By Samuel Strait – April 24, 2020 –
When I returned from a much needed decompress on March 1st, then
transiting  through LAX, I was greeted by an hysterical US media on
nearly every channel, hyping the end of the world as we know it, two
point two million deaths by April in the US alone, hospital and medicals
systems collapsing, the indisputable need to lockdown the entire country
immediately or the death toll would absolutely be much worse.  It seemed
like every medical expert in the country was on speed dial reinforcing
that message on TV and in print media.  In the nearly seven weeks since
I have been home the message really hasn’t changed much, but the numbers
have. It took an additional two plus weeks for the lockdown by various
governors to go into effect.  In the ensuing weeks, the 2.2 million
deaths did not occur.  The media gleefully began to trumpet the news
that the lockdown was having an effect, all the while forgetting that
the lockdown was already factored into the 2.2 million deaths.  Ooops…

Way too many people in this country continue to trust that message and
seem to be paralyzed by the fear that they are the next ones to succumb
to that dreaded virus.  But wait just a minute, this is the same media
that has been caught out in so many ways over the last several decades
that continues to trade in false information, misinformation and false
narratives dominated by so called “experts” such that a majority of the
people in this country just two months ago found the media to be less
trust worthy than the US Government.   In plain and simple terms the US
media ranked last in terms of trustworthiness by nearly eighty percent
of the country’s citizens, so why has that changed.  The media certainly
hasn’t.

Before we talk about the numbers as they have evolved over the last
couple of months, the stage should be set with various conversations I
have had over the last couple of days with medical professionals.   Each
in his or her own right was either a medical doctor or health care
provider, and each professing to believe completely in the current
lockdown.  When asked to comment on the general theme that is being
discussed by medical experts reporting on Covid-19 “Why is it that the
numbers are so far off”, that is, if even the numbers being reported are
remotely correct?   No one really had an answer, some tried to justify
the numbers, but the bottom line was none had an explanation for the
wildly inflated numbers initially being reported.  All reported that so
little is known about Covid-19 that to be cautious was the only way to
justify the over hyped reporting and subsequent reaction by our
government leaders.  While this might seem to be a reasonable
explanation, this has not historically been a typical response to this
sort of crisis.

To continue, in the past couple of weeks as the projected numbers have
fallen rather precipitously,  it should have become important to ask the
following  question, “While I realize that the Covid-19 virus is a new
strain with unknown implications to those infected by it and different
from our much better known experience with the common flu, why does the
Covid-19’s transition through our population now appear to be mimicking
so many of the viruses we have experienced over the last century?”   The
common answer again was we just don’t know.

We talk a lot about anecdotal experiences and the perils of relying on
it.  We talk about isolated pieces of information that could lead us
astray without the science to support it.  There is a lot of talk about
if we don’t continue to imprison ourselves we will succumb to even
greater loss of life yet to come.  All our politicians, mostly in the
form of the various state’s governors, continue to occupy themselves with
more authoritarian policies to inflict on their populations.  Yet the
numbers of deaths, hospitalizations and overall infection rates seem to
be improving towards those magical numbers that we no longer fear when
talking about new viruses.  Not so in the press.   Examples include a
recent study in New York that appears to indicate that Covid-19 is much
more wide spread than previously thought, bringing the possible death
rate to one half of one percent or lower.  Another study seems to
indicate that the virus will only impact from eight to ten percent or
less of the entire population.  Other indicators appear to point to a
greater natural immunity to the Covid-19 in the first place.  At the
present time only two percent of the infected below the age of forty
die, mostly men.  Those that should be truly fearful are those over
sixty with underlying health issues where nearly eighty percent of the
deaths occur. When you couple that with the very real possibility that
Covid deaths being reported are not the primary cause of death, and
disturbing reports that some deaths reported as Covid deaths were not
even tested.   Those are serious questions that needed answers before a
mandatory lock down was implemented .

As we have traveled the path towards where we are at now, was there ever
enough hard facts to justify the actions that have been taken?  When we
hear the information being broadcast endlessly by our media and its
“experts”, the sound bites dribble away to “We don’t really Know.”  So
I’ve heard all of the moral posturing, the virtue signaling, and
comments from from people saying you just want more people to die
because you are greedy, but that does not negate the numbers.  We
experience hundreds of thousands of deaths from health related issues
every year which is a true tragedy. Many of these deaths occur when
people unknowingly transmit viruses to others.  Does that warrant
shutting the country down?

The traditional mechanism for defeating plagues, epidemics, or even
pandemics was isolation of the vulnerable if possible. Viruses respect
neither boundaries nor government action.  It was always an individual
choice to quarantine rather than the masses being stampeded into
detention.   One other more common tactic was to relocate out of densely
populated areas to less populated parts of the country.  It was never
locking down an entire country but rather people making conscious
choices to avoid contact or not. Keeping in mind that it was only with
fear and panic that moral pandering reared its ugly face causing
countless avoidable and non health related  deaths.   Science and
medical experts do not have an answer yet.  Maybe soon, but hiding at
home is not an answer for very many.