COVID-19 ‘Salvation’ is at Hand
As another begins, one national nightmare is nearly over.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reports: “When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protection – or herd immunity… – to those who are not immune to the disease…”
“[T]here are two ways to achieve herd immunity: A large proportion of the population either gets infected or…a protective vaccine.”
The Mayo Clinic estimates that “…70% of the [U.S.] population…would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic.”
Last November, National Public Radio reported, “[S]cientists at the Centers for Disease Control…[have] calculated that the true number of [COVID-19] infections is about eight times the reported number, which includes only…cases confirmed by a laboratory test.”
On the morning of January 21, CDC lab-confirmed/reported cases totaled 24.5 million. Another 16.6 million people had received vaccines from 36 million total doses distributed.
Government officials insist they “follow the science,” so, assuming science-based tests to be accurate and CDC’s scientific estimates correct, then, on Inauguration Day, about two-thirds of Americans were vaccinated or had been infected, most asymptomatically, and recovered.
Applying the CDC’s scientific estimate to the agency’s daily-updated positive tests and inoculations reports, America reached the 70 percent herd immunity threshold on January 27. By February 8, that calculation reached nearly 80 percent.
Nevertheless, even though we now know COVID-19 to be about as dangerous as other flu-like respiratory viruses to some, less to others, much of America remains restricted.
Why? Whose purposes do restrictions serve?
Few doubt anymore that the extraordinary virus-related hype, often-contradictory information/misinformation, fear-mongering and virus-inspired petty tyrannies were politically-weaponized to harm President Donald Trump, who left office partly because of the economic wreckage caused by COVID-19-related restrictions.
So, now, with Mr. Trump a private citizen, some things can/should be made public.
Governors and state health organizations can/should confess their policies failed miserably, that shutdowns and mask mandates didn’t stop or even slow COVID-19’s spread.
Medical experts can/should concede that commonly-available face masks, especially cloth designer masks, are about as effective as coughing/sneezing into a hand or sleeve, and there is no science – none – behind six-foot social distancing.
Sans Trump, it can/should be revealed that, without mask mandates or lockdowns, Florida’s hospitalization level is roughly the same as the 2018 flu season, and South Dakota’s December unemployment number was lower than the state’s pre-pandemic rate.
Experts can/should report that, for staff efficiency/cost management, ICUs are designed to operate at 75 percent-plus capacity, and hospitals plan for capacity surges.
Experts can/should admit that fully asymptomatic cases aren’t infectious, most fatalities involved other serious comorbidities, and that, by counting people who only maybe died with rather than from COVID, deaths are overstated, perhaps drastically.
Educators can/should admit that healthy children, a group seldom seriously affected by the virus, should be in school.
In Mr. Trump’s absence, national media should report that the worst spikes in infections and deaths occurred in states with the most stringent lockdowns and mask mandates.
But media cannot without discrediting their partisan attempts to preserve the national political aspirations of New York/California governors whose dismal performances compete for America’s worst COVID mitigation and vaccine distribution failures, and who were both caught violating their own mandates.
Also largely ignored during the “crisis” were declining case fatality rates, an infection survival rate of 99.95 percent – probably higher – for people under and 95 percent or more for people over seventy, and that hospitals became far better equipped to handle patient loads, developed successful new therapeutics, and improved ventilator protocols and outpatient management.
Among COVID’s casualties were logic, common sense, the economy, small businesses, working class, especially minorities’ jobs, human connections and compassion, losses which question the fundamental compatibility of government health mandates and free, civilized societies.
“Salvation” is at hand, though.
On January 20, a Democrat acceptable to corporate media, Big Tech, bureaucrats, teachers unions, higher education and Hollywood became president and immediately mandated wearing face masks on federal property for 100 days (just hours before appearing maskless on federal property).
Sooner rather than later, expect media/administration apparatchiks to applaud that repetitive/meaningless mandate, his other empty gestures and/or false claims as “policy improvements” that “finally” allow Americans to resume more normal lives.
The CDC is newly on-board for schools, so let the re-openings commence.
Call me cynical, but, in politics, cynicism is almost always rewarded.
