As IF Times

source: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/489662-new-orleans-looks-to-be-the-next-major-city

In times of great crisis, we  will see both the best and the worst of human behavior.

Medical health workers have been overwhelmed by the publicity panic caused by Covid 19. Being thrust into a position to have to deal with an unknown and dangerous  virus has to be scary and thankless work and no one envies these working heroes.

Unfortunately, we’re also seeing the dark side of society.  The hoarding of goods, the price gouging, the finger pointing and the sheer hysteria that has enveloped people as virulently as the actual infection.

Even more unfortunate are the stupid people doing what they do best, which is to be stupid.  We have people licking toilet seats and posting them on Instagram.  We have people coughing onto food at grocery stores.  We have the Governor of Nevada  banning the use of the drug, chloroquine, shown to have been effectively used in stopping the infection, while the intellectual giant Bill de Blasio releases 200 inmates because Covid 19 posed a danger to them while incarcerated.

No one group is more responsible for fanning the flames of hysteria than is the established media. So many half truths and outright exaggerations were foisted upon a public naïve as to the actual statistics associated with the infection that it was difficult not to panic.  And how would the public know any better? Few are medical experts.  Fewer still are willing to do the investigation into the actual facts surrounding the bug.  So we depend on media sources to objectively report the status to us.  Even now, many are still selling the idea that this pandemic will infect millions and will last for 18 months or more.

When questions are posed to the President on the status of the virus, one question was dramatically  framed as “…what do you say to the millions of people in the public who are terrified?…” Hyperbole must be the prerequisite technique for reporters.  Infection and mortality rates are pasted prominently on TV screens like a morbid running stock ticker.  The not so subtle message is, “you’re all going to die!”  The linked headline above is projecting  a human catastrophe if people go to New Orleans.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you go to New Orleans for a mass celebration, the chances are good that you’ll come out with some kind of infection even if there wasn’t any Covid 19.

By now, there’s possibly only one remote tribe in Samoa that hasn’t  gotten the universal  message to wash hands fanatically, to not sneeze or cough on people, maybe wear masks, stay home if you’re sick and to avoid huge crowds of sweaty people.  Those are all sensible things…though I’m not sure why people needed to be reminded to wash their hands.

The mortality rates will unfortunately continue to climb for a period, but awareness and logical isolation will eventually end the spread.  Even now, there are indications of declining infection rates in countries such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea.  The unfortunate part is that the elderly are particularly vulnerable, but there is more and more evidence that although people may be infected, the numbers of recovery are also very high  

So Covid 19 is statistically not a death sentence.  The truth is what’s really in quarantine. The response of the world to destroy their economies seems an outsized response given the statistics that we know. As noted, nations such as Singapore and Japan have effectively reduced their exposure using effective means without having to resort to destroying their economies.  Conspicuously, those nations applied pragmatic fixes rather than political ones. But there is certainly hope that the catastrophic forecasts will be re-thought.  One of the first experts to model the corona 19 virus epidemic, Dr Neil Ferguson has in fact significantly stepped back from his initial modeling of the infection rate.

The relative ignorance of the public as to what the facts are have allowed the ever present political opportunists to capitalize on these fears. Even as there are genuine attempts made to save the economy from catastrophic implosion, political skulduggery continues as usual.  Never let a crisis go to waste were the words of an infamous politician and sure enough, in this instance, the public loses again.

Update: March 27.  Busted!

source:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/merck-ceo-on-how-us-can-avoid-coronavirus-outbreak-like-italys.html

We are well into a month since the first signs of the emergence of the Covid 19 flu.  It has since mutated into a full blown global hysteria. Not so much in actual casualties although that number is still climbing, but certainly the social panic has skyrocketed.  I think most can say that they’ve never witnessed such a thing in their lives, at least not in first world countries.  People who have fled from socialist countries are quite familiar with lineups for simple things as toilet paper and bread caused by suspect government policies.  Who would have thought that this could happen in the enlightened first world?

Such behavior can only be described as irrational panic.  There is no shortage of goods.  No one has stopped making toilet paper and food is still being produced.  While this ‘flu is highly infectious according to informed sources, it is not deadlier than numerous other diseases which have had outbreaks in the past.  To date, we know that there have been about 200,000 infections, about 80,000 recoveries and 7900 deaths.   Statistically, it’s less pervasive than pink eye.

We know that previous outbreaks have resulted in elevated mortality rates for Swine Flu, SARS, H1N1, bird flu, MERs and Ebola. None of those much deadlier outbreaks caused the global panic and social hysteria we are seeing today.  This is unquestionably much more of an economic disaster than a humanitarian medical disaster. Why is the reaction so extreme today?

One factor is the ubiquitous reach of social media which didn’t exist during times of previous outbreaks.  In today’s world, narratives literally go viral once they get a head of steam and all the trend followers climb on board.  This extends doubly so to the popular media whose job it seems is to breathlessly sensationalize every event in order to get clicks. We are very much in a culture influenced by social pressure, so that once an issue is identified as being the cause celebre, it can be quite daunting to have opposing views.  Think Global Warming. The divisive nature of politics today means that any given issue can be used as a weapon against opponents whether or not there’s any merit and so people react for the sake of reacting, not wanting to appear ineffective.

It’s beyond logic that an affliction that thus far appears to be a nasty ‘flu, can devastate the entire structure of the global economy virtually overnight. We can say with a certainty that infinitely more people will be hurt as a consequence of this panic pandering than the the virus will ever cause.   It’s difficult to say if many companies and even industries will survive because of the panicked behavior of ‘authorities’.  Jobs will be lost and with them mortgage payments, homes, devastated small businesses and damaged livelihoods. The collateral damage to people financially and psychologically is as devastating as if a war had been declared on the nation.   And it didn’t have to be so.  We expect calm heads to prevail, but instead, the spiral of paranoia is fed daily by those lacking perspective on things but convinced that they are acting in the public good.

Certain things make sense, such as restricting borders into a nation especially from areas known to be sources of the illness: China, Iran and even Italy.  Very conspicuous and strong public advisories are also logical.  Once we move into mandating the closure of businesses and the restriction of people’s free movements, then authorities have overstepped their mandate and instead become the main drivers of the vortex of fear.  They are destroying the economy in the mistaken belief that they are doing good.  It’s not as if Martians had landed and were harvesting people for organs.   Even when people were flying into buildings we didn’t see the world lose its collective mind as they have today.  Rather than somersaulting off the logic ledge like lemmings, we should take in the views of sane minds who know a bit about this.

Many learned minds come to quite different opinions about this virus.  On one side are the doomsday/isolationists who expect an 18 month run on this pandemic, while there are others who think this can be addressed more efficiently by timelier means.    What is not addressed is the cost in terms of things other than just a body count.  A professor of  medicine and epidemiology at Stanford, John Ioannidis makes a very poignant point:

“…One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making…”

In the end, there will certainly be casualties, but thus far, as in all outbreaks, it will be managed.  People get the ‘flu. They get colds…sometimes multiple times a year. If people knew the exposure they had to nasty bugs in their every day lives, they’d never get out of bed much less use a public restroom.   Now people are obsessed with a sterile environment as if there ever was one and ‘social distancing’ is the new tide pod craze.   The over the top reaction of mandating the shuttering of businesses, schools, events and  restricting people’s movements and associations is like bulldozing an entire neighborhood because someone found a bedbug in their room.  The ongoing paranoia as fed by narratives such as the one linked above will permanently set in people’s minds a fear that is irrational and difficult to eradicate in this generation.  It’s not the ‘flu that’s going to kill us; it’s the fear.