By Mel Carriere
Allright, time to dust off this old blog, which has had a long hiatus, but needs to be resuscitated. There are things that have to be said but just can't be covered within the restrictive confines of my postal blogs. Universal truths, in other words, that apply to everyone, essential or non-essential. So we're checking the detonators and verifying the cordite content of the old Truth Bomb, and getting ready to lob one.
Of course the topic that revived this blog off of its life support ventilator had to be the Coronavirus pandemic. What other subject is loud enough to wake the dead? Specifically, it was some observations from The American Institute of Economic Research that made me pull this blog out of cold storage. The AIER recently disseminated an article about the Hong Kong flu epidemic during the dog days of 1968, the sequel to the summer of love, that might seem credible for those understandably frustrated by months of house arrest, but doesn't hold up to closer scrutiny.
The article proudly declares that the Hong Kong flu of that year killed 100,000 people in the US without anybody doing anything about it, holding up this lack of response as an object of emulation. The disease was allowed to merrily run its course, unimpeded by government interference. No masks, no sheltering in place, no shuttered bars and dining establishments. We even went ahead and held the Woodstock music festival during the height of the infection! Fancy that - 200,000 people defying social distancing, wallowing together in the August mud.
This Woodstock example is exhibited as proof of why we should do nothing now, during the current pandemic. Let nature run its course, it's only weeding out the old and the "pre-existing" conditions anyway. Phooey on them. If you can't keep up with the tribe, you're expendable. The author didn't explicitly say that, by the way, I am just describing a popular pandemic mindset, one that allows such conjecture to go viral on Facebook feeds.
But what the author winds up doing in this piece is contradicting the article's assertions with its own statistics. It hangs itself using its own noose. Think about it - By admission of this journalist, the Hong Kong flu was responsible for 100,000 deaths. In disturbing contrast, the Coronavirus death tally the day I wrote this was up to 92,000.
Of course, some pundits argue that most of these people were on death's door anyway, and the real number of Covid-19 deaths is only somewhere around 6. Assuming,
however, that we really do have 92,000 Covid-19 deaths, not 6, we're still only 8,000 deaths shy of the 1968 pandemic, 8,000 sandwiches short of a picnic spread out at that Woodstock peace and love festival, served up in blissful ignorance of the culling of the herd taking place all around, the old and feeble dropping like flies while up on stage Jimmy plays an electrified star-spangled banner, the distorted soundtrack of acceptable Darwinism.
In other words - in spite of masks, excessively washing and sanitizing the skin right off our tainted digits, social distancing, sheltering in place, ghost town shopping malls, no sports, no movies, no parties, certainly no music festivals, we're still at 92,000 deaths, and will definitely overtake the 100,000 tabulated by the Hong Kong flu before this is over with. By the time I push the "Publish" button here, in fact, when I bear down on that old Truth Bomb plunger, we will have probably already caught up to, or beaten 1968.
Therefore, instead of making the point that Covid-19 is all been there done that chill out, the article indicates just how completely contagious and deadly the Coronavirus is, and why it is way too early to stop taking preventive measures against it.
I understand the economic damage is devastating for those who have been laid off and cannot get a billionaire bailout, those who will go broke before the unemployment office finally mails that check. And although it won't solve anybody's problems, in fact it serves no purpose except I told you so, I feel compelled to add that if we had a president smart enough to listen to science over the sound of his over hyperactive vocal chords, we could have nailed this down early with minimal damage. We could have guillotined the virus' crowned head before it sprouted. If the administration had searched for solutions instead of scapegoats, we would really be over the top of the curve by now, instead of pretending we are.
Yet it's definitely too late to cry about it, and only hard options will keep this thing from going into a Chernobyl-esque meltdown. There is no easy way anymore to stop that 92,000 from multiplying exponentially, because it will be fruitful and multiply. That is what that evil left-leaning cabal of conspiratorial scientists has been saying since the batty bug first jumped from winged mammals to people, via some Wuhan China taco truck.
Hard options will not be easy to implement, because certain people are criticizing the government for getting too rough, for trampling on our freedoms. These are the same people, by the way, who said the government couldn't get rough enough after the 9-11 crisis, and were willing to waterboard and detain without trial and round up whistleblowers warning you the feds were tapping into your computer. All this in the name of preserving freedom, they said. But you try to get these same folks to wear a face mask in a supermarket and they yell out "Don't tread on me," then start gunning down security guards that are there to enforce the rules of private businesses.
I guess your Covid-19 reaction all depends on what flavor Kool-aid you prefer. Personally, I stay away from that cyanide-laced orange variety, the kind being peddled from the bully pulpit by the roaring mouth hydroxychloroquine salesman, the guy who has no plan, no clue really, and changes his mind every day. I am more trusting of the batch being stirred by the scientists, unflavored by politics, not watered down by flat earth conspiracy cooks, the not-so-strange brew that cautions us to stay home, to get this pandemic under control before it all explodes in an orange haze on that Wood-crock 2020 stage.
Photo by James M. Shelley via Wikimedia Commons
