THE FEAR IS WORSE THAN THE VIRUS

It’s not the problem; it’s how you react to it. So goes the aphorism and 2020 exemplifies it. All the sum-ups of the year past proclaimed that Covid-19 made it the worst year of the century, and maybe it was. If so, it wasn’t because of the virus; it was government reaction to it — shutting down virtually everything. Many now believe those shutdowns have caused more suffering and death than the virus has.

By the end of last year, evidence to support that contention multiplied, but not enough for big government or its mainstream media spokespeople to acknowledge it. Instead, they’ve doubled down on fear hype. Recent widespread testing indicates that perhaps half the population has already been infected and has immunity. While more deadly than the seasonal flu, chances of dying from Covid are extremely low. In September, the CDC reported that the under-69 population of those infected had more than a 99.5% chance of surviving it. So why the continued shutdowns? 

And, why do teachers’s unions insist that schools remain closed when the CDC reports that children aged 0-19 survive Covid at a rate of 99.997%? Surely it’s not to protect them. Why do blue-state governors and superintendents acquiesce? Teachers’s unions are among the party’s biggest contributors. After Tuesday’s Georgia elections, Democrats could control the entire federal government, but is our country uniting behind them? A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll demonstrates that although most Americans accept that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, 39% think the election was rigged. That points to a seriously divided country.

Is this division a recent phenomenon? Many of us first became aware of roiling discontent within the electorate when the Tea Party emerged ten years ago. Most agree it was a grassroots conservative movement, but I can recall what happened when a large contingent of Tea Party activists first made their presence known at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Republicans were wary because it had no leaders and wasn’t part of the Republican power structure. CPAC’s 3-day conference program that year didn’t even mention the Tea Party.

I remember walking into the hotel lobby in Washington and the first thing I noticed was a man dressed as an original 1773 Massachusetts patriot complete with tricorne hat and waving a yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. However no one mentioned the Tea Party in any of the sessions I attended. It was as if it didn’t exist. And Democrats were not going to welcome them either, given the Tea Party first coalesced following the narrow passage of government-expanding Obamacare in 2009 with not a single Republican vote.

Here was an amorphous throng of citizens dead-set against big government — and shunned by both major parties. Mitt Romney ignored the Tea Party in his 2012 presidential run and lost. Looking back now, we should not have been surprised that an outsider with zero political experience and promising to “drain the swamp” won the presidency in 2016. If it weren’t for his narcissism he would likely have won a second term. Instead, he was toppled by an aged career politician who stayed in his basement throughout the campaign in fear of either Covid or making a gaffe, or both.

After the first two weeks in early 2020, many Americans opposed government’s massive response to Covid. Shutting down the economy and triggering a near depression, it then created trillions of dollars out of thin air and distributed them to citizens, businesses, as well as various institutions and organizations large and small. Federal debt, already out of control, went into the stratosphere. Governors, most of them in blue states, extended shutdowns again and again, and now into 2021. All but 13 states have ordered their citizens to wear masks everywhere.

When gubernatorial authority to shut down states is challenged in court, judges have so far ruled it unconstitutional — even though states do have authority to deal with infectious disease. Anthony Fauci objects to that though, claiming that federalism is undermining the U.S. response he coordinates. Evidence that shutdowns at any level are effective in controlling spread is thin.

 According to an article in Just The News, when states report Covid statistics, nearly all conflate patients hospitalized “with Covid” and “due to Covid.” As more people are tested and found to have antibodies, it’s inevitable that more hospitalized patients will too. Hospitals are not being overfilled with patients “due to Covid” as media and government repeatedly proclaim, but “with Covid.” That’s an extremely important distinction that few Americans recognize.

Covid is a problem, yes, but it’s much worse when government and media stoke Covid fear to justify seizure of power over the day-to-day lives of Americans — and further dividing our country. Two centuries ago, President Andrew Jackson advised Americans: “Never take counsel of your fears,” yet that’s exactly what we’re doing.

WILL THE ELECTION BE ABOUT FEAR?

Every four years, it seems, we have “the most important election in history.” Exaggeration? Maybe, but I don’t think so, not this year anyway. While many Americans see November 3rd as  Biden vs Trump, others see it as left versus right. I’ve voted in every presidential election since I became eligible in 1972 and, while I used to be swayed by who the person running was, that’s not very important to me anymore. It’s the platform he or she espouses that matters now.

Over that forty-eight year span, my political outlook has moved across the spectrum from left to right and two aphorisms sum up why. The first is attributed to Winston Churchill: “If you’re not a liberal when you’re twenty, you have no heart; if you’re still a liberal when you’re forty, you have no brain.” The second is from that other British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who said: “The facts of life are conservative.” Democrats are so far left now they’re becoming socialist.

In a February 17th column, I said Trump looked unbeatable, and he did. Then, in the last paragraph, I wrote something which has proven prophetic: 

But nine months is an eternity in politics. Anything can happen between now and November. Like what you may ask? The Corona virus, for one thing. Chinese efforts to contain it have been futile. So have their efforts to censor information about how serious it is. Their economy is slowing considerably and likely to tank. Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer Laurie Garrett has covered first-hand over thirty epidemics worldwide and she offers a very sobering account of what we may expect from the virus now being called COVID-19. “The economic and political repercussions are going to be enormous,” she says.

Then, on March 16th, a British professor at Imperial College named Neil Ferguson issued a devastating prediction. If the U.S. and the U.K. did not shut down for eighteen months and isolation measures were not taken, he claimed, 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million British would be killed. American and British health officials — and President Trump —took that very seriously and shut down their countries. Thus, covid became the biggest issue in the campaign.

Ten days later, Ferguson said, Whoops! I was wrong! And he revised his prediction down. Only 20,000 Brits would die; half of them would have died anyway of old age and comorbidities; and the U.K. already had enough ICUs to handle the victims. But it was too late. The left loved the shutdown here in Amcrica because President Trump’s surging economy — his biggest asset for reelection — was crippled. The left and its mainstream media allies weren’t about to let it recover until after election day in November.

Using the British scale above, Ferguson’s prediction for the deaths in the U.S. would revise downward by 2500%, from 2.2 million to 88,000. Here in mid September the CDC has reported 200,000 Covid deaths, but in August the CDC said that only 6% of fatalities reported as Covid deaths were solely from the virus. The other 94% involved Covid, but the virus wasn’t the only killer. Nonetheless, mainstream media continue to hype the virus with endless stories about how many are testing positive and how many are dying. Is that because they want the shutdown to continue through to the election? Seems like it.

Actually, in June, the CDC estimated 0.2 % overall chance of dying from Covid

On my local Left & Right TV show months ago, I asked my left-wing opponent if there will come a time when we view the shutdowns as a major disaster far worse than the virus itself. Never before has there been such a drastic step taken to deal with a disease. Never before has this country shut down its entire economy plus its schools, sports, parades, churches, and countless other activities for medical reasons. Have our state and federal governments exceeded their constitutional authority? Have they violated constitutional rights of citizens?

In 1933, the US Supreme Court ruled that no governments — neither state nor federal — may exercise powers not enumerated by the US Constitution. “[A]n emergency may not call into life a power which has never lived,” said the ruling in HOME BUILDING & LOAN ASS'N v. BLAISDELL. Lawsuits have been filed in several states alleging governors wielded unconstitutional powers, but given the slowness of the judicial process, many plaintiffs will have gone bankrupt before they’re adjudicated.

Governors and other officials, especially in blue states like Maine, drunk with new power over people and economies, are reluctant to give it up as the virus threat fades. Have partisan politics controlled government response to Covid? Do politics influence research into Covid? Consider this: According to Federal Election Commission records, over $285,000 was contributed by CDC employees to Democrats, but only $1000 to Republicans.

Is it possible the CDC is hoping to sway November’s election by pushing fear?

Let's Not Take Counsel From Our Fears

We’re finally beginning to look past the virus. Some expect “things” will eventually be back to normal but I’m not one of them, not after what we’ve been through. It’s been unprecedented. The world and the United States have been through many epidemics but this one will have changed us the most by far. Why? It’s not the virus itself so much as the response to it and foremost is damage our response has inflicted on our economy. Ultimately that may kill more people than the virus does.

Do whatever he tells you. What can go wrong?

Americans are ambivalent. The “We’re all in this together” feeling has been nice. We all pulled together to defeat a common enemy much as we did in World War II, but that’s changing. We’re trying to get to herd immunity and that’s a good thing too, but if we also get herd mentality that’s not, and we're seeing two herd mentalities divided along political lines. The blue herd believes we need to be guided by government and the red herd believes we need to think and act for ourselves.

Last month our very-blue Governor Janet Mills closed Maine’s golf courses and beaches because that’s what they did in Massachusetts and those people might come here. Today she said her shutdown will continue through May for most things. Restaurants must stay closed until June — hotels and campgrounds until July. She won’t open northern Maine counties with few if any cases though federal guidelines would allow that. 

Governor Janet Mills telling us what to do last Tuesday

Maine mirrors the nation with an urban/rural political divide both politically and virally. Our two southern counties of York and Cumberland contain nearly half the population but almost all virus cases. Southern Maine is overwhelmingly leftist. Rural northern Maine is largely conservative. A rhetorical question someone asked me: If Montana had half of all the Covid 19 deaths, would we shut down New York City? Similarly, if Maine’s rural Aroostook County had 95% of Maine’s virus deaths, would Governor Mills shut down Portland?

Virus response was handled from Washington at first. President Trump listened to his medical advisors — not soon enough for his chronic critics — but he eventually followed their recommendations. The USA did what most other countries did: we shut down. Then we learned the models used by those medical advisors were faulty. Only then did authority devolve to the governors. Now governors are taking different courses and that’s good, but it begs the question: should we be allowing the decision-making process to take place at an even lower level? 

As I mentioned in a last week’s column, that’s what Sweden has done. Ordinary Swedes make their own decisions about how to react, and it appears to be working. According to NPR, Sweden’s Ambassador to the USA recently announced: “We could reach herd immunity in the capital as early as next month.” That’s the goal, right? We cannot rely on getting a vaccine. That will take over a year at best and there’s little likelihood our economy would survive that long a ahutdown.

Doctor Murphy

Writing Monday in the New York Post, Covid-positive, Bronx ER Doctor Daniel Murphy advises: “I’ve worked the coronavirus front line — and I say it’s time to start opening up.” He was swamped with Covid-19 patients early on, and then noticed the virus peaked at 1:00 pm on April 7th when “the number of arriving COVID-19 patients dropped below the number discharged, transferred or deceased.” He was that specific.

“This was striking,” he continued, “because the community I serve is poor. Some are homeless. Most work in ‘essential,’ low-paying jobs, where distancing isn’t easy. Nevertheless, the wave passed over us, peaked and subsided. The way this transpired tells me the ebb and flow had more to do with the natural course of the outbreak than it did with the lockdown.” This scenario supports the Israeli mathematician I mentioned in last week’s column who said the virus goes through an 8-week cycle regardless of whether there’s a shutdown or not.

Israeli Mathematician Yitzhak Ben-Israel

Our president, governors, and mayors may discover very soon that they’re not in charge of what people do. A tailor in NYC today defied orders and reopened his shop. Nearby businesses admire his courage and declared they will open too. After Governor Mills announcements today, Maine businesses may follow suit. That would be very American. Early in this process we all took counsel from our fears, which many Americans historically warned against including Andrew Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, and George Patton. Let’s remember that as we restart our economy.

Have We Overreacted?

Up to now people worldwide and here at home have largely cooperated with government shutdowns, but things are changing. The economic cost has been unprecedented. More people have lost their jobs than did in the Great Depression. Small businesses people spent their lifetimes building have been severely hurt and some have been destroyed. Trillions in stock values have gone “Poof.” Almost every American life has been disrupted in some way. Backlash has begun around the country with demonstrations at various statehouses where Democrat governors ordered the strictest, most-extended shutdowns.

As we’re learning more about this virus, some are beginning to question whether it was all necessary. Sweden, for example, has allowed businesses and most schools to remain open and left it up to individual citizens how to respond. They’ve come under criticism from across Europe including from neighboring Norway, a very similar country in nearly every way, which shut down much as America has. Sweden wagered that most citizens would eventually get the virus anyway and it would achieve herd immunity more quickly while other countries extended their vulnerability.

By some calculations, Sweden has had more deaths than Norway per capita, but Covid-19 mortality statistics are worked out differently across the globe. Here in America, for example, deaths of people who never tested positive for Covid-19 are nonetheless counted as victims of the virus. Those who did test positive but who may have died of more serious co-morbidities are still counted as victims of Covid-19. As I wrote in last week’s column, our shutdown was largely prompted by a virus model by Neil Ferguson out of Oxford University that has since proven way overblown.

Neil Ferguson caused panic

We don’t yet know if Sweden’s bet will pay off. While its death rate is twice Denmark’s, it’s only half of France’s according to Vanity Fair last Friday. An Israeli study published last week indicates that the virus goes through all human populations in eight weeks regardless of whether a country shuts down or not. President Trump’s Covid-19 Task Force pats itself on the back for saving thousands of lives with its shutdown policies, but are they correct? If the Israeli model proves true, what’s the likelihood that Trump would ever admit he was wrong? In an election year?

Even less likely to admit it would be mainstream media. All through March and April, they’ve done little but spread fear and criticize Trump for not shutting down early enough or strictly enough. Some Libertarians have suggested that neither federal nor state governments have legitimate authority to shut down the country and lawsuits have been filed to challenge them. We have so far used computer models and algorithms to predict the path Covid-19 would take, but now we’re seeing evidence that many models were flawed.

No major media figure nor political leader has dared question whether this has all been necessary. Did total shutdown increase the likelihood of a second viral wave in the fall? We don’t know. Will Sweden’s milder approach decrease that likelihood? We don’t know that either. Political leaders with their medical advisors have been forced to make decisions based on incomplete data. To what degree will they be held responsible if subsequent data prove them wrong? We don’t know, but it’s a safe bet that political partisans will point fingers if they believe it will help them electorally.

As testing for both the virus and antibodies to it are administered more widely, we’re learning unexpected things. So far — and we still have a long way to go — we’re learning that many more of us have been exposed to Covid-19 than expected. It looks like upwards of 30% of Americans may have antibodies but few if any symptoms. Would this be good news or bad news?

Usually I watch Fox’s Bret Baier deliver the news at 6:00 PM weeknights, but he’s often preempted of late by President Trump and his virus team. Trump hogs the podium and repeats things so much that I’ve been switching over to CBS, ABC, and NBC. What strikes me most about network anchors there is their melodrama, especially when reporting on the virus, and wonder if it’s genuine or affected. I suspect the latter.

Swedish leaders and their medical advisors have withstood withering criticism for their outlier policies both from within Sweden and from across the globe. Whatever the outcome, they won’t avoid repercussions. It might be continued condemnation, but it might ultimately be praise. We don’t know yet. How much criticism will this smalltime columnist receive for even suggesting that American politicians and media may have overreacted at enormous cost to our economy and our day-to-day lives? We don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll find out very soon.

To Open Or Not To Open

This week I was determined to write about something other than the virus, but couldn’t make myself do so. More than two decades ago — way back in the 20th century as a matter of fact — I promised myself  I would write columns only about what was most on my mind any given week. I’d write only about what I wanted to write about, not what various editors wanted. That isn’t conducive to furthering a career as a columnist, but it s good for my equilibrium.

Often I start writing about something and as my fingers move around the keyboard, I’ll end up somewhere else and I think, “Where did that come from?” Writing is a way of thinking things through. What starts as a vague idea turns into something coherent as one constructs logical sentences with subject, verb, and direct object, then sequence them into paragraphs. So, what’s on my mind this week? The same thing that’s on everyone’s mind: the virus, but more specifically our individual and collective reactions to it. We’re all wondering when our lives will return to what they were, if they ever do.

Social distancing is easier for my wife and I as we spend most of our time with people to whom we’re closely related. I have a big family: six siblings, three children, six grandchildren, in-laws, as well as nieces and nephews too numerous to count. Several are in the health care professions and some of them are working directly with the virus. I worry about them and pray too. We exchange information I use to hone the working hypothesis to understand event around me. This is a new thing we’re dealing with, hence the moniker “novel” corona virus. Leaders from all over the political spectrum thought at first that this was just another flu. They made statements they now wish they didn’t. We all thought it killed only the elderly and weak, but have since learned that is not always true.

My daughter sent me this

Only three months ago, the World Health Organization said virus didn’t spread human-to-human. Now there are calls to defund the WHO and demands that its director resign. Only weeks ago someone at Oxford University projected over two million dead in the United States. According to the March 16 New York Times, that lead to the near-total shutdown of our lives and economy. Now we hear that projection was way overblown, but the restrictive policies we’re still living under are all based on that. So where do we go from here? Back to how we were?

Some say not until we have a vaccine, but that’s a year out at least. When we get herd immunity? We may be closer to that than we think with so few in California being hospitalized. Were they exposed earlier? We won’t know until they’re all tested. Should we have shut down earlier or has this all been an overreaction? We don’t know without more data. Who can reopen the country? The president alone? The governors? Both together? Democrat governors have been more restrictive than Republican governors. The left wants to maintain the shutdown. The right wants to open up. We had a total economic collapse but we may have a patchwork recovery.

Almost daily I watch Coronavirus Task Force press conferences on Fox because mainstream media don’t all carry them live. President Trump dominates, ,endlessly repeating how government response is terrific and everyone is doing a great job “like nobody’s ever seen before.” That’s true in the sense that never before have the president and governors shut down the entire country. Never before have we printed so much money so quickly. Never before have the stock market, GDP, and the employment tanked further or faster.

In this election year, Trump’s ace in the hole was a strong economy virtually guaranteeing his reelection. Since 2016, stories dominating news have been Russian collusion, emoluments, the 25th Amendment, Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine phone call, impeachment — stories that had Democrats and their mainstream media allies salivating. But none of it worked. Six weeks ago, Democrat hopes rested with Bernie and Biden and it didn’t look good for them at all.

Then, as if it dropped from the sky, the novel coronavirus appeared! Trump’s economy tanked and Democrat hopes were renewed. Now Bernie is gone but Biden looks hapless. Some say Democrats and their media allies are quietly pushing Andrew Cuomo to dislodge Biden at a virtual convention this summer. Liberals and conservatives both insist their policy recommendations are solely based on what’s good for the American people and have nothing to do with partisan politics. Some seem to believe that. Others do not.

Democrat governors say they decide when to open up. Trump says he does. We’ll see.