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Did Anyone Think This Through?
AmericanThinker.com ^ | April 5, 2020 | Douglas Fint

Posted on 04/05/2020 5:53:30 AM PDT by Kaslin

Count me as one of a diminishing number of "coronavirus response" skeptics. My vantage point is that of a working-class person (service manager in an auto repair shop). My state of Virginia has joined the growing number of states that has ordered its citizens to remain in their homes except for essential reasons, and a shutdown of non-essential businesses until at least June 10th.

The good news for me is that auto repair is classed as an essential service and I have enough diverse skills to make me the kind of employee who will be the last to be laid off. The bad news is that inevitably, I will be laid off. Shop revenues for the month of March were down between 25 and 50%, depending on which metric was being used, which means my pay was down by a nearly equal percentage. So far, in the first few days of April, revenues are down 75-90% companywide.

I work for good people. It’s a family-owned business with 10 shops. I know they don't have the cash reserves to keep paying staff through this, and even if they did, they would be foolish to do so since there is no date certain of a return to normalcy.

At some point very soon, they will have to shift from keeping enough employees to recover quickly when the crisis ends, to preserving whatever assets they have for the survival of the family. When that happens and I am laid off, as millions of working-class Americans already have been, I have a problem beyond no job and no income. Try no health insurance. Because I, as most working Americans, get my health insurance through work.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: coronavirus
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1 posted on 04/05/2020 5:53:30 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Actually, I believe that the number of people who understand that the isolation has gone way too far as people increasingly notice the proportionate lack of bodies produced by the emporer’s new plague.


2 posted on 04/05/2020 5:58:58 AM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: Kaslin

Let Americans Work Again. LAWA!


3 posted on 04/05/2020 6:00:48 AM PDT by ronniesgal (so I wonder what his FR handle is????)
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To: Kaslin

It was always foolish in the extreme to tie health insurance to employment, and now the consequences will manifest in a big way.


4 posted on 04/05/2020 6:03:15 AM PDT by thoughtomator (Joe Biden/Zombie Reagan in 2020 - Braaaaaains!)
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To: Kaslin

Is any information available upon the shuttered West Virginia plant which did manufacture HCQ several years ago, due to reopen.

Also about a story on Israeli manufacturing and gifting of HCQ some millions of doses of HCQ to the USA.


5 posted on 04/05/2020 6:03:24 AM PDT by Norski
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To: Kaslin

Three weeks ago I was telling everybody around me that if people are not producing, buying, selling and consuming, governments are not getting their tax dollars. That can go on for only so long before things get really ugly. Wars are fought over this sort of thing. World Wars.


6 posted on 04/05/2020 6:05:55 AM PDT by cuban leaf (The political war playing out in every country now: Globalists vs Nationalists)
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To: Kaslin
Count me as one of a diminishing number of "coronavirus response" skeptics.

I think he got it backwards

Count me as one of a GROWING number of "coronavirus response" skeptics.

7 posted on 04/05/2020 6:07:45 AM PDT by Pollard (shadowbanned)
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To: Kaslin

I have a problem beyond no job and no income. Try no health insurance. Because I, as most working Americans, get my health insurance through work.“

Medicare for all - or some other kind of universal health insurance. And I’m not joking. We’re doing it anyway with the bailout for people who’ve been thrown out of work, and with Pences promise that the feds will reimburse hospitals for treatment to uninsured covid-19 patients

Germany has universal health insurance. Australia. Israel. Taiwan. In fact, all developed countries do except us.

Why should small businesses be saddled with the cost of health care for their employees? For that matter, why should large businesses? It throws huge costs on them, lowers the number of people they can afford to hire, and makes them less competitive viz foreign companies; none of our industrial competitor nations require their businesses to serve as providers of health care or health care insurance.


8 posted on 04/05/2020 6:08:22 AM PDT by rintintin (qu)
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To: MrEdd

By now I was expecting piles of bodies being burned in the streets. In Mexifornia the percentage of deaths is a 10,000th of one percent of the population.


9 posted on 04/05/2020 6:12:16 AM PDT by HighSierra5
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To: rintintin

It’s not an either or thing, and when you push socialism as the cure you completely lose a lot of people on this forum who support deregulation of pharmaceuticals and defanging the FDA instead of either of the propositions you mention.


10 posted on 04/05/2020 6:17:17 AM PDT by MrEdd (Caveat Emptor)
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To: Norski

And I think HCQ in sufficient quantities is the key, but so far our leaders are not expressing it as they should.

They need to recognize a couple of things about this bug. It’s a flu-type virus, but particularly nasty in three ways. One is that a lot of people who get it have very bad, and sometimes fatal, symptoms. Another is that it is apparently highly contagious. The third is that there is currently no historical immunity in the human species.

The combination of those things means that there is no way to physically contain the spread of this disease. Most everyone will be exposed to it eventually. As things stand right now, when that happens you are either going to not know it, get mildly sick, get really sick, or die. And that will be the case until the bug infects enough people and there is enough herd immunity that it no longer has hosts to spread to.

Having said that, we need a therapy that mitigates the worst symptoms of this so that the number of those who die are reduced as much as possible. If that is HCQ, which seems to be promising, then lets make A LOT of it. And administer a regimen to people as soon as they are symptomatic.

And then open up the economy and let this thing run its course.

Otherwise, we are going to have the dual outcomes of dead people and a dead economy.


11 posted on 04/05/2020 6:19:37 AM PDT by henkster ("We can always fool the foreigner" - Chinese Proverb)
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To: rintintin

One problem with the universal healthcare model is that in the end, the wealthy people from those enlightened countries always have their serious procedures done in the US. No lines or waiting for them; they simply jet over to the promised land and get their surgeries done.

They know “universal health insurance” reduces medical professionals to the status of government motor vehicles workers - with the same disincentive to strive harder.

We’ve already dabbled with “universal health INSURANCE” - which has seen most Americans pay much higher premiums and copays for much less “healthcare”.


12 posted on 04/05/2020 6:23:32 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Kaslin

Dear POTUS,
Time to relax the Fauxci “Guidelines” and then let the states fully decide their economic fates.

Your role:
- Keep funneling medical supplies to states
- Do a pure Infrastructure program (yuck) with Congress
- Protect the borders
- Do another tax cut with Congress
- Start purposing cutting the Federal budget wherever it’s useless, including overseas troop commitments


13 posted on 04/05/2020 6:23:46 AM PDT by ReaganGeneration2
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To: MrEdd

Its not an either or thing, and when you push socialism as the cure you completely lose a lot of people on this forum”

I know. But have they really thought things through? Right now we force businesses to provide health insurance. And when rookie lose their jobs, the government pays their medical bills anyway - as is happening thru the bailout. How is that not socialism? It turns businesses into social service providers, by government command, and undermines employment by making it more expensive to hire people

Once again, I’ll remind people that Israel has a universal health insurance program, and it is well liked by everyone I have talked with. (It also allows people to purchase private plans if they desire, but doesn’t force businesses into being insurers for their employees)


14 posted on 04/05/2020 6:24:01 AM PDT by rintintin (qu)
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To: MrEdd
But in a perfect circular argument, Dr. Fauci and others have said that if the extreme social isolation measures are successful in greatly reducing the body count, then the result will be that it will look like the government overreacted.

Our only clue as to whether the extreme measures were necessary is to look to Sweden, who has not issued shelter in place orders, and compare their mortality rates to the rest of Scandinavia.

15 posted on 04/05/2020 6:25:55 AM PDT by Yo-Yo ( is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: Kaslin

No bodies in the ditches here, either.

One fatality at local hospital, 80+, stage 4 lung cancer, was already on vent for that. Cause of death, CV !!!

CDC has encouraged padding numbers, even under presumed cause of death, no test
required

Follow the money

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


16 posted on 04/05/2020 6:25:57 AM PDT by nevermorelenore ( If My people will pray ....)
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To: rintintin

Paul Starr’s book. It’s excellent. During WW II companies could not attract workers with wages. So they began offering “health insurance”. Kaiser Permanente was the first.


17 posted on 04/05/2020 6:26:18 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: Kaslin

Allocations of future healthcare dollars and community support by Congress will be based on regional/state death data

an example of Democrat and RINO “farsightedness”...looking ahead....for the “chirrun”..and for “government”

all kinds of opportunity for siphoning off cash to overseas accounts for the governing among us


18 posted on 04/05/2020 6:27:45 AM PDT by mo ("If you understand, no explanation is needed; if you don't understand, no explanation is possible")
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To: wastoute

Yes I know how it got started. But now it’s mandated. By government decree, all but the smallest businesses must service public social service agencies by providing health care insurance for their employees. That effectively “nationalizes” these businesses, turning them into agents of the state

Beoyond that, the health insurers are huge profit making organizations that are essentially middlemen, high salaries and overhead, sucking up vast sums of money that could otherwise actually be spent on health care


19 posted on 04/05/2020 6:30:51 AM PDT by rintintin (qu)
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To: Kaslin

It was thought through thoroughly. It took the Progs a moment to get it but they did while Chicken Freepers reacted with fear and ridiculed anyone that dared to apply the least little logic.

The Progs realized that a panicked population would submit to government edicts leading to a wrecked economy (red man gone) and accept vastly expanded government control of their lives. Now the template is set for any scary scenario that comes our way. And there will be many more to come.

This has been thought through.


20 posted on 04/05/2020 6:31:43 AM PDT by FreedomNotSafety
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