I’m a long-time advocate of more ordinary citizens getting themselves firearms and learning to use them safely and competently. But this is a public-service announcement: if you’re thinking of running out to buy a gun because of COVID-19, please don’t.
There are disaster scenarios in which getting armed up in a hurry makes sense; the precondition for all of them is a collapse of civil order. That’s not going to happen with COVID-19 – the mortality rate is too low.
Be aware that the gun culture doesn’t like and doesn’t trust panic buyers; they tend to be annoying flake cases who are more of liability than an asset. We prefer a higher-quality intake than we can get in the middle of a plague panic. Slow down. Think. And if you’ve somehow formed the idea that you’re in a zombie movie or a Road Warrior sequel, chill. That’s not a useful reaction; it can lead to panic shootings and those are never good.
I don’t mean to discourage anyone from buying guns in the general case – more armed citizens are a good thing on multiple levels. After we’re through the worst of this would be a good time for it. But do it calmly, learn the Four Rules of Firearms Safety first, and train, train, train. Get good with your weapons, and confident enough not to shoot unless you have to, before the next episode of shit-hits-the-fan.
Nits –
Title has a typo – should be Covid-19, not Covid-10
“more of an asset than a liability” – don’t think that was a Freudian slip. Just vice-versa.
But more substantially, how far are we from breakdown of civil order? Went walking around downtown SF yesterday for some shopping. Bare shelves, nobody but homeless on the streets – and they don’t need makeup for the next Zombie Apocalypse movie. We’ve already been told that being outside without cause is illegal. The National Guard is being called up in four states, including mine. What are they going to do, shoot the virus? How far are we from a Kent State incident?
>But more substantially, how far are we from breakdown of civil order?
Most places, quite far. For civil order to collapse, enough cops and first responders have to succumb that you start getting looters and arsonists who think they can act with impunity.
>Went walking around downtown SF yesterday
There’s your problem. SF is much closer to collapse of civil order than anywhere else in the U.S., but it’s due to pre-existing ideological rot rather than COVID-19.
Absolutely correct. COVID-19 has just thrown more feces on the fire in Scat Franshitco.
Well, civil order didn’t even break down in Wuhan, so there’s that.
(We did get lots of riots in Italian prisons a few weeks ago, but they only lasted a few days and I don’t think they would have warranted more precautions for ordinary civilians to take than against the epidemic itself.)
Can you really describe that commie society as a “civil order” ?
The way the chicoms treat their human herd? Civil order?
I think not.
I have some insider info as to what happened in Wuhan. Social order didn’t break down in the same way social order didn’t break down in Ukraine during Holodomor. That’s all I’m at liberty to say on the matter.
I have no plans to buy a gun because of China virus. But I’ve had a long-standing plan to buy one if Trump is re-elected, because I believe the Left will go batpoop crazy in such a circumstance.
The gun and ammunition market gets very tight and expensive around elections. You need to figure that into your planning.
And you really should know the 4 Rules down to gut level. Ideally before ever touching a gun, but that usually isn’t possible.
>And you really should know the 4 Rules
That was a good enough point that I’ve added it to the post. Thanks.
…and read Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense.
While we’re on the topic…
I’m thinking in the next year of getting a gun for home defense, and I’d like myself and my spouse to train with it. Is there a good spot to find information on a good starter gun, along with detailed best practices around safely storing a firearm?
I have young kids, and want to make sure the gun is accessible enough to be reachable in the event of a break-in but hard enough to access that my daughter doesn’t get into it.
>Is there a good spot to find information on a good starter gun, along with detailed best practices around safely storing a firearm?
You’ll do as well asking here as you could anywhere else – a lot of the regulars are no-bullshit experts, Dan included.
I was actually thinking of doing a blog post on choosing home-defense weapons wisely. I think I will do that next; it will provide an answer to your question and others can react in the thread.
Good idea. Start that thread.
+1 to this, I would find this a very useful resource.
The woman behind corneredcat.com settled on always carrying a pistol, including at home. It may not work for everyone, but it *does* solve several aspects of the Kids At Home problem.
Until ESR starts a thread on this topic, I have to say that IMNSHO what you are asking is actually rather complex.
There are so many BS opinions out there – mine included – that could steer you in an inappropriate direction.
I could say “GET A SHOTGUN” but this may not fit with your lifestyle or home choices. I could also say “GET THIS PISTOL OR RIFLE” and still be wide of the mark regarding your particular needs.
There is no simple answer to your question.
We can, however, have an involved conversation about such things……and try to refine an understanding of what might be best for your particular circumstances.
But ultimately, I am not responsible for your family – you are – and you need to be prepared to accept full responsibility for the consequences of your choices.
We’re just well-meaning people online, but we aren’t going to be responding to the wolf at your door.
No idea why I’m waiting on moderation for that comment….seems pretty innocuous to me?
Only one gun I ever recommend for someone who wants a gun for emergencies, but has no interest in shooting/hunting etc.
A revolver.
Only pistol that you can pull out of a drawer 5 years from now and have a reasonable expectation it will function.
Also everybodies FIRST REACTION with a gun not firing is to pull the trigger again.
Revolver is also only gun that responds well to that strategy.
Shoot it at least once a year.
You can practice the 4 rules with a Nerf blaster. And should, really.
No joke.
I teach them with a BB gun.
There are some very good replica CO2 powered handguns which have exact placement of all touch points and even do a pretty good job of replicating the weight and balance.
They can be a good way to practice sighting and trigger squeeze at a much lower cost than real ammo, you can practice every day in your house if you want, and for getting familiar the consequences of a mistake are much lower.
See for example some of the Sig replicas at Pyramid Air.
Or just use snap caps. You can practice handling all you like, get used to loading, unloading, making safe, preparing for takedown/cleaning, etc with perfect safety using your actual firearm.
And snap caps also allow safe dry firing. So you can and should practice all the things you would need to do with your firearm right up to trigger pull. And you need to work on sight picture and your trigger pull, a LOT, or you will never hit anything.
Exactly the kind of thing I use.
Excellent training devices.
IMO, if you want a training tool that mimics the ergonomics of a real pistol, the best thing is a SIRT pistol.
https://nextleveltraining.com/product/sirt-110-training-pistol-2/
I don’t work for them or anything – I just have one. It’s really great.
The only real differences are that the slide doesn’t move and the trigger resets on its own.
If that is your concern, then you shouldn’t wait until Trump is reelected. You should buy one now(ish) and spend the intervening months training with it so that you are ready should the balloon go up.
My $0.02 ;)
“But I’ve had a long-standing plan to buy one if Trump is re-elected, because I believe the Left will go batpoop crazy in such a circumstance.”
Can they get any crazier? For me it’s been 3+ years of thinking “They can’t get any dumber than THAT!” (THAT being whatever bizarre thing the left has tried to pin on Trump on any given day), only to have a liberal go “Hold my chardonnay…”
Would you also buy a gun if a Democrat got elected?
I plan to spend bigly on guns if it looks like the democrats will be back in power, because it might be the final opportunity before they repeal 2A.
How do you think Democrats will get two thirds of the House and two thirds of the Senate to vote for that, and then three quarters of the states to ratify it?
Alternatively: After all those judges Trump appointed to the federal courts, how do you think the federal courts will go back to ignoring the Second Amendment just because a Democrat is in the White House?
@Thomas Blankenhorn,
Oh, this is just an excuse to stage a coup and start a civil war.
Some supporters of Trump do not want to accept a Democrat government anymore. They rather start a civil war. This kind of posturing is common with people who want to start a war. There is also some (a lot?) underlying 19th century Civil War revisionism.
Seen this pattern many times in history.
The Democrats don’t accept the election of any Republican as legitimate. Why should Republicans?
They don’t have to. The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, only has as much force as the courts give it.
Justice Thomas was right when he said it was being treated as a second-class right. And if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we’d already have seen DC v. Heller overturned.
A Democrat President and Senate can write the Second Amendment out of the constitution with one or two adverse rulings. Don’t think for a moment they won’t.
Exactly. It is prima facie obvious that the democrats will fully repeal 2A (and if they can, 1A) given the opportunity, and they’ll pull as many dirty tricks as they need to.
Now there’s your boogaloo
The Constitution gives Congress complete discretion to add Federal judges at every level, right up to the Supreme Court. Thus, while Congress cannot remove an incumbent judge (except by impeachment and conviction), Congress can add new judgeships to be filled by the President. It would be trivial (and entirely constitutional) for Congress and the President to make enough new judges to provide a majority on every Federal court of appeals and the Supreme Court..
Prominent liberals have already discussed such measures. Their on-going campaign to nullify the Electoral College by extra-constitutional means reveals, IMO, that such measures are quite likely if they get the power.
I am pretty sure some Americans are already preparing for a repeat of the civil war to prevent the Democrats from ever getting to power again. You know, the will of the people should be the will of the RIGHT people.
Looking at the current COVID crisis, you can already ask yourself how many million dead Americans are too many for Trump to secure his reelection. Then extrapolate that to what Trump would be willing to do to stay in power.
Winter, if you’re gonna troll, could you at least try to be less transparent?
The scenario “some Americans” are arming against isn’t “Democrats get into power”, it’s “Democrats, having gotten into power, initiate a nationwide gun-confiscation programme in direct violation of the Second Amendment”. Which, if the Dems do get into power, is a realistic possibility, but it’s not automatically entailed.
As long as a Dem administration follows the Constitution (to within a plausibly-deniable approximation, because let’s be honest the US fedgov hasn’t followed the Constitution for at least seventy years), the right will grumble but meekly comply with the law. Just like they did during the Obama years.
“it’s “Democrats, having gotten into power, initiate a nationwide gun-confiscation programme in direct violation of the Second Amendment”.”
That did not happened under Obama, nor under Clinton. So you are just sowing disinformation to justify the thing I wrote: Start an armed uprising.
You should apply for a job in St Petersburg. There is a Russian media institute that is looking for people like you. Or, maybe apply at Russia Today? They have offices in the US.
@Edward Cree
“You should apply for a job in St Petersburg.”
I must apologize, I responded to the wrong comment, mixing up authors.
I do not want to imply that I think Edward Cree should apply at the St Petersburg Troll factory.
Again, sorry.
All the current Democrat candidates made it painfully obvious that they’re going to enact some form of confiscation if elected. No one was more transparent than “Beto” O’Rourke, aka Mr. “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15s!” Biden even reportedly promised to give O’Rourke a position in his administration if elected.
We have “Beta” O’Rourke ON CAMERA saying that if he were elected he’d confiscate all the AR15s.
Then we have Crazy Joe Biden ON CAMERA saying that he’d put Beta in charge of doing that.
So you’re telling me it’s crazy to take progressives at their word?
Of course! Taking progressives at their word about their own clearly stated intentions is obviously prohibited, unless it’s obviously mandatory, and vice versa.
Funny, I don’t remember Obama taking any guns from anybody.
But don’t think republicans are all about the 2nd.
Since they refused to pass national carry reciprocity when they had both houses and the presidency.
Another Trump promise BROKEN!
He puts out CoVID-10 to avoid getting censored. Just like it was Wuhan Virus before Chinese owned WHO recategorized to something more neutral. Hell, there is even attempt at renaming Spanish Flu of 1919.
>He puts out CoVID-10 to avoid getting censored.
No, that was a simple typo, now fixed.
At a meetup a few weeks ago (dear God, when will we be having meetups again?), someone was talking about getting a gun in case he wanted to make a run to Nebraska in case of civil disorder. He was concerned about how he’d get rid of the gun before returning to England.
I flattened the mood considerably by pointing out that you need to *learn* to use a gun.
You shoulda offered to stash the gun for him ;)
Your message is correct, but some cautions are in order.
There have been more than one case near here where a person could easily have found themselves in a self-defense situation due to the virus. Specifically, when near riots broke out and violence ensured when the restocking truck arrived at Wal-Mart or Dollar General. I wouldn’t go there unarmed. No so much because of the panic buyers, but because of the opportunistic thugs who might take advantage of the confusion.
That said, the smart thing to do is don’t go anywhere near such places. The best gunfight is the one you avoid. Stay home.
Once again, the smart people already have an adequate supply of guns, ammo, food, and yes, toilet paper on hand to handle moderate length disruptions. Go ye and do likewise.
“when near riots broke out and violence ensured when the restocking truck arrived at Wal-Mart or Dollar General”
Everybody was Kung Flu Fighting…
Go stand in the corner ;)
Light-bikes don’t handle well in tight corners. Don’t let’s get Tron Guy de-rezzed, please.
There was a “bitch slapping” verbal altercation involving a younger and older female in Walmart around here. And three police vehicles dispatched to the scene.
Three police vehicles? Wow
Were two of them donut vans?
Hahaha. Brand spanking new SUVs with young, fit cops, although I did see one older cop standing in the parking lot. I gave way as one hurdled the curb nearest to the entry/exit door.
“Specifically, when near riots broke out and violence ensured when the restocking truck arrived at Wal-Mart or Dollar General””
I didn’t know the veneer of civilization was that thin in the US.
Of course, a more plausible explanation is that those reports of a breakdown of civil order are just bogus or exaggerated, just like they were during Hurricane Katrina, and that as in most societies disaster brings out the best, not the worst out of people.
Have you ever seen certain Black Friday videos of Walmart riots? We all know, but don’t like to talk about, what kind of areas those videos are filmed in.
As Eric is always repeating, in terms of order and crime rates most of the US is safe like Switzerland. But some parts are…. not.
Yes, according to the mainstream media, those areas have a lot of “teens” living in them. And that’s the only demographic the rioters have in common, and you’d better not challenge them, even if it’s obvious, or you will be prosecuted for wrongthink.
If you have thus far failed to grasp the virtue and utility of firearm ownership & competence, and are now flailing around in a panicky rush to buy one, you’re not doing yourself or anyone else any favors – you’re just an unprepared dunce in this domain, turning yourself into said dunce but now with a lethal weapon. Any blundering idiot can own a gun, and now, thanks to you, one does.
We will get through this without the boogaloo, and I hope that one takeaway for you dunces is that you should start down that pathway with calm determination and seek competence with arms. A warm welcome will await you.
We need to be careful how we frame that. The last thing we want to do is call people st00pid for not arming themselves already, no matter how correct we may be in doing so. That will simply turn them off. We need to emphasize that responsible firearms ownership includes competence in using it, and that that competence doesn’t materialize overnight or without work.
Understood and agreed.
That’s why I’m no politician ;)
There are other fact patterns besides “collapse of civil order” that might justify buying a weapon because of an event, and some of them are plausible right now, or were for a while. I can’t blame anyone who bought one because:
(1) Suppose everyone in power knows that the virus is going to do a lot less damage than last year’s flu, but figures it’s a great time to conduct gun sweeps because the media can spin them as a necessary emergency response that only fools would oppose. If I were one of the gun-haters in Virginia, f’r instance, no way could I pass up such an opportunity.
(2) Similarly, governors or the president can easily issue “temporary” gun control regulations and then just forget ever to end the emergency. Wikipedia has a list of emergencies going back to the Nixon administration that are still in effect.
(3) Multiple US jurisdictions have already begun releasing prisoners rather than risk the virus killing a lot of people inside prisons. (The logic of this seems backward on multiple levels.) The convicts are especially likely to exhibit feral behavior while the police are otherwise busy. So are homeless people, when the food is being hoarded.
It depends on what sort of crime they’re accused of. Also, some of the people being released or not incarcerated are awaiting trial, They aren’t convicts.
Some jurisdictions already stated they will not respond to reports of theft and other less urgent crimes. The amount of mischief is bound to increase.
Happy hunting
The prisons could be a reservoir of infections that are then unleashed into the society-at-large:
Every prisoner on Rikers Island may already be infected.
Surely they should quarantine for 28 days and test before releasing. But the non-serology tests have high false negative rates. And as our systems become more overwhelmed then authorities may be forced to accept short-cuts. Rikers is already overcrowded. Where are they going to quarantine those who test negative before releasing them into the society-at-large?
Eric astutely picked up on something I had to think over yesterday. I know the owner of a large hardware store in S. Texas and he carries guns and ammo. We were discussing if these lockdowns were precursors of something worse to come and whether we needed to start preparing by communicating with and organizing with other avid gun enthusiasts among his huge circle of friends and clients. Think ranchers and other vocations because Texans love their guns. Those are organizational preparations that should have been done a long time ago with a clear, level-headed chain of information sharing designed to prevent the sort of irrational reactions Eric justifiably fears.
He said he had six AR-15s coming in next week and that 9mm ammo in particular was becoming scarce. He said he could hold for me whatever I wanted. I know he was trying to be helpful, but after he responded in the affirmative to my question about whether these demand shocks were not evident before the lockdowns and virus scare, I declined to make any decision about obtaining a firearm until after the crisis subsides. My main reason was I don’t want to rush any such very serious decision. For example, I need to renew my skills and re-familiarize myself with what class of weapon I am most accurate and comfortable with. Also I need to research which gun is most applicable to the situations I am prepping for. I also need to survey the future landscape to determine where my country, the world and myself are headed.
If I am not mistaken, my friend may have indicated that many of these recent purchases were pre-existing gun owners who were adding to their inventory. If it has been predominantly newcomers panicking then all of Eric’s points apply. It’s unfortunate that we humans can be stoked into rash and irrational actions by propaganda.
And it does appear that we have a rational President at the helm who is going to resist or counter the insanity, incompetence, myopia or malice (which is it?) in the bureaucracy. And the Marxist media and their hordes of memebots are waiting for any excuse to attack Trump and take our guns. Let’s not make it any easier for them by acting rashly.
Fauci gets frank about Trump: ‘I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down’
Fauci and U.S. Surgeon General trying to maintain maximum fear and panic whilst Trump attempts to pitch an end to the tunnel of doom:
Live updates: Trump suggests coronavirus containment measures may be too extreme as more states issue stay-at-home orders
I simply can’t believe that we would have health professionals at the helm who have never been educated about holistic calculations of community health policy cost and risk. These people are either extremely incompetent or intentionally trying to destabilize the country with pysops.
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/we-do-have-to-get-beyond-the-cdc/
I think you’re being very level-headed about this.
These people are either extremely incompetent or intentionally trying to destabilize the country with pysops.
I’m leaning more and more toward the latter. I’m still not convinced this whole thing isn’t being orchestrated. There are many powerful people (and an even more powerful media) who want Trump out at any cost. I predicted months ago that once the impeachment sham failed, they would move on to Plan C and find some way to wreck the economy. Lo and behold, here we are. How convenient.
Analogous to the Clintons who were/are for sale to the highest bidders such as those who would donate to their now defunct Clinton Foundation, one could imagine the surreptitious profit to be made by a bureaucrat who wields the power to for example issue, draconian orders that can crash the entire economy.
I’m very happy today because I think this recent event has awoken many people to be more skeptical about trusting technocrats and “experts”.
It’s bigger than that, and I don’t think it’s about money. It’s about power. If I’m right about this, it’s not the Democrats that are behind it. It’s bigger than any one political party, bigger than any one government. Something akin to the NWO or Illuminati. The ones with the power see Trump as a threat, and will do anything – anything – to stop him from getting reelected.
.
I’ll see your conspiracy and raise you. One can ponder the king-makers helped elect Trump via the Podesta emails. Trump has been pressuring the Fed to go into negative interest rates. And now viola, we’re almost there.
I think Trump is a good guy yet perhaps unwittingly accomplishes some of the sinister goals. He’s also the ideal personality to incite a reactionary, leftist, fervent radical youth political movement, especially if we clear out the elderly demographic with the 2nd and 3rd waves of this virus likely coming in 2021 and 2022. To radicalize the electorate and destabilize the politics.
It could end up analogous to the Spanish flu. The worst could come as it mutates in the sequel wave, possibility due to some autoimmunity (ADE or antigen imprinting) effect from the prior infections or flu shots. Maybe that is why this has a “gain-of-function” spike protein that has some genome similarities to all of HIV, Zika, Mers, etc.. (Note I have zero expertise on the biochemistry)
I hope you agree that we’re walking on quicksand with these conspiracy theories.
It safer to just imagine plausible profit motives, than to get caught up in the potential delusion of some grand conspiracy.
The Foundation is back, heavily funded, and Chelsea at the helm again, business as usual.
Yep. When the next episode of ‘shit-hits-the-fan’ is upon us, it will be the misanthropes with guns who survive.
I don’t believe that at all.
In fact, I believe that misanthropes are poorly adjusted for long-term survival.
s/malice/malevolence/
What mortality rate do you suspect would lead to a collapse of civil order?
>What mortality rate do you suspect would lead to a collapse of civil order?
You’d get civil disorder from a panic that takes out cops and soldiers and a lot of the military-age armed citizens that step up when the cops are overloaded (see: rooftop Koreans).
COVID-19 isn’t that – for a healthy nonsmoker under 50 the morbidity risk is really low, it mainly kills people over 60 with conditions like diabetes. The exceptions are people like front-line doctors who get continued exposure to a massive viral load.
How do the L.A. riots fit within your model?
Completely different calculus
>How do the L.A. riots fit within your model?
I don’t understand how that question is relevant. We were discussing what kind of plague mortality could cause a civil-order collapse. But plague is far from the only possible cause of civil disorder. There was no plague during those riots, so we’d need to look for different causal mechanisms that are outside the scope of this conversation.
Apologies as I thought we were discussing “disaster scenarios” as stated in the OP. I should have clued in to the prerequisite huge loss of police for civil unrest being specific to an epidemic causation.
I was contemplating that police could be overwhelmed in an event where hordes have taken the law into their own hands, such as if the food supply was disrupted for a couple of weeks, e.g. for a hurricane such as Katrina. What if a massive earthquake had struck during these lockdowns. Or other Schelling Point such as in the L.A. riots or Ferguson unrest. I think this is relevant because this current crisis exemplifies how vulnerable our economic ecosystem is to a political or constitutional crisis. For example, our Senate was playing Russian Roulette today instead of completing their urgent duty.
My greatest fear is that there will be conflicting commands in such a constitutional crisis and police will not know whose orders to follow, or be delayed by confusion. I think we’re sliding that direction and this crisis was a warning shot over the bow what lies ahead maybe not until 2036 or perhaps as soon as 2022.
Earthquakes and other tectonic activity such a volcanic eruptions are increasing as they normally do with the Maunder Minimum underway.
I keep Taleb’s Black Swan and Antifragility in mind.
>I think this is relevant because this current crisis exemplifies how vulnerable our economic ecosystem is to a political or constitutional crisis.
Actually, I don’t think we are very vulnerable to crises of that kind (political/constitutional). As long as goods can move around and the money economy can still function, markets are very good at resilience against shocks like that (and most other kinds too). The exception would be a monetary collapse – without a unit of account for people to trade in, things would get real ugly real fast.
The police know what to do when arson and looting starts, and they’re not going to wait on Federal approval to do it. And unless the political crisis has caused a hot civil war, a bunch of busted head, property damage, and a few bad guys shot by rooftop-Korean-equivalents is as bad as a disaster-induced riot is likely to get.
It seems there’s a narrative to push for the elimination of cash with this virus. Whether the protagonists (if there are any) will succeed is another matter.
Armstrong’s hypothesis is that at least in the EU the key politicians and planners want to eliminate cash (including gold) to force everyone to pay negative interest rates on all money — effectively a tax on all money.
Such totalitarian capital controls could in effect interfere with the free market and plunge an economy into chaos.
Armstrong’s closed-source computer has been remarkably accurate in predicting the timing of some major events and key inflection points. The computer is targeting June/July 2020 for a significant rise in civil unrest. If it’s not directly due to the virus, then it should likely involve the upcoming contentious election. (Note ostensibly the computer picks up on deterministic chaos with advanced machine learning methods fed extensive data on the history of human civilization, but I’m open to that he could be a charlatan after all.)
I’m pondering if the posited civil unrest (if it comes) could be the inevitable memebot reaction to Trump opening of the economy back up for business before the “18 months” that was in the national disaster plan I linked to in the bioweapon blog, or the “3 to 4 months” Trump said some health officials were mentioning. The media could sensationalize it as the “cavalier, brusque, intransigent, impetuous” Trump putting the nation at risk of millions of deaths from a resurgent virus by 2021.
And in another even more outlandish, horrific scenario, what if the media and memebots even end up being “correct” because some malevolent force is preparing to drop a prepared mutation into the wild on us. Then they can take this into the election process as a rallying cry for extra-constitutional remedies.
I do not think we should dismiss the greater probability of exogenous events driving outcomes at this late innings juncture of the massive global debt bubble. I think of the analogy of a pressure cooker. Something has to blow.
If you were in charge how would you handle an inevitable Minsky Moment. Maybe it is best to prepare some weapon to scapegoat and control it.
Add “reckless and insane” to the labels the memebots will likely pin on Trump if he disobeys the health policy bureaucrats.
Here we go:
‘Where’s Fauci?’ America panics as doctor absent again from White House briefing
Trump’s push to shorten the coronavirus shutdown proves the captain is flying blind
“ctually, I don’t think we are very vulnerable to crises of that kind (political/constitutional).”
Italy is in total lockdown, Spain and France nearly total. There is no crisis of order, no looting, no violence.
Western European democracies tend to be quite stable in the face of disaster. That is not a surprise. When there is a disaster, there is no alternative than to stand together.
Stand together into the abyss of (e.g. Wiemar) socialism.
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”—Communist Manifesto
Nevermind that the economics are perhaps totally fucked by the egregious shock:
Is this a Staged Political Coup on a Grand International Level?
“Stand together into the abyss of (e.g. Wiemar) socialism.”
Weimar was hardly socialist. Its problem was that the country was disintegrating.
Actually, we saw it twice last century. After both WWs, the countries simply regrouped and rebuild. The only exceptions were the very young countries Germany and Italy, that had just existed 3 decades when WWI started. But Old countries like France rebuild rather uneventful.
And the last 70 years, Western Europe was probably the safest place on earth. And the people are still among the happiest on earth.
All these “predictions” where the likes of Switzerland and Norway would start building Gulags any moment now. Just you wait.
Did not happen.
“Weimar was hardly socialist.”
From wiki:
-the highest income tax went from 4% to 60%
-laws were passed to regulate rents
-set up youth offices in charge of child protection, and also codified a right to education for all children
-Health insurance coverage was extended to other categories of the population during the existence of the Weimar Republic, including seamen, people employed in the educational and social welfare sectors, and all primary dependents.
“But Old countries like France rebuild rather uneventful.”
Only a single coup attempt! Wait, does Spain not count as Western Europe?
“And the people are still among the happiest on earth.”
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/cities-and-happiness-a-global-ranking-and-analysis/
4 Zurich
22 Dublin
29 Vienna
32 Cork
40 Brussels
43 Paris
48 Madrid
55 Barcelona
Australia and New Zealand
3, 10, 14, 16, 17, 20
United States
18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31
Central America
34, 38, 41, 42, 58, 64
“All these “predictions” where the likes of Switzerland and Norway would start building Gulags any moment now.”
No one pays attention to Switzerland and Norway has a magic money pump. Criticism has been more directed towards nations like England (which has gone crazy).
Ugh.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. Eventually they’ll insert totalitarian Patriot Act 3 provisions buried in some emergency stimulus.
The parts of the House [Corona stimulus] bill drawing scrutiny
I’m seeing the narrative and push for Winter’s totalitarian solution which I criticized as a violation of civil liberties.
WHO Expert: Lock-Downs Won’t Stop This Virus:
That latter bit about taking the fight to the virus is likely the pretext for forced vaccinations and Bill Gates’ ID2020.
Essentially this alleged psyops bioweapon has been unleashed to blackmail the nations—implement totalitarianism or collapse into a Great Depression with lockdowns or millions of deaths due to a posited 10+% mortality rate.
If this is the correct interpretation then we’re in a real-time shit storm, exponentially accelerating, Minksy Moment collapse of Western civilization.
I’m trying to take a break from posting but frankly this is disconcerting.
The following CDC document is not intended to apply to sustained community transmission zones but would presumably apply to all rural areas that we could seek for refuge. For sustained transmission zones per my prior post, I posit the health policy “experts” might instead eventually force vaccinations and ID2020.
If I am interpreting correctly between the lines below, our law enforcement officials can be forced to implement “show me your papers” checkpoints on all travel.
Interim US Guidance for Risk Assessment and Public Health Management of Persons with Potential Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Exposures: Geographic Risk and Contacts of Laboratory-confirmed Cases:
It has, however, been a hands-on learning experience for plenty of people who quacked about “buying guns over the Internet” and now find that not only do they themselves want guns, the process isn’t as simple as they’ve been spouting. The question is whether they have a long enough attention span to remember it.
….long enough attenSQUIRREL!!!
I do wonder what the effects will be of people who have been ‘taught’ that guns are really easy to buy, easier than buying books or food, etc etc, being rudely introduced to reality. And FFL transfers, Form 4473’s, NICS checks….
Yes, I know the Churchill quip about men stumbling over the truth.
Look on the bright side. All the ammo’s sold out, at least around here. For now the incompetents have nothing to shoot themselves in the face with. And when this is all over, there will be plenty of opportunities to pick up effectively new guns on the used gun market. Have to look on the bright side of life.
That’s not the bright side.
This is as close to a bright side as I could come up with.
For people feeling anxious about current events, a reasonable alternative to panic buying a firearm is to keep a wooden baseball bat by the front door (a good ol’ Louisville Slugger works just fine). It provides a sense of empowerment without the risk of a fatal accident on a family member. Also, get a long handle axe and chop some cord wood in the backyard to relieve stress and build up your upper body strength.
I’ll let my grandmother know, thanks.
Or a sharpened knitting needle concealed in a sleeve could be quite empowering in a pinch.
His point was about people feeling safe, not realistic self defense.
My grandmother can’t swing a baseball bat, nor an axe.
But she sure can point a .38 and wreck someone’s day.
I reckon she feels safe. Seems pretty realistic to me ;)
Too low to kill all the cops. And as you pointed out, the mortality disproportionately affects geriatric, retired age brackets or those with illnesses not likely to be large percentage of the law enforcement population.
But is the case fatality rate (CFR) percentage low? If not, could a CFR rate similar to SARS lead to overwhelming hysteria and civil disorder?
I commented on the bioweapon blog about the false positive rate (FPR) of the tests being perhaps
98+%if randomly sampling from the general population. If suspected and tested cases are mostly selected by those who have some flu-like symptoms not specific to only SARS-Cov-2, the FPR could still be very high if the annual flu has orders-of-magnitude higher incidence in the population.I raised the issue that CDC is reporting cases with confirmed symptoms (aka COVID-19) separately from the total cases which includes “presumptive positive cases”. The CFR if calculated only on those with confirmed symptoms would be perhaps in excess of 10%. The CDC’s definition of “presumptive positive cases” appears to be anyone with a positive or perhaps even a pending or negative test result.
Is the CDC obfuscating that this virus actually has a very high mortality and that the spread is actually an order-of-magnitude lower at this time than the mass media sensationalized “presumptive positive cases” count? Or is the spread so extremely high but most people are asymptomatic so the presumptive positive cases” count is not statistically meaningful?
My layman’s assumption is that absent serology testing there’s no way to be sure a positive test result with mild or ambiguous, flu-like symptoms is actually a SARS-Cov-2 infection. And serology testing may not be useful until roughly two weeks after onset of symptoms. Afaik serology testing is not yet widely deployed for this new virus.
I posted a request for clarification on the appropriate Wikipedia discussion page.
Additionally, 1-in-4 adults under and 3-in-4 Americans over the age of 65 have multiple chronic diseases including by descending order of prevalence: cardiovascular, cancer, other “noncommunicable”, respiratory (e.g. asthma) and diabetes.
According to the CDC, 6-in-10 Americans have at least one chronic disease.
This seems to argue for the case that the mortality is much higher than 1% perhaps as high as 10+% yet still disproportionately impacting the geriatric population.
If the CDC has allowed the media to misrepresent the definition of a “confirmed case” by being silent while we all misinterpret what they wrote on their web page. I posit possible implications could include:
1. The people are overly alarmed too soon as spread is much lower than claimed.
2. Trump will walk into a trap by ending strict social distancing because as the virus spreads, the mortality will be much higher than he’s expecting.
As I hypothesized in my reply to Eric in comments further up thread, this could be a political setup to try to prevent Trump from being reelected. And it could exacerbate the hysteria that results, “Insane old white man Trump is trying to kill us by ignoring the health policy experts.”
I hope this hypothesis is incorrect.
> this could be a political setup to try to prevent Trump from being reelected. And it could exacerbate the hysteria that results, “Insane old white man Trump is trying to kill us by ignoring the health policy experts.”
^^ this.
Trump was backed into a corner from the beginning. He had no choice but to play along with the “experts”, or be made to look like a fool – standing before the nation telling everyone there’s nothing to worry about while the media and “experts” create panic and chaos. I still believe this virus has a mortality rate not much different from influenza, and the vast majority of “coronavirus deaths” are among people who would have died anyway if they got a cold or flu. Now that they have him backed into that corner, any attempt to reverse course and save the economy will be met with a chorus of, as you put it “Insane Old White Man is trying to kill us all by ignoring the experts!”
So if he reopens the country to save the economy, he’s politically doomed. And if he doesn’t, he’s politically doomed. It’s just too damned convenient to not be a setup.
@Jeff L
“So if he reopens the country to save the economy, he’s politically doomed. And if he doesn’t, he’s politically doomed. It’s just too damned convenient to not be a setup.”
Yeah, the rest of the world is going into lock-down just to mess with Trump’s poll numbers. An obvious thing for a few billion people to do.
But I can see how this will be the narrative in the USA:
GOP Urges End Of Quarantine For Lifeless Bipedal Automatons That Make Economy Go
https://politics.theonion.com/gop-urges-end-of-quarantine-for-lifeless-bipedal-automa-1842461351
@Winter:
The rest of the world has been coerced into listening to the same “experts”. Any dissenting opinion is immediately ridiculed by the global media mob. Any world leader refusing to comply would be committing political suicide. Combined with the feeling of most world leaders that they would be better off with Trump out of office in the US, there’s little reason for them not to play along.
Which media are coercive enough to do this in China, India, Eurpe and Australia?
Isn’t it the reverse? Fox News being able to fool enough of the Republicans to get the US to go for a full throttle pandemic route without safety belts?
I think the Onion hit the nail on the head.
the positive rate (FPR) of the tests being perhaps 98+% if randomly sampling from the general population
But (except for South Korea AFAIK) the case numbers being reported are not from random sampling from the general population. They are from testing of people who meet much stricter criteria, so the set of people being tested has a much higher base rate of infection–in fact that rate in the population being tested is probably significantly higher than the error rate of the test. That means the false positive rate will be much lower.
Yes I had mentioned that possibility. But are you sure? Weren’t they doing drive-through testing? Is their incidence of chronic disease and old age the same as ours?
Apologies I replied too quickly while rushing out the door. I misread your comment. My prior reply was reacting to the low mortality rate observed in S.Korea.
Where is that stricter criteria stipulated or described? I tried to find it and I couldn’t find something that satisfied the next question. Are you sure they are testing from those who exhibit symptoms distinct from the annual flu?
Why do you presume the incidence in the U.S. population is greater than 5%? I think that’s unlikely especially given the lockdowns that have been in place. The incidence may be that high in a few urban regions which were impacted early on or which lacked quarantine since.
Where is that stricter criteria stipulated or described?
For the US, here:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html
https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2020/han00429.asp
Are you sure they are testing from those who exhibit symptoms distinct from the annual flu?
The guidance does not specify exactly which symptoms will get you tested: it leaves that to the judgment of the health care workers. But there are differential diagnosis symptoms that can be used; see, for example, Slide 26 here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DqfSnlaW6N3GBc5YKyBOCGPfdqOsqk1G/view
Note in particular shortness of breath. I’m also seeing reports online that loss of sense of smell and taste might be another symptom that could be used as a differential.
Why do you presume the incidence in the U.S. population is greater than 5%?
That’s not what I presumed. What I presumed was that the incidence in the population that is being tested based on the presence of symptoms is significantly greater than 5%. Big difference.
That requires a preponderance of the tests to be done on those with symptoms distinguishable from the annual flu, such as some respiratory distress. Which I reason is not likely. Do you have any data to suggest that is the case?
My presumption is that to meet the political outcry for more testing, everyone who asks and has even a fever has been obtaining testing. I read about drive-through testing which requires a doctor referral but presumably avoids you actually having to go into the doctor’s office in most instances. And even self-administered home-testing kits are supposedly coming. Armstrong wrote about the mass hysteria that 13% of those who have the common flu think they have COVID-19. Also Armstrong wrote that epidemiologists had confided in him about this problem with widespread testing.
The past four days the CDC’s count of total cases has jumped by on average roughly 9k daily. I have also read several days ago the number of tests that can be completed nationally has been ramped up to “tens of thousands” daily and presumably more than that by now. That 9k figure seems to roughly match what a 5% FPR would yield out of the maximum number of tests available.
From your cited slide 26, only respiratory distress distinguishes COVID-19 from annual influenza flu.
What doctor or State health official would want to risk not testing someone with a fever and a cough now in this political environment? They know that the respiratory symptoms strike suddenly and some patients have died in their homes after being denied testing. And there’s even research suggesting that irreversible damage to the lungs begins before respiratory symptoms manifest.
I hope I am wrong and testing has been very methodical and measured. Like you, I would also like for the CDC to open source their data on this. Their submission forms apparently have fields for the local health officials to document the observed symptoms.
I have read about so many actors, athletes and public officials who have tested positive but some have noted they have no symptoms. Others did not state whether they had symptoms or not.
By not reporting the count of negative test results, the authorities are significantly obscuring whether they’re successfully testing people most likely to be infected. A negative to positive test result ratio in the realm of 67-33 or 50-50 would give us confidence. Even 80-20 would be better than no data.
But the tests have a very high false negative rate, so perhaps even a 90-10 outcome wouldn’t necessarily indicate they’re testing people who predominantly don’t have the infection. I do not know what the FNR is.
Apologies. That’s incorrect. If the incidence of those who have the infection of those tested matches the FPR (and false negative rate is very low), then the probability of being false positive declines to 50%. But the FNR is not low. I’ve read that some positive cases have to be tested multiple times before they get a positive test result.
If the FNR is 33% for those who have respiratory symptoms, the above scenario declines to only ~60%.
If 20% of those being tested actually have the infection and the FNR is 33% for them, then the probability that an individual who is positive and does not have respiratory distress may be false positive declines to ~27%, Still high.
My computation may be slightly off.
I still doubt that 5% of those being tested have respiratory distress. I would welcome data to the contrary.
I found a data point.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-widespread-coronavirus-testing-isnt-coming-anytime-soon
By Monday the 23rd, 20,875 had tested positive.
Equations:
FPR × NI + (1-FNR) × I = 20875
NI + I = 80000
So only ~11–14% of those who are positive are false if the FPR is 0.5%. I did read that some of the tests have a FPR of 10% but that would only increase it to at most ~16%. My range is due to unknown FNR.
I can’t be sure that the 80,000 aligns with the 20,875, and I read that New York’s total positive cases are doubling every 3 days as of Monday.
But that article above also says:
New York presumably has been prioritizing samples from the most ill patients. So that data point above may not hold for New York over time and/or not for other locations which have lower case loads.
The case totals have been surging ~9k per day past 4 days. So this appears to be catch up. I need some more data and more recent data to convince that the false positive issue is not significant.
I shouldn’t be trying to comment when I’m sleepless.
Correction: not ~16% but up to ~31% in the above scenario if FPR is 10%. I had a multiplication error computing the equations in my mind instead of writing it out.
At 20% FPR then the result is up to ~71%.
Also I wonder if the FPR varies based on the demographics of those tested. If a 5% or 10% FPR is based on testing patients with likely symptoms then if the FNR is reasonably low then the chance of a false positive is maybe 33% to 50% less than if all those tested are likely to not be infected.
So now I’m not very convinced that my original concern is invalidated. But I need to sleep, so bear in mind this might be gibberish.
Symptom definition allows conflation with the annual flu:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/risk-assessment.html
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html
Even confirmed cases apparently allow the above ambiguous symptoms conflation, as a confirmed case is merely a positive test result from a CDC lab:
https://www.khou.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/what-is-a-presumptive-positive-coronavirus-test/285-8f4ddba9-6f4d-4de0-bca4-2a8b1c37d8b9
So the question is with the intensive ramp-up in testing (to appease public outcry) has the U.S.A. been testing many asymptomatics with “close connections” or in jurisdictions with confirmed community spread, and/or those who only had a flu and cough? My bet is yes we have.
Symptom definition allows conflation with the annual flu:
Not difficulty breathing, that’s not a flu symptom.
Most patients with confirmed COVID-19 have developed fever and/or symptoms of acute respiratory illness (e.g., cough, difficulty breathing).
I would certainly like to see actual numbers on how many patients have each of those symptoms individually (with particular interest in acute respiratory illness, since that’s the key differential). But I do not think the data we currently have support a claim that most “confirmed cases” are not actually COVID-19.
I posted a data point from New York above, which seems to support your position of the false positives being low perhaps in the 10 to 20% range. That’s not 100% conclusive but I will operate with that assumption for the time being.
Yet there’s another possible onerous ramification of even that lower level of false positives. It doesn’t alleviate the extremely high chance of being false positive for those positives who only had a fever or cough or were forced to test because the CDC tags them as a PUI because they had some close contact with someone who tested positive. One could wildly imagine it ending up as a dystopian Kafkaesque cascade. So the main threat may not be the overall statistical impact on mortality rate and total infections cited, but a more sinister, insidious attack hidden within the math of this that can be targeted on chosen dissidents (or angry white men, registered gun owners, etc). It’s not a transparent process. The individual decisions are made by health officials at their discretion. Remember the IRS targeting conservatives at the behest of Eric Holder presumably with blessing from Obama.
My comment in response to Winter cites that the CDC and/or WHO are possibly contemplating that when community spread becomes intensive that only those who are vaccinated or test negative can be whitelisted from involuntary quarantine.
“Travel Papers” and the Pandemic Patriot Act 2.0
63% of Americans believe the CDC
And why would a Republican government do such a thing?
Or are you convinced the whole medical guild is trying to get you?
Not everybody who survives the ICU will be well. Chronic lung diseases are common.
https://www.businessinsider.nl/coronavirus-survivors-lung-damage-ards-fcim-intensive-care-research-2020-3?international=true&r=US
Another open letter to the President by Armstrong after it became evident that Trump had likely read his first letter to the President et al. Armstrong is attempting to save our nation before it’s too late.
The letter’s content speaks to Armstrong’s credibility also. Note I have tried to email my epiphenies from this blog to Armstrong. Everyone can email him: ArmstrongEconomics@gmail.com
President Donald Trump Letter- 3-24-2020
I hope I’m incorrect, but I’m becoming more tuned in to a possible shit storm of epic or even Biblical proportions.
Don’t rush. Prepare with a calm mind. The OP applies in spades.
Do we need to start getting organized? Are there extant organizations?
I’ll STFU now and observe for a while.
@FYD
“Do we need to start getting organized? Are there extant organizations?”
Remember Moab!
Coronavirus: Is it too much to ask for an actual plan?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/coronavirus-is-it-too-much-to-ask-for-an-actual-plan/?comments=1
The answer is: Yes, it is too much to ask for a plan.
Outdenting a discussion thread.
To help readers make their own informed judgments about the threat model ahead. I believe these to be factual statements.
CDC is a Private Organization – Not Government!
Is Bloomberg Behind the John Hopkins University Virus Map that Has Scared the World?
Failure of Coronavirus Bill to Address Economic Collapse:
Trump would want to penalize States which continue lockdowns indefinitely. This may be one of tools for enforcing his wishes, analogous to how he capped the mortgage deduction to weaken and/or politically pressure California. Democrats would also not want to reward corporations who are not sustaining nor increasing employment. The House Democrats even tried (but apparently failed?) to insert a stipulation that any companies receiving aid would have to pay $15 minimum wage. And they were trying to insert Green New Deal clauses, a ‘digital dollar’ and instant voter registration along with unequivocal absentee balloting so they can enable more illegal aliens to vote.
The may foster continuing economic and civil order collapse in the leftist States that want to resist Trump’s call for an early end to lockdowns and a reopening of the U.S. economy. Warm, southerly, conservative States or counties with low viral spread may benefit the most from returning most people back to work asap. Pressuring the leftist States to capitulate should also raise their memebot’s anger towards Trump a step closer to automaton, “foaming at the mouth” violence — which ties into my prior point about the June/July civil unrest projected by Armstrong’s computer.
The markets will soon realize the stimulus bill is going to encourage increased firings until States capitulate on the absurd lockdowns. Precisely the outcome the infiltrated Marxist coup wants is to train the people to become dependent on the Marxist concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) to displace actual production so as to plunge our nation into pestilence and megadeath.
Is our our economy now dominoing into Minsky Moment collapse regardless of policy decisions? Will be especially so in the northerly States, highly urbanized zones or vocations which require close contact and/or frequent handling of objects others have touched or breathed on. Working and going out to eat or shopping with masks on, isn’t going to inspire the confidence to liberally spend and incur more debt. Frugal time preference will collapse the Western debt bubble. The insoluble problem is precisely the PUBLIC CONFIDENCE issue that Armstrong raises in support of re-opening the economy. Want to Save the Economy? Listen to Fauci, Not Trump. explains:
Fear will paralyze the economy regardless of the policy decisions. The economic activity and spending of our nonaffected youth doesn’t comprise the majority of our economy. I cited that one-fourth of our adults under age 65 have multiple chronic illnesses which are comorbidities that increase the fatality rate for COVID-19.
As I already explained, Congress just passed a stimulus that with economics that effectively forces businesses to send more workers to file unemployment claims.
The only possible way out of that catch-22 is an effective vaccine or COVID-19 treatment to restore public confidence.
Buried in the stimulus legislation is a tax break that removes the limits on amount of capital gains from real estate that will be tax-free from years 2018, 2019 and 2020.
This enables a massive fire-sale on real estate before the private sector interest rates skyrocket crushing real estate values into the abyss and putting Americans under water on their mortgages. The likelihood of a Great Depression is increasing.
Is anybody awake? We are on the verge of losing America as we knew it. A few more weeks of the insane flatten the curve nonsense and we will past the point of no return.
The elephant in the room is that draconian quarantine suppression prevents herd immunity. Think that out and it becomes clear that the flatten the curve meme is destructive propaganda. I heard ~17 million people died from starvation during the Great Depression and there was a world war as a result.
This Lawyer Has Caught Trumps Attention For His Coronavirus Analysis
America Is Entering Permanent Martial Law Warns Legal Scholar
This alleged legal scholar Robert Barnes seems to be articulate. Trump responded on Twitter to Barnes’ promise to build a statue of Trump if he prevents a Great Depression due to the virus scam. Alex Jones let’s Barnes do most of the talking.
“The elephant in the room is that draconian quarantine suppression prevents herd immunity. Think that out and it becomes clear that the flatten the curve meme is destructive propaganda. ”
People want to obtain herd immunity with minimal casualties. That means the progress of the infections should be controlled as not to overrun and destroy the health care system, inducing even more deaths in people with other diseases. When the health care system collapses, you get the maximum casualties PLUS the economic collapse.
That is what flatten the curve means to prevent.
But meanwhile I think your aim is to maximize the number of casualties and damage in the US. Your advice all points in that direction.
Let me know when you have really thought it out. Regurgitating incorrect propaganda is not “think it out.”
At the Epidemic Calculator checkbox “Recovered” and remember that immunity only lasts for one or maybe at most two flu seasons.
Winter I apologize for the frustration in my reply. Please refer to the last sentence only and disregard the rest.
My “propaganda” is people who actually do research in viruses and infectious diseases.
Covid19 Corona is not the flu. Different virus, different animal hosts.
The Corona virus mutates much much slower. There is good hope that immunity may last for years, maybe a lifetime.
Virus mutation isn’t the only vector. Our antibody titers decline so reinfection (or antibody dependent enhancement at medium titer levels) with the same strain may be plausible after one or two flu seasons. In the Bioweapon II blog, I cited research establishing ADE in SARS and possibly MERS.
Let’s cite the expert Imperial College study which lead to this insane “flatten the curve” hysteria:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf#page=4
I have read anecdotal reports from Chinese doctors of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection in the same “flu season” aka epidemic episode/outbreak.
Sources? I have cited above expertise which seems to disagree.
“I have read anecdotal reports from Chinese doctors ”
The plural of anecdote is not data. It does not look currently that reinfection is going to be an important factor.
You insert the word ‘currently’ to protect yourself against being wrong in the future and then fail to refute the expert by citing your sources. He did not claim 3 years of immunity.
There simply is no conclusive data yet. But that does not mean that some random idea should be pushed as the Truth.
You are claiming Prof Andrew Hayward is a source of random ideas? He specifically made no assurances about beyond the next flu season.
And we should risk the entire fate of the planet on an unknown which an expert is not confident enough to exclude?
Also you completely avoided addressing ADE which is a documented effect in SARS. Again you will claim that it has uncertainties so we should just ignore it. And rest the fate of the entire planet on your assurances that it will not happen. Can you pay for it if you are wrong? Did the Soviets reimburse for the Holodomor?
“He specifically made no assurances about beyond the next flu season.”
COVID-19 is not even related to the Influenza virus. They are biologically as different and elephants and clams.
“Also you completely avoided addressing ADE which is a documented effect in SARS.”
I would think that the experiences in Italy and Spain would by now have silenced all “myths” about people outside China being less sensitive.
But it is difficult to convince a man whose religion depends on not being convinced.
I wonder if the immunity in the elderly would decline faster?
If so, thus arguing for importance of herd immunity asap to protect them.
Cuomo now admits the iatrogenic quarantines and lockdowns may have caused more infections among the elderly than they prevented by locking young and old in close quarters. That would be more plausible if the “new” virus is actually an older, extant widely circulating virus as hypothesized in a comment thread below.
Creating a self-inflicted Greater Depression and another world war is not minimizing causalities. 17 million died of starvation in the last Great Depression. And that suffering spawned World War II.
Provision more hospitals instead. If I’m correct about immunity not lasting long enough to gain herd immunity with strict quarantines, then cumulative causalities due to the virus will not be any less with “flatten the curve” — which should be factually named “flatten the economy, civil order and nutritional health into the abyss”.
“17 million died of starvation in the last Great Depression. And that suffering spawned World War II.”
That was 90 years ago. The US can feed their whole population, if they want to. But I agree they probably won’t.
So now you agree with me that we shouldn’t create a self-inflicted starvation?
There is nodanger for food shortage. However, there is a danger of famine because the US have few ways of feeding the unemployed.
Commies always lie:
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1250716/food-shortage-looms-amid-quarantine
>However, there is a danger of famine because the US have few ways of feeding the unemployed.
I don’t think you have a real grasp on how cheap minimum calories for subsistence are in the U.S. Even our homeless people run to obesity. There’s been nothing resembling famine conditions in the U.S. in 40 years, and the last instance was deep in the Appalachias.
I’m concerned about access, not cost. Although I have not researched it diligently yet. I notice various disconcerting developments such as HEB is only allowing 50 people inside at a time. Analogous to NHS rationing healthcare in the UK. Maybe at some point the excuse is that it’s unsafe for delivery trucks to an enter an area either due to the (illusion of an epidemic) virus or some civil unrest or presence of a local militia.
Hopefully my concern is paranoia. I will sleep and think it over.
Maybe we’re being pushed to online delivery for everything.
Follow-up. I cringe when I cite ZeroHedge because I know they intentionally sensationalize. So here it goes another extreme example of what I’m referring to about the self-inflicted queues and limits on access due to the ostensibly mass mania hallucination about the meaning of the normal annual rate of respiratory illness and death which said factual illness has nothing to do with some concocted narrative about a new virus that’s really a family of viruses that have always been with us:
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/greater-depression-shocking-images-show-horror-americas-new-breadlines
“a new virus that’s really a family of viruses that have always been with us:”
Just like Influenza and the Spanish flu: Up to a 100M dying from
“a family of viruses that have always been with us”
“Even our homeless people run to obesity. ”
Obesity and malnourishment can go perfectly together. Especially in children.
But I was not the one predicting 17M dead by famine. I only point out that famines can exist when there is plenty of food, but no mechanism to feed the poor. And the prevalence of food stamps and food banks in the US point out that lack of a distribution mechanism.
The Irish famine in the 19th century is a perfect example. There was more than enough food in the UK, but the British were unwilling to help out their colony for obvious political reasons.
“And how many zillions of mutations have passed up by without any such megadeath impact?”
Do you actually understand what you are trying to say? Because what you write is utterly irrelevant to the problem at hand.
Let me try one more time to illicit some interest or replies from Armed and Dangerous readers.
They’re coming for our guns with this scam which provides all the excuses and pliable reaction from the majority to just stop processing for example permits. The police will follow orders from the authorities who are promulgating this scam.
https://guides.sll.texas.gov/gun-laws/background-checks
There’s possibly no new human corona virus circulating that wasn’t circulating for a long-time:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300972
Perhaps there’s only a new (renamed old) test:
https://youtu.be/qzhZFD19Udc?t=268 (link to video)
Those cited experts are not arguing that the unique genome doesn’t exist. Rather that the “SARS-CoV-2” was circulating already in our population. It’s an informational, propaganda, psy-ops illusion.
Virtual reality warfare may have arrived.
s/illicit/elicit/
I can’t get anything through the moderation filter. I have evidence that there may not be the health crisis in the hospitals being claimed. First hand evidence would be best.
“Trump’s decisions are apparently being driven by the irrational fear among his voter base about a vacuous threat, ”
You do not think seeing corpses shoved into a truck with a forklift is disconcerting enough to give a feeling of alarm? Especially when you know how many hospitals were closed in your neighborhood.
If I wanted to maximize the damages from this pandemic to the US, I would advocate your advice.
@FYD
“That’s because you’re only concerned about ‘damages’ to your political power. ”
If you can find a non-centralized solution to the problem of a pandemic, please tell us. We all desperately want to learn about it.
But you have no such solution. And to prevent others from taking the necessary steps to protect the lives of your compatriots (if you are American at all) you are discrediting everyone who actually knows something about the consequences of such a pandemic.
In short, you are willing to sacrifice a few million American lives to prevent an effective policy because you are ideologically opposed to any effective solution actually working.
You desperately WANT a national policy to fail, so much so you will do whatever is in your power to sabotage such a policy.
In your case, there is an institute in Saint Petersburg (RF) that needs people like you. You already sound exactly like one of their employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
“Can you put in a good word for me with your superiors there?”
Given that I will tell everyone that Putin is a murderous, cleptocrat dictator who ruins what is left of Russia, they will not listen to me.
And the Trolls from Olgino also do not like people who defend scientists and journalists, which makes me unemployable there.
“Pretending Marxism only failed because of Putin is not an example of conflict.”
Putin is not exactly worse than the Marxists who preceded him. But then, I abhor all dictators, whatever colors or stripes they wear.
Hope flies eternal I see.