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2020-

2020-08-18 d
When "Science" Becomes Politicized - Part III

COVID Rebellion

The sky is falling

The popular narrative is that COVID is in the ascendance. New Zealand with one person in the hospital as per reports a few days back, found that sufficient to shut down yet again, demonstrating their penchant for unmerited economic suicide against the as yet unseen economic, social, and other side effects being stockpiled.

The US, though, is the poster child for COVID incompetence. Doubtless some of that is clearly merited, but a sober look at facts does restrain us somewhat. August 13th was day 150 of “15 days to flatten the curve.” As of that day:

•Only 3% of ER visits were for COVID symptoms.
•Only 1.9% of active cases were hospitalized.
•Only .014% of Americans were hospitalized with COVID. Only 0.7% of Americans were currently a positive case. So, let us at least partially pacify our angst.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

Economic consequences from the protracted “reality evasion” of perpetual “lockdown” are now starting to be experienced. And the pundits of perpetual lockdown, the smug savants of “lives above economy” (as if the two could be meaningfully detached) are now fulminating in outraged and impotent horror, as the “consequences” are beginning to assert themselves.

The blow to numerous economies has been cataclysmic. The UK has experienced the worst recession of any major nation. The drop in output dwarfs the Great Recession of 2008 and the Great Depression of the 1930s (though hopefully, the COVID depression won’t last as long). You have to go back to 1709, before the Industrial Revolution, to what was colorfully described as “the Great Frost” — the coldest winter of the past half-millennium — to find an event which has so devastated economic life. The US GDP collapse has essentially wiped out five years of growth in a matter of months, and using another metric, Yelp estimates that more than 60% of restaurants in the United States have closed or are in the process of doing so.

Those who were the most outraged “COVID concentration camp” proponents since the outset are shocked that foisting unscientific remedies through extrapolated panic porn is not the way for a major economy to navigate.

The fetishistic “bed wetters” who clanged alarm bells at every semblance of normal life inching back, as if they had been given oracular prescience as to keeping the virus at bay, now are appalled as the purported “infinity stones” of lockdowns, masks and endless stimulus (furlough) checks are faltering and mocking our delusions.

The fact that cases are a poor barometer and were not “exploding” as most of the world opened up, and where they “spiked” was partly attributable to a massive surge in testing, and strange protocols of what constituted a “COVID case” (anyone even asymptomatically testing “positive” from PCP tests notorious for considerably less than 100% “sensitivity” or “specificity” was being tagged), counterbalanced by no sustained spike in deaths (which continued by and large to be flat or fall), was steadfastly ignored.

Also ignored is that “economy vs lives” does not affect the richest, it is the poor who lose jobs, savings, cannot access medical care or education and more. Big Tech or Amazon or Netflix or even stock speculators are not those who have felt, to date anyway, the impact.

Of course, superstition is maintained by asserting nonsense repeatedly. Namely, “if we had moved faster, an earlier, shorter lockdown would have reduced COVID fatalities, and limited the economic pain.” Unfortunately, Belgium, a marvelous exemplar of early, strict lockdown has one of the highest number of per capita COVID deaths, compared certainly to Sweden, or frankly even Brazil (on which more below).

Moreover, much of this is retroactive rationalizing. Imperial College, the deranged modeling twats who show how impervious funding and even government backing can be to outright incompetence, were assuming five months of strict shutdown in March. Their enablers were trumpeting “as long as needed.” One wondered which Constitution re the asserted suspension of liberties they were reading, which magical grove of money trees they were going to fund this enterprise from, or the medical statistics they had access to, showing us that far from a bad influenza period we were actually re-experiencing the Plague of Justinian.

Alas, clarity was not forthcoming on any of those points.

And despite the hissing vitriol targeted towards Sweden by the deranged pro lockdown proponents, there is an eerie silence as it becomes clear Sweden has economically fared better than the rest of Europe, has no out-of-control “waves,” and but for their disastrous handling of nursing homes, still did better than the UK and many other European nations in terms of overall mortality. Sweden’s economic contraction is akin to 1980 rather than the Great Frost, which anyway was a natural disaster, not a calamitous “shutdown” of critical faculties and judgment. (read more)

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