DDP Newsletter, Vol XXXVII, No. 1
The SARS-CoV-2 virus has certainly been associated with mass destruction of human lives and livelihoods—without directly killing more than other viruses that have not shut down economies and forced people into house arrest. The “emergency” goes on and on. Who can make plans for the future of a business if it could be shut down by a report of a couple cases within the company’s ZIP code? A semblance of “normalcy” will possibly return IF everyone gets the needle in the arm—at least for people with the “Green Pass.”
Daily reports of COVID deaths lack all perspective. As David Stockman pointed out in August 2020, “we are in the midst of a full on public hysteria that has empowered that statist proclivities of present-day American politicians…to erupt in a brutal attack on the economy, personal liberty and the very notion of government via constitutional due process.” He challenges the “underlying predicate…that the Covid presents a Black Plague level threat to life and limb, …an alleged once-in-a-hundred-years existential threat.”
In fact, he notes that COVID is a serious health threat to 5% of the population and a “flu-like nuisance” to the rest. The risk of death WITH (not necessarily OF) COVID is 10,000 times higher (700.5/100,000) in the Great-Grandparents Nation (age 85+) than in the School-Age Nation (0.07/100,000). In the Socializing Nation (age 15-24), the risk of dying in an auto accident is 30 times greater than the 0.52/100,000 risk of dying with COVID. In the Core Working-Age Nation (age 25-54), the risk of death by poisoning is four times higher than the 9.6/100,000 COVID risk (https://tinyurl.com/cecd7x2p).
[A rate of less than 1 in 10,000 (10 in 100,000) was stated to be “rare” or “extremely rare” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at a June 23, 2021, emergency meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) held to discuss an elevated risk of myocarditis after receiving an mRNA jab.]
Stockman also notes that the infection rates do not vary much by age, and are somewhat less in the elderly because they circulate less intensively in society.
Instead of protecting the vulnerable 5%, societies are adopting “medical prohibitionism” with devastating collateral damage. Stockman states that this inevitably leads to totalitarianism, quoting C.J. Hopkins: “In the New Normal society they want to establish, as in every totalitarian society, fear and conformity will be pervasive…. Paranoid propaganda and ideological conditioning will be ubiquitous and constant…. Anyone who fails [to follow the rules] will be deemed ‘a threat to public health,’ and beaten and arrested by the police or the military, or swarmed by mobs of New Normal vigilantes” (ibid.).
U.S. economic and social life was hammered and the Constitution shredded for a tiny blip in the age-adjusted all-cause mortality rate, from 7/1,000 to 8/1,000 in 2020. The latter was no higher than taken as standard as recently as 2004-2006, and is half as high as in 1957 (https://tinyurl.com/2rwakwcu).
Stockman highlights some bewildering international statistics: As of December 2020, China had reported 60 cases/million population, and New York State 38,660/million. Test positivity rate was 0.038% in China, and 3.62% in New York. Was China’s draconian Wuhan lockdown, which lasted 44 days, 650 times more effective than Gov. Cuomo’s, which devastated New York City and still hasn’t ended? What explains the situation with not-locked-down Taiwan, with a COVID death rate of 0.3/million vs. New York State’s 1,804/million? And Hong Kong, with a test positivity rate 41 times lower and a COVID mortality rate (15/million) 120 times lower than New York’s?
China’s number fudging can’t account for these vast differences. Stockman suggests that Chinese may have fewer comorbidities than obese, sedentary New Yorkers (https://tinyurl.com/r62f7phy). Other possibilities that he does not mention could be use of early treatment or protective elements in the diet. Or genetic susceptibilities in persons of European or African (non-Chinese) ancestry. A genetically engineered virus or vaccine conceivably could be used for ethnic cleansing.
The Lockdown Nation policies depend on the Gates-funded Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation (IHME), which generates massive data sets and intricate disease models designed to enable politicians and officialdom to intervene in the health sector aggressively, sweepingly, and intrusively. “Call it big data enabled socialism on a grand scale,” writes Stockman (https://tinyurl.com/t75zrjx4).
[If you are unable to retrieve some of the articles cited here, consider subscribing to David Stockman’s Contra Corner.]
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
“The worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made,” writes Dennis Prager. “The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem ‘essential’ has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression…. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe” (https://tinyurl.com/zn9cezp8).
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), he notes, predicted that 260 million people, twice as many as in 2019, would face starvation by the end of 2020.
Starvation hasn’t threatened Americans—yet—but millions have been made destitute. Government-sourced income such as unemployment benefits and other transfer payments have surged, so that 27% of all household income comes from the government, compared with 7% in the 1950s and 1960s.
The middle class pays. “The dollar debasement…and the insane debt accumulation…mean that millions of Americans content to work 9-5, pay their taxes, and generally keep their mouth shut as others are burning everything down and tearing down statues, are now doomed,” writes Tyler Durden. “With just a 50% share of the population in middle-income households, the U.S. is now in the same category as…Turkey, China and… Russia (https://tinyurl.com/334nsjtx).
In October 2020, David Cutler and Lawrence Summers of Harvard called SARS-CoV-2 the $16 trillion virus because of lost output and health reduction (tinyurl.com/jezmjd87).
Just considering federal spending, in March 2021 the U.S. committed to spend another $1.9 trillion, boosting total taxpayer pandemic spending to more than $6 trillion, or “half again what it cost to liberate the world from fascism,” writes Craig Rucker. Much of the funding goes to a left-wing wish list (https://tinyurl.com/dkamjmbk).
And how would we describe the system of “lockdown forever” under intrusive government control? “The Beltway Nomenklatura has now added public health totalitarianism to its bag of missions and ministrations, writes David Stockman, while during just one day of spending, the U.S. Treasury’s checkbook balance dropped by more than $271 billion, the entire public debt in the Eisenhower years (tinyurl.com/26sp42by).
Can the damage ever be repaired?