Let’s face it. I don’t think the lockdown is doing a damn bit of good. Maybe it prevented some infections. But there are so many loopholes in the lockdown orders (except, apparently, in states like Michigan and Colorado where the governors have gone full Nazi…and you never want to go full Nazi…and yes, yes, I realize I just Godwinned myself, fuck off) that I really don’t see how they’ve been all that effective. In effect, you’re essential unless otherwise prohibited from working, and most of the folks prohibited from working seem to be the very folks who are least able to afford not working.
I mean, I’m still working, but the company I work for doesn’t deal with in-person customer service to begin with, and I’ve been a full-time telecommuter for nearly a quarter century. So there was no change in my work day or work situation. My wife nearly got furloughed, since she works at a health club, but her boss is a mensch and kept people working who wanted to help give the place a deep clean during the closure. And even the people who didn’t have anything to do are still being paid based on their February earnings (mostly these are part-time instructors, lifeguards, etc.). Which is why I consider her boss to be a mensch.
But that is not the case for the over 20 million people the WSJ said last week had filed for unemployment.
Now, figures lie and liars figure, and it is beginning to become apparent that there is a lot of number-finagling going on in places like New York City, where they’re counting just about every death as COVID-19 related. Why? Their governor figured out that he could get more money from the Feds that way. See the CARES Act, section 4409:
SEC. 4409. Medicare hospital inpatient prospective payment system add-on payment for covid–19 patients during emergency period.(a) In general.—Section 1886(d)(4)(C) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395ww(d)(4)(C)) is amended by adding at the end the following new clause:
“(iv) (I) For discharges occurring during the emergency period described in section 1135(g)(1)(B), in the case of a discharge that has a principal or secondary diagnosis of COVID–19, the Secretary shall increase the weighting factor for each diagnosis-related group (with such a principal or secondary diagnosis) by 15 percent.
“(II) Any adjustment under subclause (I) shall not be taken into account in applying budget neutrality under clause (iii).”
(b) Implementation.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary may implement the amendment made by subsection (a) by program instruction or otherwise.
So suddenly, New York revises their numbers to include patients who deceased “during the emergency period” who MAY have had COVID-19 but were never actually diagnosed with it. But they had heart trouble, or were diabetic, or were just fucking old, so obviously they must have had COVID-19, right? And there’s no way to prove otherwise, because the deceased were not tested for the virus and many of them have since been cremated.
Fact-checkers are, of course, calling bullshit, not because the CARES Act doesn’t say what people are saying it says, but because they claim there is “no evidence” that New York City is inflating its numbers to get more money from the Feds. Fact-checkers often lie, too. You think for one minute that De Blasio and Cuomo aren’t colluding to make those emendations? (De Blasio isn’t smart enough to think of it, but Cuomo is, so I imagine collusion. Why not? The Dems imagine collusion all the time.)
But all the money we don’t have that’s being wasted aside, it makes no sense that we are buttoning up in our homes and avoiding contact like the plague. (Ha. Ha. That was a joke, son.) It’s becoming pretty evident that the virus has been floating around since last fall. Hell, I suspect I had the “mild” version myself last fall, but there’s no way to get tested for it because in effect, unless you have symptoms, you can’t get tested. And they’d need to run an antibody test on me anyway, not the thing they run up your nose, because I don’t have symptoms, and it was months ago at this point.
The thing that makes this most annoying is there’s this thing called “herd immunity.” And forcing people to stay at home and not interact is preventing us from developing it — unless we already have, because the virus has been here since last fall.
Yes, people are continuing to fall ill from the ‘Rona. People are going to continue to fall ill from the ‘Rona until we develop immunity. There’s not going to be a vaccine (have you ever heard of a vaccine for the common cold? It’s a coronavirus, too) before the virus itself mutates into a milder form, which is what viruses generally do. Viruses that kill lots of people very fast do not, as a general rule, have a lot of survivability.
Although it’s an interesting virus, and the only thing that makes me think it was “engineered” as opposed to “just appeared in nature” is the two-week incubation period during which infected people are asymptomatic but contagious. Most viruses have a three- to five-day window to development of frank symptoms. You’ve all had colds, you may have had the flu. Doesn’t take long until you’re sick and know it. This thing isn’t like that. Its primary purpose seems to be to infect as many people as it can before it sickens its host. A secondary purpose seems to be to kill off the weak, sick, and otherwise non-healthy segments of the population.
At the same time, there are cohorts among which it’s not doing that, and you’d think it would. The homeless, primarily. Nobody is forcing them into shelters and they’re still living out in the streets as usual. (I noticed yesterday that they’re back begging in the roadway medians and street corners. Is that considered an “essential” occupation, Governor?) And almost all of them who are tested are either virus-free or have antibodies indicating they already have had either the mild version or the asymptomatic version.
Huh.
Might be all that fresh air and sunshine. Vitamin D appears to help. You don’t get Vitamin D unless you go out in the sun or take supplements or drink a shitload of milk. Possibly the fact that I’ve been taking 5000 i.u. daily of Vitamin D for the past two years because I don’t get out much during the course of a day isn’t just helping me avoid migraines, maybe it’s also helping me avoid getting the ‘Rona. I don’t know.
But sitting around your house all day binge-watching Netflix isn’t doing a thing for building your herd immunity to this shit.
So everyone who’s fallen for the “stay at home” orders has got this idea that as soon as we open up, we’re going to see a spike in cases and deaths again. Well, duh. The point was to flatten the curve, not hide from the virus until it goes away. The very idea that a significant percentage of the workforce can sit in their houses cowering from this thing for the next six to eighteen months in hopes of a nebulous vaccine being developed is the cray-cray. We will have a recession, or a depression, and we will end up having a famine, if we listen to the fools who are running things right now, who either did Nazi that coming or just want to play Nazi until we storm the statehouses and treat them all to necktie parties.
AND THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WANT THE NECKTYING TO START IMMEDIATELY. Michigan. Colorado. Alabama. California. Probably New York and Pennsylvania, and probably North Carolina. Hell, even in Indiana there are people making that sort of noise.
That’s the fucking danger, more than running out of money or running out of food. Once the boogaloo starts, it’s not going to stop until the blood-lust is satisfied. There are people out there who are that fucking angry right now. I’m not one of them — yet. But if the boog starts, I’ll be right out there yeeting with the rest of them.
Because this country was not founded on the idea that local officials could lock us up in our homes just because we might die from a virus. You lock the people up who have it. You don’t lock the healthy people up, and that includes the asymptomatic folks. You have to create herd immunity or this stuff will come back time and time and time again.
So here’s what the “smart people” on Facebook seem to think is the right thing for anyone who decides to defy the lockouts.
First of all, no, and second of all, fuck no. Because that’s the other side of the coin. There isn’t a vaccine, but there are treatments that WORK. Gilead has one that’s been tested with COVID-19 patients during a Phase 3 trial, and had amazing success. That’s remdesivir, which will probably get fast approval if it continues to score successes. Then there’s the malaria/lupus drug hydroxychloroquine used with a Z-pack antibiotic and (I think) vitamin D. Both are known to work. They might or might not save all patients, but they’ll save a high percentage of them.
The whole fucking point of the lockdown was, as I already said above, to flatten the curve. That was so we wouldn’t put a burden on the hospitals. Well, not only did the curve flatten, it flattened so far that none of the dire predictions came true. The numbers never got that high. Emergency facilities and the two US Navy hospital ships turned out not to be all that necessary. (The U.S. Army tent hospital put up in Seattle’s football stadium to great fanfare was taken down after three days without ever having seen a patient.)
This is virus theatre.
We need to get out of our homes, get back to our jobs, and get the economy going again. Take precautions? Sure. Wear a mask if it rings your bell. Wash your fucking hands. Keep your social distance (do that anyway, damn it). Restaurants will probably have to make do with fewer tables. Don’t know what will happen with sports and theatres or any kind of live entertainment (movie theatres are dying anyway, and may have just had their death knell sound with people discovering watching from the comfort of their own homes is preferable to going to the multiplex and dealing with all those other people and spending $50 or more to get you and your date in, get some popcorn and a drink, and watch the latest Hollywood crap on the big screen).
You know, I’m just as scared of getting the virus as anyone else who’s over 60, obese, diabetic, and has respiratory problems (I’ve had chronic bronchitis since I was in my 20’s and probably longer). But I’m at the point where I simply don’t care, because if I get it and I die from it, that’s what the plan for me must have been all along. I’m a lot more concerned that we’re headed for the death of our country from the decisions of a bunch of statist fucks who don’t know any more about virology than I do, and who are getting abysmally bad advice from people in the NIH and the CDC who have already been handing out bad advice for years to start with.
Comments are not open on this because I have no interest in arguing the point. It’s argued back and forth all day long and nobody ever seems to be able to find a middle ground. And the more we argue about it and don’t find a working solution that lets people get back to living their lives, the closer we get to everything just going to hell, either because someone starts the boog or because we all start to starve to death in our own homes.
We don’t have to live in Bandit Six’s world. At least we dodged the bullet of Hillary Clinton. Jury’s still out on whether we’re going to get a Big Chill, though.
Oh, and, because I haven’t said it so far in this post: Chinese Virus. Wu Flu. Winnie The Flu.
Fuck China.