The article below is from American Greatness (free subscription and highly recommended publication). It is by Julie Kelly and expresses important considerations. Accompanying it are some insightful comments we picked from those that were attached to it. The YouTube video set forth below the American Greatness rendering exposes the deliberate lying media treatment of the ChiCom virus; aka CCP virus; aka Wuhan virus; aka coronavirus; aka COVID-19.
Hockey Sticks, Changing Goal Posts, and Hysteria
There’s still time to find a balance between public health and the economy: Trump must find it before April 30.
Last year, Glacier National Park in Montana began removing signs that warned visitors the park’s gigantic glaciers would start melting away by 2020 due to global warming. Park officials altered other climate change flair such as brochures and displays to postpone the threat to sometime in “future generations.”
Like so many claims about the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic global warming, predictions about disappearing glaciers were quickly memory-holed. And, as usual, the experts behind the flawed science that misled millions of people to believe their actions would cause the destruction of one of nature’s most awesome sights didn’t apologize. No scientist or government official even had the guts to stand up and say, “Oops, my bad.”
Quite to the contrary—prophets of nonexistent doom are often cheered as heroes no matter how many times they’ve been wrong.
Take Dr. Michael Mann, for example. The Pennsylvania State University author of the infamous “hockey stick” graph is still considered a god among the international climate change set; his graph launched the modern-day climate movement even though his work has been widely refuted by scientists and hacked emails showed how he and his fellow researchers manipulated data to “prove” their theory.
Now, we have the latest version of the hockey stick graph and it is related to COVID-19. The alarming visual indicates a huge spike in estimated deaths and hospitalizations in the United States from coronavirus infections over the next few weeks. Last week, a researcher at the University of Washington released a study that appears to serve as the scientific justification to extend the CDCs social distancing guidelines until at least April 30.
Christopher Murray, director of the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, warns that daily fatalities will climb from zero on February 24 to a high of 2,214 on April 15. (Much like Mann’s hockey stick graph that claimed to show warming temperatures, data from the period before the spike cannot be accurate since the first case of coronavirus in the U.S. was reported in mid-January. If it’s as contagious and as lethal as we’ve been told, hundreds if not thousands of people would already have died from the disease in the first two months of the year unbeknownst to healthcare providers.)
By May 2, based on Murray’s model, more than 60,000 Americans will be dead; by the beginning of August, nearly 84,000 of our fellow countrymen will have succumbed to the disease.
The need for hospital beds, intensive care units, and ventilators will far outpace supply, according to Murray. By this Friday, U.S. hospitals will need more than 135,000 beds, nearly 26,000 ICUs and more than 20,000 ventilators to accommodate COVID-19 patients.
And this disaster scenario will occur even with the draconian measures enacted at the federal, state and local level to slow the disease’s death march.
“The estimated excess demand on hospital systems is predicated on the enactment of social distancing measures in all states that have not done so already within the next week and maintenance of these measures throughout the epidemic, emphasizing the importance of implementing, enforcing, and maintaining these measures to mitigate hospital system overload and prevent deaths,” wrote Murray.
From Common Sense to House Arrest
The White House, apparently, is listening. After first disputing an outlandish study produced by the UK’s Imperial College that projected a few million Americans would die from COVID-19 this year, Dr. Deborah Birx presented Murray’s report to the president over the weekend. Birx referred to Murray’s model in a Rose Garden briefing on Sunday.
“It’s anywhere, in the model, between 80,000 and 160,000, maybe potentially 200,000 succumbing to this,” Birx cautioned. “That’s with mitigation.” She insisted that the current measures would need to continue “with a level of intensity.”
During a confusing press briefing Tuesday evening, Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, presented the models to the American public. The president solemnly prepared the country for a “very tough two weeks” that could witness the death of 100,000 to 200,000 Americans. But neither Birx nor Fauci could convincingly explain the data supporting the ominous charts—while Birx seemed married to the ultimate death toll, Fauci tap-danced around the study’s projections, wish-casting about better outcomes and riffing about how new information would improve the model’s efficacy.
So in a matter of weeks, relying on sketchy and incomplete data, government experts have pivoted from offering common-sense steps to fight a virus to declaring government-imposed house arrest. “Flattening the curve” is old news; preventing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans requires tyrannical diktats that a month ago freedom-loving Americans could scarcely imagine.
COVID-19 wasn’t transmitted person-to-person before it was transmitted person-to-person. Masks weren’t necessary; now, they might be part of a required uniform should anyone dare to leave the house. It’s like a bad flu; now it’s way worse than the flu.
Governors are one-upping each other in an egregious power play that defies science, common sense, and decency in a despicable trampling of constitutional rights. The appeal to authority, a common tactic to quash any dissent in the climate change debate, is in full effect as laypeople are warned not to question the advice of credentialed medical and health professionals.
The consequences of this collective overreach—and that’s putting it mildly—have been mind-boggling. The world’s most vibrant economy is at a standstill. Millions of hourly employees are being laid off or let go as unemployment claims skyrocket to historic levels with the worst yet to come. Small business owners fear bankruptcy. The stock market is tanking while politicians on both sides of the aisle, along with the president, concoct bailout plans to fix the economic disaster they helped create.
School children and college students are done with public classes for at least five months. Job offers to college graduates have disappeared. Weddings, graduation ceremonies, and funerals are prohibited. Places of worship are shuttered; religious leaders who defy a government guideline—not a law on the books—to serve their flock are being arrested. Daily joys like a stroll on the beach or dinner at a restaurant or a game of pickup basketball or a round of golf have been stripped from our lives with shockingly little protest. And an army of Karens are policing public spaces to tattle on Facebook if anyone refuses to submit.
Sick people suffer alone; seniors are cut off from family and friends. Lonely children are further isolated as schools close down and their teachers and friends are out of reach. Panic and fear are weaponized to dictate individual behavior.
Echoes of Climate Alarmism
It all has an eerie ring to those of us who’ve covered the climate movement. (Barack Obama connected climate and coronavirus in a tweet on Tuesday: “We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic. We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial.”)
And just as happened with the climate change agenda, farfetched models with incomplete, untested data drive public policy decisions. Anyone who disputes the experts or challenges the assumptions must hate the environment or the children or the future. (In the case of COVID-19, you must hate grandma.) Anyone who laments the destruction of the economy is a heartless, greedy money-grubber. “Profits over people!” the detractors are taunted. The goalposts keep moving, doomsday is extended, but harsher and harsher actions are nonetheless demanded from above.
So, what if, as Trump accurately said just a week ago, the cure is worse than the disease? What if Murray’s models are woefully off by a factor of five or even 10 but it’s too late to salvage jobs or small businesses? His data is already way off: As of March 31, Murray predicted the U.S. would need 98,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients but only 22,000 were hospitalized that day.
Will the White House, much like Glacier National Park, just change the message while the agitators escape any accountability?
The president is trying to do the right thing but this is a breaking point. If Trump ruins the economy and torches his solid economic achievements based on a handful of flawed models and the evolving opinions of unsure advisors, it will be hard to walk it back. If these figures don’t move to support Murray’s modeling—and fast—Trump needs to reconsider his plan.
There’s still time to find a balance between public health and the economy: Trump must find it before April 30.
Select comments appended to AG article:
AntiPoliticallyCorrect longplay
I agree, That’s why i can’t help but feel like something else is going on here. If he listens to the experts and they are wrong, he loses. If they are right, he loses all his gains. If he goes with his gut, and is wrong, people die. If he’s right, people live and economy is on track. I wouldn’t want to be in that situation. But it seems very scripted.
Jason P
With a gestation period of under two weeks, Italy tried a two-week lockdown, then we tried a two-week lockdown. This was supposed to show who had or didn’t have covid-19 in lieu of mass testing. Subsequently we’d know who needs help and who is in the clear. Both countries tried this and it didn’t help us. Now we’re told we have to do this another month and perhaps a year until a vaccine is found. For what? There’s no stopping this virus. We’ll still have the 200,000 deaths even with mitigation.
The common sense solution is to isolate seniors and those caring for seniors while the young and healthy get back to work. They healthy will develop a herd immunity and by the summer we all can come back out. If we continue the lockdown I predict massive unrest. This won’t work.
Jack Armstrong
Unlike the climate predictions, this one will be proved wrong in very short order. I suspect that Trump and team know that the model is off, and Trump is just playing the game. He will look like a brilliant leader when the death toll ends up being a fraction of the prediction.
Phil James Jack Armstrong
Unfortunately, if he plays the game until April 30th, our economy will be destroyed. We have already done significant damage, another month will be devastating. Trump started off strong but now he is letting the doomsayers steer the ship. The model they talked about in the briefing today is already wildly wrong but we are full steam ahead on lockdowns.
Garrett W. Sheldon
Thank you for this intelligent, sane analysis, which I think most Americans feel at the gut level. This is an overreaction (not to say overkill) which is based on problematical statistical modelling, fear, and political manipulation. I hope with the rapid development of diagnostic tests and medicinal cures (both of which are found, only need to be mass produced and delivered) this hysteria will be over sooner than later and we will learn the valuable lesson of how easily people can give up their rights and martial law can be established. Fortunately, we still have enough common sense and free speech that this should be averted. For now. But with google’s new censorship scheme and the Deep State’s unending efforts for survival, this may just be a dry run. Pray for God’s mercy and protection over our country.
basehitz
“If these figures don’t move to support Murray’s modeling—and fast—Trump needs to reconsider his plan.”
Have you not noticed Trump’s ability to out-fox the foxes yet? My key takeaways of the big picture:
1) Trump has aggressively pushed the cheap and effective drugs, which have now been proven in multiple countries in documented cases, and is finally being accepted by our medical “professionals” though reluctantly. FDA wanted a year or more to approve. Trump got it already. When Cuomo’s tests and others finally make news, it will be a new ballgame. Trump even used this phrase. He knows what’s going on.
2) The medical establishment is aggressively pushing a new vaccine, which when offered to a panicked world, they will make a fortune in profits. They need to keep the panic alive. They also need to suppress the cheap solutions. Fauci’s history demonstrates he is part of the medical establishment and serves the interests of Big Pharma.
3) The fake news media is willing to destroy the country economically and/or kill millions of people just to hurt Trump. So they will also fuel the panic. BTW, Big Pharma spends $5/yr in advertising. Media will hide the real solutions on cheap drugs in service to their benefactors. And they also bash the cheap drugs . . . probably just because Trump supports it.
4) Based on current actions being taken, item #1 will win, because #2 takes too long.
5) Fake news media will have further decimated it’s already destroyed reputation for both hyping the virus and bashing the remedy.
6) Trump will take all the poker chips again.
linda goudsmit
The only think this article missed is that the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), founded by Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, is committed to globalism and the the UN 17 sustainable goals. This is political science, not medical science.
http://www.healthdata.org/n…
IHME – Publication date: November 25, 2019
“SEATTLE – The lack of data, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, combined with the absence of international standards for data management, is hindering efforts in measuring progress toward meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) according to a viewpoint published in the international medical journal The Lancet.
“We cannot make progress without being able to measure progress,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). “Strong health data is essential for highlighting who is being left behind, and why. Together, WHO and IHME and other partners are working to strengthen country data systems for better decision-making, and better health.”
The viewpoint is a collaboration by global health experts from several countries and organizations, including WHO and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.”
Tony_Petroski
Ms. Kelly states that “There’s still time to find a balance between public health and the economy.”
I recommend she read the March 28, 2020 article written by Roger Kimball, “It’s Not a Choice Between Lives and the Economy.”
There’s no “balance” to be struck here. Lives will be lost no matter what course is chosen. Is the current nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of a virus wise policy given that it is leading the nation into a second Great Depression? Perhaps. Should the lockdown continue until the end of April? Indefinitely?
And what to do about the scary flu viruses coming at us in the Fall?
This criminal and illegal shut-down of the nation has to end immediately.
Forwarded by HP: Of note – people who received flu vaccines more likely to be diagnosed with COVID19. – (self-select factor perhaps??)
