Thinking about CoVid-19 on Good Friday

What we know so far:

• The various epidemiological models have all been wrong, and wrong in the same exaggerated direction. They have skewed policies in an unfortunate direction.
• The number of asymptomatic survivors is unknown.
• Current CDC guidance asks physicians to classify deaths of patients with symptoms of CoVid as a CoVid death, even though the real or primary cause of death is something else. CoVid mortality figures are unreliable.
• “Flattening the curve” only postpones the inevitable and delays development of herd immunity.
• Lockdowns are not 100% effective.
• Lockdowns must be temporary.
• Once the lockdowns are lifted, normal spreading of the virus will take place. The area under the model’s curves hasn’t changed and the virus is still highly contagious.
• Lockdowns create enormous costs: to the economy, mental health, our healthcare system. Many hospitals are furloughing employees as non-essential surgeries are prohibited and patients are exposed to harm or death later. Some hospitals have closed.
• The costs of the lockdown cure are already greater than the disease.
• Development of a vaccine is at least 18 months away.

My conclusion: Government should ASAP open up the lockdowns bit by bit in ways to hasten herd immunity and speed development of effective therapies and of vaccines.

Some 30,000-feet up reflections about why things happened as they did. For instance,

• Why, early on, was this “pneumonia of unknown type” downplayed by Fauci, the media, the governors and mayors, and the President?
• Why did the CDC and the FDA insist that only they should perform testing?
• Why did the Surgeon General say we should not wear masks and then say we should?
• Why did the state governments, notably New York’s, spend in other areas the money that should have gone to prepare for the next pandemic ?
• Why did the President and the Fed agencies change their tune and then go overboard, taking the Congress with them?
• Why does it take way too long to approve vaccines and other drugs?

It seems to me that the answer lies in a noxious cultural climate abetted by a bloodthirsty, sensationalistic media. Better politically correct or safe – even if safe has a high cost – than sorry. A heightened, hysterical political environment adds a bloodlust dimension. Many blamed BushHitler for causing Katrina. The political temperature will get white-hot as election season proceeds.

Just listen to this brief video of the stupidest questions the press asked of the President. My Favorite was: What is an acceptable number of CoVid-19 deaths? No matter the number given, the President would have been pilloried from one side or the other, sometimes both.  Governor Cuomo declined to buy the recommended pandemic supplies. A mistake, yes. But if he had done so, he would have been criticized for neglecting other politically critical immediate needs. Showing calming leadership earlier and all-hands-on-deck actions later can both be criticized, as by journalists in the same question. The CDC and the FDA have to be extraordinarily careful not to be in a position of possible criticism about chancing loss of life. Of course whatever the do necessarily risks loss of life. An impatient, poorly informed public has been conditioned to demand that something should be done NOW. That shining-object Something has lately been ventilators. Next week it will be Something else. I still remember a delightful conversation during Clinton’s reelection n campaign about gun control .I said that gun controls do not work. The reply was: Yes, I know, but we have to do something.

Along with the demand that someone else should do something is the mob-like cry to “hold accountable” (i.e. pillory and crucify) those whose actions do not rise to the impossibly heights of our beam-eyed expectations, but not our accomplishments. The sideline snipers of the media are really good at this.

On this Good Friday, let us resist the temptation to join the mobs casting blame and howling for blood. And, btw, where can I get face masks? Now we can’t shop for groceries at the local Schnuck’s without one. Anyway, we all need to get used to wearing one in public for the next year and a half.

Troglo (L. H. Kevil)