There are certain things that one can predict with ease; All pandemics are bad for human beings. All pandemics assert a certain degree of fear and panic among those that know about their deadliness. And yet, all pandemics die-off in search of a host when none are available to infect. Simple truisms are hard to ignore even in these days flooded with a boatload of information. However, this fog of this pandemic, one can slice through with a knife.
It seems this is different when you take its pulse. It started off in the Chinese province of Hubei in the city of Wuhan. Where and when it actually took its origins, remains a mystery shrouded in an enigma. But there was a certain flare and drama associated with its birth. The Chinese provided us with a televised theater of street spraying and authoritative policing control of its citizenry for a full 2-month period. Then, under the auspices of a willing World Health Organization, it was broadcast that the virus showed no human to human transmission. Amazing how this was swallowed in toto without a question. Surprisingly this followed in the wake of the daily TV drama from China of the human toll, but no one seemed to take notice. The powers that be encouraged mingling with the crowds and people were encouraged to “live your lives.” A good thing these past events have been documented, or else, we would be labeled delusional. Some might reflect with a snort of derision, but facing reality is always a good antiseptic to all the virtual illnesses afflicting the human mind.
The dissociative fugue that has followed in this fog of uncertainty is quite a remarkable evolution of events. A short time ago, there followed a flight of fancy from the “epidemiologists” that sparked a fear almost as inexorable as the pull of gravity. The experts with M.D.s after their names or Professor before opined with daily graphics showing the meteoric rise in the numbers of COVID infected cases and there followed the numbers of daily dead across the country in large bannered headlines. The Grim Reaper was nearby, “Stay away, Pull on the mask, pull down the shades and dissolve yourself into a state of oblivion. The litany continued unabated. But over time things began to settle down a bit. Call it regional herd immunity or shutdown policy. Whatever that was, was a welcome course of events. And curiously at about the same time, an unfortunate event sparked protests that grew in momentum and continue to rage across the country, and some enlightened parts of the world soon were collaborated with arson, looting, and destruction of personal property. The protestors were in full gear in large numbers compressed within wide streets, miles long, and were hailed as heroes, expressing their First Amendment rights. Then as if on cue, two weeks later the infection numbers that had been declining started to rise again. There was plenty of blame going around and mostly on the “premature reopening of commerce and trade,” yet no one seemed to point to the hundreds of thousands that had, and continue to clog the streets, as perhaps partially responsible for potentially initiating the infection spike. But semantics is the order of the day.
The expert professors expressed their vociferous consternation against those violating their dictates and more projections started arriving at the doorsteps of the newspapers opined by various professors and M.D.s with a certain flair for authority that the world was in a tailspin and unless all commerce was to cease immediately there would be millions who would lose their lives. One gentleman, a former government employee, specifically meted out a 90% shutdown of all movements across the country. He never specified who or why the 10% were exempt. One wonders, if the COVID patients had not been relegated via some state decrees to the nursing homes and the elderly resident there had been protected, potentially up to 80% of the deceased might have been protected?
Counting is the new Game. Even in this whole drama of counting daily infections, a case of a car accident with a positive COVID virus test was recorded as a COVID death, sparked an interest in the curious minds. Questioning eyes started to ask the Centers for Disease Control for answers and even one of their chief supporters, a mostly cautious Dr. Brix suggested that she could not trust any data from the CDC. Now here is where we must pause. Pause, because the significance has to be underscored. The CDC was considered god-like in its powers over anything “infectious” after all the hierarchy at the CDC was full of veterinarians and were considered experts in zoonotic diseases. And because the rhetoric seemed to follow the initial playbook of wild estimations by the epidemiologists and the statisticians that seemed to fall in line with the latter group’s thinking. The statistical game of fear was afoot. Alas, humans being error-prone creatures had used the wrong variable and that potentially dramatic deadly future frosted over quickly. The charade, however, was still on. It was now onto counting numbers. The CDC the beacon of information was over-zealous in reporting of any human with a suspected infection, exposure to an infected individual, false-positive result, might be, or symptomatic with fever, cough shortness of breath from any illness, was a recorded as a potential case even without proof and any death in the hospital where the COVID infected cases were present was considered a COVID death. In other words, most anyone dying during the pandemic was considered a case. Given the expansive, inflationary universe of “suspected but never proven” infected individuals the numbers started a second meteoric rise. Counts of infected meant those with a positive RT-PCR test (a potential 20% error rate) and a positive antibody test suggesting a past infection were included in the daily “new” cases. Thus, began the systematic abrogation of all the scientific rigor, supplanted by pseudo-intellectual complex high-minded speeches and op-ed pieces perpetuated as a meme by the media into the soft underbelly of the groupthink crowd. The higher the daily number of those testing positive the better the narrative of the professors and their exalted M.D.s. The more their graphics got retweeted and likes, the happier they got with this new-found popularity. The more graphics got dished out to the eager crowd. The need to perpetuate the narrative seemed an imperative of some consequence in the U.S. The only problem was the lagging-indicator-death-rate was not showing a similarly meteoric rise. But infection-rate was infection rate and thus all activities were to come to a screeching halt immediately was the mandate from high above. Yet in India, which continues to remain unadulterated by the western science of IFTTT (has its own different sets of problems to contend with) had realized the potential of herd immunity concept and embraced it. Sweden, a much-maligned country by the “experts” during this entire deadly drama has emerged as the sanest of all countries. Common sense does exist after all.
As the fog cleared in some minds, two reports caught my eye. One, a Connecticut lab discovered flawed data on 90 people falsely reported as positives were recanted. And the second was in Texas where 3484 people were removed from the COVID related death roster since no verification was available. These poor souls who had succumbed to natural causes outside of COVID had been added on as “might be” or “probable cause” to inflate the numbers. Other cities, counties, and states have yet to clean out their databases. When all is said and done, and reality rears its sovereign head, this whole debacle might be perhaps the biggest manufactured crises the United States, nay the world has ever known.
Meanwhile, groupthink is in progress, any thinker with a different idea or opinion is rendered a kook. There were furious attacks on thinkers and skeptics. If someone brought up the subject of a drug called (HCQ) Hydroxychloroquine, then a sudden plethora of poorly designed studies claimed it didn’t work. But no one asked the physicians who had been treating patients in their clinics whether there was merit to the drug. Why was the vitriol against the drug so amplified that anyone discussing its benefits was considered a “Charlatan?” Why? As “blind” luck would have it, a new drug emerged and was touted as the next thing since sliced bread against COVID, but the data was weak, yet it was the chosen one and millions of doses were bought by the government for a paltry sum of $3400.00 compared to $200 for the HCQ. So much so, that the company received a multi-billion contract to supply millions of doses, all based on an “interim analysis,” of the data. The HCQ use in early cases of COVID infections still remains under fire by the professors and the experts and the political football is still in the air, waiting for an interception.
Life has come to a screeching halt, mostly. Schools are closed for children and at least one Harvard Professor issued her concern that children should not be taught at home, fearing the loss of the curriculum-induced-indoctrination. Her motives seem very strong and personal to her. Yet the State Governors continue to delay the reopening of the schools. Their motives seemed even stronger. If we look at the infectivity rate in children, it is virtually “zero”(0.0026%) in the 0-20 age population. One wonders why then? But closing the schools is an opportune moment since it prevents the parents from going back to work as well. It affects those more so in the middle-class service and vocational industries who have to do physical labor, rather than the finance and money-transferring industries where most can sit at home in PJs and work from home or from their vacation resorts via computers. The very core of the sector these “experts’ claim to help save is the one systematically and financially being decimated.
Indeed when one sets one’s mind to inquire into the goings-on during this pandemic that seems to continue to this day and will probably go on for some time, there appear to be forces within the medical and scientific communities that are so attuned to rhetoric, so vested in the narrative, so hardened in their resolve, so entrenched in their way as the only way, that they fail to see the forest for the trees (a perfect metaphor here). These experts seem to have a deeply vested future in claiming that all previously cherished life-norms have to be undone. That commerce has to cease to kill the virus once and for all. Yet in their “deep thought” they have lost their concern for the loss of life from other ailments that need care. And speaking of such care, hospitals have realized a decline in their revenues because all elective surgical and medical procedures were canceled by governmental fiat and thus as a fallout, they have furloughed doctors and ancillary healthcare personnel. Clinics and hospitals with limited resources have closed to the detriment of the communities. Meanwhile the “public good” rhetoric goes on. But the reality of the numbers of patients with diseases that have unfortunately succumbed to these expert-opined-practices might never be known. What is known is that Suicide Rates have soared by 600% over the past few months. I am sure that there will be subtly stated spin that absolves the masterminds and inflicts this happenstance on those who resist their rhetoric. When it ends, and it will one day, is anyone’s guess. One cannot with certainty theorize the end date. Time will hold these fabricators to answer for their actions.
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