The seasonal flue kills between 12 thousand to 61 thousand people in the US each year. This year we added the unwelcome contribution from the Chinese Communist Party, the Wuhan flu, a.k.a. Covid-19. It has killed between ten thousand to a quarter million of us so far. Unfortunately, our politicians and our media made their cure worse than the disease. Unlike the flu, we can’t easily recover from the harm our elites have done.
About ten thousand of us died from Covid in the US. Up to a quarter million of us died from pre-existing health problems while we had Covid. The numbers are confusing since those tables show more of us dying from contributing diseases than there were actual deaths with Covid. The numbers only make sense once we realize that the vast majority of people who die from Covid had not one, but several preexisting illnesses. Respiratory disease, high blood, and heart disease were the top contributing factors. Those were also the contributing factors for the almost three million of us who will die this year.
The seasonal flu behaves like Covid in that the flu is the final illness that overtakes those in fragile health.
Many states in the US forced their schools to close due to Covid. Politicians got that response wildly wrong. Unlike the regular flu, Covid-19 hardly bothers children at all. In contrast with the seasonal flu, the fatality numbers from Covid don’t climb until we look at those over the age of 64. In short, Covid is dangerous to those who are already in poor health.
New epidemiological models of Covid showed that keeping children out of school actually cost lives rather than saved them. Yes, countries around the world and some states here in the US that allowed children to stay in school actually saved lives. The underlying method is easy to understand.
Those children went to school, got the flu, and then were no longer available as a vector to spread the disease. The way to stop Covid-19 was to let the segment of the population that was not at risk from the disease to get sick. The kids had the sniffles for a day and became immune. In contrast, keeping kids out of school meant that young people continued to spread the disease to vulnerable adults for a much longer period of time. More of the elderly eventually caught Covid and died.
Let me emphasize that point. Different groups respond differently to the disease. Letting people who are not vulnerable get the disease protected the vulnerable segment of our population. That distinction is too subtle for our politicians to grasp. That public policy is too nuanced for our journalists to explain in 20 seconds.. and they didn’t take the extra minute to explain it to us.
The Politicians who claimed they wanted to help actually cost us tens-of-thousands of lives, particularly among the elderly. In addition, those children who were forced out of school can’t get their year back. Nor can the parents who stayed home to take care of their younger children. That cost all of us.
Politicians closed our businesses. Tens of millions of employees lost their source of income. Millions of business owners lost their income and their investment. Politicians made us permanently poorer since millions of us lost our homes and many of those businesses can’t come back. For many of us, politicians promised protection and delivered a lifetime of poverty.
That is important. Poverty has a huge impact on our lives and our children’s lives. We saw increased rates of alcoholism and addiction. We saw, and will see, increased rates of divorce. Politicians made us poorer, not just today, but for generations. Other effects are immediate.
Politicians told addicts that it was too dangerous to their health to attend sobriety meetings. Deaths from overdose and suicide soared during the Covid lockdown.
Those deaths should not come as a surprise. Almost twice as many of us die from suicide than from the flu. Any public policy that makes us more vulnerable to suicide while saving us from the flu is a prescription for disaster. Unfortunately, the media let politicians hide behind their good intentions.
Addicts have something to teach us;
stay away from politician who are drunk on power.
Our communities were hurting, both financially and spiritually. That is when politicians closed our churches.. unless a politician wanted an audience for a campaign speech. The news media seldom objected.
The media never dug behind the politicians simplistic answers. We told sick people to stay away from the hospital unless they had Covid-19. Their heart conditions, their diabetes, and their cancers went undiagnosed and untreated so we could make room for a wave of Covid patients that in most location never came.
The bureaucrat’s solution was simplistic
and made things worse.
In hindsight, we told those who were physically sick to stay away from doctors and those who were sick at heart to stay away from our churches. That proves one thing very clearly, and doctors learned it long ago.
First, do no harm.
The human body is complex. It is easy to treat one condition and kill the patient as you try to cure the disease. Similarly, our society works as a marvelously interrelated engine of prosperity. It is far easier for a government edict to cause problems than to improve our overall condition. In this case, the politian’s cure was worse than the government-created disease.
I have a newfound respect for the politicians who withstood media pressure. They said that we the people were wiser than they were. They said it was up to us to protect the vulnerable elderly, and to protect ourselves as we saw fit. Those politicians were brave and insightful.
The other politicians saw a crisis they could exploit. In too many cases, we let them get away with it.
Liberty is dangerous, but it is the safest choice we have.
This time, we gave up our freedom over the flu.. and people died.
