COVID 19 Surpasses Flu as Killer
Daily Death Count Surpasses That of 2019–20 Strains of Flu
Daily Death Toll Surpasses 1,000 — OPINION
I’ve often heard the “excuse” that the two strains of flu of the 2019–2020 season have killed tens of thousands of Americans and we weren’t locked down for that. Well, fatalities during the flu season according to the CDC, were an estimated 23,000 and 59,000 from 1OCT19 through 14MAR20). That means the flu killed, on average, 138 people a day (low end) and 369 people a day (high end).
Let us remember that there were anti-viral drugs to treat the flu (and many millions of people like myself were vaccinated for flu), whereas no matter what the President says, there is no treatment for COVID 19.
Yesterday, more than 1,000 people died in the U.S. from the complications of COVID 19. It’s already proven itself to be more virulent than the “Chinese flu” as President Trump called it, until pressure from the Chinese government finally got him to flip flop and ashcan the ridiculous phrase.
The people who warned the public of the true threat of COVID 19, people like National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, MD, were right all along. This is the physician, a member of the White House Coronavius Task Force, who has battled AIDS, SARS, Ebola and the Zika virus. An expert. A General George Patton of public health.
Let me repeat: DR FAUCI WAS RIGHT!
For being right, the parasites such as those at Fox News and other drummers for Dr. Trump’s Medicine Show have attacked him. Dr. Fauci’s security has been increased due to death threats.
It Can Happen Here
How discouraging that Dr. Fauci is being pilloried by the MAGA reactionaries, who behave like Stalinists, ready to take on any enemies of their Idol in any capacity. Their behavior in kind, and possibly degree, is akin to the American Stalinists of the 1930s through 50s.
American Stalinists attacked liberal Democrats and President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s for being soft on Hitler when Stalin was anti-Hitler, then had a Damascene conversion and became pro-Hitler in August 1939 after the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact was signed by the foreign ministers of the two greatest mass murderers of their times. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact brought on World War Two, as Hitler attacked Poland from its Western border, and a fortnight later, the USSR attacked it from the East.
American Stalinists turned violently anti-Hitler again in June 1941, after the German invasion of the USSR. They threw themselves into the defense of the Soviet Union, which was entangled in the struggle-to-the-death that Stalin called “The Great Patriotic War.”
In June 1941, the American Stalinists (those who hadn’t quit Communist Party USA after the 1939 Pact and new recruits) flipped from vilifying FDR as a capitalist stooge and warmonger to public expressions of the greatest warmth and tenderness for Roosevelt, as he was transformed into their beloved Uncle Joe’s newest and greatest benefactor. If they were still in the Party after the War, the remaining stalwart Stalinists then turned against President Harry Truman and New Deal/Fair Deal Democrats (who created the modern middle class after WW2) when Uncle Joe — like Dr. Pavlov and his dogs — rang the bell….
As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — An extremist is an extremist is an extremist.
And I guess it can happen here.
COVID 19 is Deadly
This isn’t the flu (Chinese or otherwise). It is COVID 19, a type of coronavirus. And the reason that we are seeing THE WORLD take precautions not seen in most of the world in 100 years, is because it is deadly.
If COVID 19 were to mutate again, it could become even more deadly. It’s only mutated once, to my understanding, which is unusual for a virus, as is it’s long incubation period of 14 to 21 days. Some strains of the flu, after infecting a human host, can cause a full blown case within three hours. That lag time offered created an illusion for the naysayers, such as President Trump until his most recent conversion to the COVID is BAD School of Public Health. It was a license for them to act irresponsibly.
I also understand that there is a risk that COVID 19 may go rogue and create a hybrid with bacteria, something that so far, has only been created in a laboratory. Because of its primitive structure, which I understand is more basic than that of a normal virus — viruses being non-living entities, packages that deliver RNA to a host so that the RNA can be replicated — there is a possibility, however remote, that it could create a hybrid with a living life form, which bacteria is. The consequences could be an apocalyptic plague.
(As viruses and bacteria occupy the same niche, viruses can be seen as offering “help” to bacteria; many cases of flu — a viral infection — can lead to bacterial infections, by weakening the host. The viral infection has already triggered the immune response, which then facing a bacterial infection can go into overdrive, causing sepsis and multiple organ failure. It is speculated that the viral infection can render the receptors in a human cell that identify a foreign body and trigger the immune system to destroy it, oversensitive.)
A Fool and His Knowledge
Listen. I’m fairly well-educated and worked in the production of communications (including books, articles, etc. and worked on the military equivalent of a newswire), but my education and education and experience is mostly in humanities/social studies/legal systems. All I mean to say is that this is a really serious problem. I’m smart enough to recognize that. And I think most people recognize the problem too.
When I was sued by an ex-mayor for libel + defamation for asking the Manchester Board of Aldermen to investigate something everybody in this city knew was true (a case thrown out with the judge who essentially called the ex-mayor a liar), I went into court with the best 1st Amendment attorney in New Hampshire. He was pro-bono, and has my thanks. I didn’t go in there representing myself (“An attorney who represents himself has a fool for a client,” is an old legal adage.)
Yet, concerning this is a life and death situation for perhaps as x,xxx,xxx people ( which is the high end of the death toll predicted by an interactive New York Times article of a fortnight ago. I won’t publish the top figure as to the potential death toll as hopefully, it is out-of-date) too many fools are jamming the jury box in the court of public opinion, in my own opinion. (I hope I’m not one of them.)
When dealing with this disaster, I don’t need the opinions of people who, frankly, are incapable of reason, let alone lack degrees in virology, let alone chemistry or advances mathematics.
When I had to have surgery, I didn’t ask a journalist or a politician to operate on me. And when I got a diagnosis for surgery, I didn’t rant and rave at the physician and attack her in a social media fueled shaming. I got surgery.
Furthermore:
In my opinion, people — politicians, professors, professional talking heads, etc . — who continue to indulge in psychological fugues due to their ideology, be it “progressive,” conservative or libertarian, are fools. We’ve seen the typical vicious caterwauling of the same demagogues, and it won’t save one life.
A note of caution to those of you who are in the iron-gloved grip of a death wish that philosophers like Herbert Marcuse identified as the genesis of mid-20th Century German fascism — Kindly do your self-destruction outside of the body politic. (And for me, whose life has entailed studying politics, the spectrum of politics is a circle, not a line, with the ultra-left folding back into the ultra-right: Hitler and Stalin are synonymous).
The Bicoastal Libertarian
An article from the Los Angeles Times illustrates how one political ideology, libertarianism, might be responsible for the White House’s response being so EXPLETIVE DELETED up. “Trump’s inexcusable coronavirus failures may stem from an inexcusable source” reveals that New York University Law School Professor Richard Epstein, whose political ideology generally is classified as “libertarian,” is influential in Trump’s White House.
Apparently, the weight of libertarian free market advocates is one of the reasons President Trump has refused to use his emergency powers to compel businesses to make sorely needed medical supplies.
Professor Epstein, who also is a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is a COVID 19 skeptic. Epstein’s blog Coronavirus Perspective, which is hosted on the Hoover Institution’s website, is popular amongst Trump staffers.
A reading of Epstein’s posts leads me to classify him as a “COVID-19 Cynic.” His last blog post, which was March 16th, states, “…I believe that the current dire models radically overestimate the ultimate death toll.”
After being called out for being wrong many times in the recent past, apparently, Professor Epstein has decided to shut up. However, the damage this cynic has done, in terms of human lives, due to his “Pull” in the White House, in incalculable. For all of our sakes, I hope it is minimal.
The best thing for Professor Epstein is advice President Trump has often given to critics with whom he disagrees with: SHUT UP!
