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Reopening America after a month of lockdowns is not like flipping a light switch. A better analogy is a dimmer switch. Governors will methodically reopen sectors of the economy and daily life while closely monitoring COVID-19 cases. With good numbers, they’ll keep dialing the rheostat to the right; with bad, to the left. They should start this process now.
That analysis is much to logical and straightforward to ever make it to the MSM.
That is, there are known, lethal public health side effects to Dr. Fauci’s prescription for America, side effects of which he had a duty to be aware and for which he had a duty to bring in consulting medical experts, really team members, to fully inform President Trump and the American people and to give full consideration to all the known serious or fatal side effects.
As I mentioned in another thread, on Wednesday a regional politician relayed information from the chief of police of a nearby city: since the “lockdown” began, child abuse calls are up 23% and spousal abuse calls are up 21%. Suicides are also up, but getting a firm number is apparently difficult.
A child (12 years old) in an adjacent town tried to commit suicide on Sunday. A friend of mine who is friends with the family said that the child was already depressed, and the lockdown may have pushed him over the line.
Unfortunately, the increase in domestic violence, suicide, and plain old “giving up” are not likely to make media headlines, and thus will probably remain “unseen.” Also, to follow up on comments made by @andrewklavan on his podcast, a bunch of dead bodies on Broadway in New York City will impact the country as a whole, and so policies must be implemented to prevent that. Those bodies would be in a concentrated area of importance to the media, and thus would be seen by the entire country. But I would respond that we might make the wrong policy choices if we ignore or don’t see the bodies (suicide, drug and alcohol overdose, domestic violence, and even the technically living but spiritually dead who have just given up) that are spread out across the vast expanse of the rest of the country. Unfortunately we are unlikely to see those distributed bodies.
Jon,
Regards,
Jim
Jon, what makes you think that it is feasible to prevent COVID-19 deaths? Is there evidence that the lockdown has actually prevented any deaths, as opposed to merely delaying them?
Eventually, this thing is going to spread until the point of herd immunity. The IFR is going to be the IFR, whatever it is — 0.2%, 0.5%, maybe higher, unlikely lower.
My conclusion, at the moment, is that we’ve created an economic depression in order to buy a little time, apparently in the vain hope that someone will come up with a vaccine in a miraculously short period of time, or that some other miracle will occur.
Hey. Speak for yourself, Arizona Lad. I want…..death!
Pretty good summary of the numbers, and the rationale for a ratcheted recovery re…plan.
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation
The government has lost a lot of credibility. People can’t help thinking, “If they were so smart, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.” So the government’s telling everyone, “Get back to normal now because the danger is past” may not be very reassuring for a while.
I quite agree. The problem is that this debate has become weaponized by people who want to destroy their opponents, and it barely matters what their opponents believe so long as they can justify their opposition. At this point I’m just automatically ignoring nearly all the posts that talk about this topic, even here on Ricochet where we’re supposed to be offering thoughtful discourse.
The far left wants to see chaos, the moderate left just wants power and that means weaken Trump. Trump is trying to avoid these two groups. The middle, who aren’t run by politics, are being herded reluctantly by everybody in different directions, but mostly are willing to follow Trump and are paying the biggest price. The right, as usual, is all over the place, they know the left is crazy and crooked, but are skeptical about everybody else. It’s all normal, but in a new very costly direction that must be corrected as soon as possible.
Exactly so. “We” have chosen to unperson those who died of despair over the past decade(s), slinging dismissive insults about disfunctional subcultures and telling the victims to “learn to code.” Apparently these lives were worth trading off for the latest iPhone and some avocado toast. The Cuomos of our world can strike their lives over dollars pose because the lives on the other side of the ledger just do not register.