No One Can Oblige
Us to Commit Suicide
The USNS Comfort was rushed to
New York City Harbor to help care for the tens of thousands of coronavirus
patients that were expected to fill the city’s hospital beds. The floating
military hospital added a full 1,000 beds to the system’s capacity.
The
ship is now leaving, having been barely used. In New York City, the much-feared
collapse of the health system never happened. Extra ventilators, like the
hospital ship, are available for other places.
The ship’s stay in the hot zone
and its departure are highly symbolic.
Across
the country, hospitals prepared for Armageddon by clearing out space to deal
with the expected waves of COVID-19 victims. Then, everywhere the health system
was underwhelmed by an Armageddon that never came. Now, hospitals are laying off
medical staff or even going bankrupt. The lack of patients and the canceling of
elective surgeries seriously harmed them financially. People are dying because
they postponed vital operations.
Something went seriously wrong
with the models used to project the threat to public health. These models were
not even close to reality. The most cited was released by a team from the
Imperial College London led by Prof. Neil Ferguson. It was used by a large
number of governments to impose extreme confinement measures on their citizens.
These political leaders showed more faith and reverence for this model’s skewed
projections than they accord to the Four Gospels. These London experts
estimated 2.2 million Americans would die. Only a fraction of that number
succumbed. The study’s principal author later admitted that the wild estimates
were based on thousands of lines of undocumented code written 13 years ago to
model flu pandemics. These initial models were not just
miscalculations but guesstimates based on a poor application of science. A
politicized media then ran with them.
No
one has yet been called to accounts over this massive mistake. These scientists
still have their jobs. The government leaders who rashly and unquestionably
accepted and acted on their inflated numbers are still in office. Irresponsible
media continues to whip up hysteria.
At the same time, political
leaders smugly ignored doctors and scientists like Dr. John Ioannidis of
Stanford University. Their studies and insights were quite close to accurate
and estimated the lethality rate was close to that of the seasonal flu. Had
they been given favorable hearing, it could have saved the hospital system a
great deal of time and money. Their politically incorrect yet epidemiologically
correct insights could have saved lives and trouble.
Not
satisfied with their disastrous handling of the crisis in the medical field,
government leaders doubled down and went for an encore in the economy and
society-at-large. The wheels of industry and commerce came to a screeching halt
in anticipation of the pandemic that would kill millions. A good portion of the
world is still in some phase of lockdown. These decisions too were based on the
same faulty models. They are triggering a meltdown.
Government
actions should be based on real data and sound science. The continued
implementation of extreme confinement measures based on these flawed
guesstimate models is nothing but socio-political and economic suicide.
Vast
stretches of America with few or no cases of the virus were treated with the
same drastic rigor as New York City, the national hot spot. Vibrant businesses
and operations were simplistically divided into just two groups: “essential” or
“non-essential.” Who knows what questionable criteria informed this
un-Solomonic decision seeing that in many states abortion mills, marijuana
dispensaries and liquor stores were deemed “essential,” but not so churches and
religious gatherings.
When integrated modern
economies stop, whole supply chains also halt. Components of the process often
cannot be repurposed. Massive amounts of goods and foodstuffs must be donated
or thrown away.
The
sheer scope of economic destruction is mind-boggling. In March and April,
markets shed trillions of dollars in value. Important industries like hospitality
and travel ground to a halt. Debt skyrocketed. Government spending ballooned
out of all control. Tens of millions no longer have jobs and are collecting
unemployment aid.
Worst
of all, the business world, eager to reopen, is subject to the slow and cruel
vagaries of the same politicians who landed them in their current fate. Many
government leaders now extend the lockdowns in a vacuous attempt to save face
and “prove” the closings were indeed needed. Other government officials are
ideologues and care nothing for the economic calamity. They see the crisis as
an opportunity to ram through their socialist and green agendas.
The
great danger is not the virus but rather the bungling of its handling. It led
to measures that are destroying the social and economic order. A
do-whatever-it-takes attitude is burning the house down when a flashlight would
have been sufficient to illuminate and find a solution to the problem.
One day, history will judge
with great severity the guilt of all involved in creating the panic and
hysteria informing this crisis. It will condemn harshly those who have openly
and unashamedly used the crisis to pursue their subversive ideological goals.
To varying degrees, each must bear some responsibility for this medical and
economic calamity. They will share in the blame for those who will perish by
illness, suicide, anxiety and other indirect causes of death wrought by the
worldwide panic and everything it triggered.
The
only way out of the crisis is to pull out of this suicidal course. Now.
Immediately. No one can be obliged to commit suicide. Like the USNS Comfort, it
is time to leave the New York harbor behind.
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