about that—and don’t tell me that what Pelosi, Cuomo, and Mayor of NY did was in any way better than POTUS actions.
Talk about a trio of trolls that are dumber than a box of rocks...
POTUS has been amazing - period.
He then let the governors demonstrate what totalitarian despots they are—or just how dumb they are or whatever you want to call the actions that many of the Governors and Mayors have decreed.
The only death our county has had was a young 20 year old female. But the deaths are really not the important measure—it is the hospital utilization that people should be tracking.
Even in a normal flu season, our area’s hospitals are often overwhelmed. People have sometimes had to wait in Emergency rooms in our rural areas for days before they can be transferred for surgery to a hospital due to lack of beds.
Our County’s Emergency Team, Health Department, and County Commissioners didn’t not “lock anything down” except what the governor decreed. They posted a request on face book asking for help to give them time to prepare.
All businesses that could operate with 6 ft. distancing, 10 people or the state guidelines for larger businesses were exempted from any closures in our county-no discussion of essential business(all businesses are essential to the people depending on them for their livelihood).
We have all done what we considered was common sense in our area-with little thought to what government said or did. The main impact was the switch to drive through, pick up, and delivery services for a lot of things.
This “shutdown” is on the governors, mayors, and local officials—NOT POTUS.
And it’s been a great big PSYOP by the media as a wedge issue to insert discord into the deplorables and stop the TRUMP TRAIN. Really sick of all the jabbering and arguing. It’s a bit early to know for sure what this virus is/will be—it could stay in the body and possibly pop up now and then or come back with a vengeance-like shingles for example.
Yes it was, and the continuing of it is making it worse!
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