Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of April 30 the death toll is 61,669. May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
Something fascinating about this whole debacle is how many people are treating each and every Coronavirus death as something completely preventable, but problems due to the shutdown as an inevitability that we can’t control.
So having over 60 thousand people die (most of whom had serious comorbidities) is a tragedy and we should have had no one die, by somehow completely stopping the spread.
But if someone dies of cancer due to insufficient screening? Well, what could have been done about that?
If supply chain issues mean that harvested crops rot in storage and market ready pigs can’t be sold, leading to widespread famine in much of the world? Again, just something that happened, nothing we could have done about it.
RH: The lock downs aren’t working. They are about optics, politics and scaring people. Their objectives are Defeat Trump by destroying his boom economy. Sadly, Trump gave them a kick-start.
Hannity said, “When you mix politics with medicine, you get politics.”
Let’s put next to the China Murder Virus body count per million against new (past six weeks) unemployment insurance claims per million. Here it is.
188 / 90,909.
RH and T.Shaw, amen. And the same chorus who screech “it’s about saving lives!” tend generally (not everyone, I know, but very many of them) to be vocal supporters of the “choice” to kill babies in the womb, right up to the day of their birth. Calling it “health care.” Or, in the words of the certifiably insane governor of Michigan, “life sustaining.”
Kyrie eleison.