I am trying to share some thoughts on Twitter about Covid-19, but I am met with hostile and childish responses. Even the politicians are thinking unrealistically about this. My responses are misunderstood and attacked. How do you reason with people who aren’t logical? It seems futile, but the future of the American economy or life in this nation depends on it.
Here are my predictions.
(a) Covid-19 will infect 100,000,000 Ameriicans more or less
(b)10,000,000 will likely be “registered” officially as infected as most cases go undetected.
(c) 15% of detected or “registered” cases end up with some hospital time, but the duration is not well documented.
(d) Roughly half of hospitalized patients for covid-19 end up dead within perhaps a week to several weeks — in China many cases have dragged on for months.
(e) 6 million people will die in the usa from this disease this time and 15 million will need to be hospitalized over the course of six months.
(f) It is likely that up to 4 million people will need to be hospitalized at the same time. The military and FEMA are able to create this type of capacity, especially if they use ships and trains which are good because you can move sick people to places where there are more doctors and staff.
(g) Lock downs do not end the disease, and it doesn’t matter if you lock down early or late. The fact remains that lock downs cost the USA about 1 Trillion per month at least and that the minute you stop locking down, the disease will catch up to where it was in a month or two depending on how long you locked down.
ILLOGICAL THINKING
People scolded me on Twitter for suggesting that the economy was more important than the lives of humans. I merely said that sacrificing the economy permanently to temporarily delay people’s death did not seem like a good strategy. In the minds of childish people, their philosophy is often:
CHILDISH PHILOSPHY
Death is bad; Lock downs fight virus & prevent death; Therefore lock downs = good. Additionally, we should SCOLD those
who in our opinion value money more than life.
MY PHILOSOPHY
Death is bad; Having a broken economy could cause complete anarchy making the USA unlivable and unsafe to walk down the street without the fear of being beaten, robbed or raped. A broken economy leads to death.
COVID-19 also causes death. Delaying deaths from Covid-19 does NOT prevent death, but only delays death unless a vaccine comes fast. Lock downs don’t prevent death. They only delay disease caused death. But, extended lock downs could cause the death of the US economy which could cause problems that nobody can even imagine. If you don’t believe me, take a closer look at what is going on in Venezuela or bankrupt African nations where anarchy reigns, villages get massacred, and five year olds are given guns and forced to join militia death squads. That could be the future of America if we break our system. Freedom and constitutional rights can also be ended, and in my opinion already have been due to the shut down. The equation is a lot more complicated than the dummies who rudely criticize my points of view on social media.
REALITY OF VIRUSES
Viruses do not just go away on their own. If a critical mass of people gains immunity, or weather changes make transmission difficult, then the virus might just go away. Lock downs in china resulted in a dramatic reduction in active cases. However, now that China is opening up, people from other countries who are visiting them are reinfecting their communities which completely undermines the effort and self-inflicted economic damage the Chinese did. They could be reinfected to the level they were two months ago in just — two months. So, in order to combat this disease using lockdowns, you would have to lock down forever.
The other reality is that in my opinion 6 million will die in the USA. If we flatten the curve using shut downs, then those people instead of dying in six months, will die over a period of time. In theory, if we flatten the curve too much, we might have 10,000 people dying per month over a period of 600 months which would be 50 years. Some idiot on Twitter says that there is no evidence that the disease will last 12 years (I used 12 years in a mathematical hypothetical situation online) and I agree that there is no evidence how long the disease will last. But, with artificial means to limit the disease it could last for years — probably not 50 years. We could flatten the curve and have 100,000 people die per month and then the deaths will take place over 5 years to reach a death toll of 6,000,000 according to mathematics — once again a hypothetical analysis not based on reality.
The bottom line is that many people will die, and using shut downs, we can control how fast they die. At the rate society is willing to let people die –perhaps at a few dozen per month, we will be locked down forever, the disease will never be eliminated since we will have been prevented from gaining immunity, and our economy will grind to an irreparable hault.
Dummies and childish thinkers don’t think the American economy will grind to a halt and think that the economic problems are just temporary. Right now they are temporary, but could become permanent. The Great Depression took 16 years to fix, and if it weren’t for WW2, it would not ever have been fixed. I am speaking in terms of reality and historical precident here.
Shut downs do not prevent death — they just delay death and do long term damage to the economy and people’s life. We may not have a nation if this continues. Nations depend on taxes, money, and credit and if you ruin your credit you can’t perform functions as a nation. America cannot function without a payroll for the military, social services, infrastructure, school, medicare, etc. If you break the system to delay a disease the entire nation could dissolve and cease to be a nation. We would be left with 50 bankrupt states and a nation of paupers which is exactly what my guru prophecized twenty years ago. I am afraid that his prediction will be coming true faster than I thought.
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Brilliantly written. I could not agree more!!
Comment by Candice — April 29, 2020 @ 9:09 pm
I don’t understand anyone that puts money over people. Your take on a potential outcome of an extended lockdown is extreme at best. Economies can recover but lives lost cannot be recovered. Saying a lockdown doesn’t saves lives is like saying seat belts don’t save lives. Of course, death will visit us all at some point. But I submit that every human being has the to right life and no human should have the right to decide whether someone lives or dies.
To say your critics have a childish understanding of the issue is not true. What is true is that your position is called greed and it is much more dangerous to the American economy and our way of life.
Comment by Alvin M Johnson — April 29, 2020 @ 9:40 pm
Nice job! I agree with you!
Comment by Cat — April 29, 2020 @ 9:53 pm
This is not the case with China. Their lock down did stop the spread of Covid-19
Comment by Maureen — April 29, 2020 @ 10:42 pm
Well written, I agree!
Comment by Deborah Fiddler — April 30, 2020 @ 12:23 am
Sorry to disagree, but your doom and gloom outlook is demoralizing. How do you live everyday with your head in the sand? Americans are strong people, and for the most part are optimistic about their future. Tomorrow is a new day, the sun will come out. God bless.
Comment by Stan Rogers — April 30, 2020 @ 1:15 am
Absolutely!! Someone understands!
Comment by Tina — April 30, 2020 @ 4:38 pm