Quote:
Originally Posted by Major
Yes, unfortunately, there are alarmists. It wasn't that long ago that we made the decision to quarantine and shelter in place based on "models" showing two to three million Americans dying from the Chinese coronavirus. Essentially, we've experienced a bad flu season. (I question the death numbers we are seeing. I think they're inflated. They include deaths from hospice facilities, for example. There appears to be no discrimination between the flu or the Chinese coronavirus. Nearly every death with an associated sickness is being attributed to Chinese coronavirus, without the benefit of autopsies.)
Anyway, the models were completely wrong. The alarmists and the media are complicit in ginning up this so-called crisis.
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Seems that we need to find a balance. Many of the strident posters on this board seem to feel that we should have completely disregarded the medical consensus that we needed to change the trajectory of this thing, or they think we should be on complete lockdown until a vaccine is in place. Or maybe that’s just the noise on here and there are a whole lot of folks that want to find a reasonable middle ground. But I digress.
With all due respect my main point is I simply don’t get the flu argument that you make. The data I have seen indicates one of the worst flu seasons in recent memory was when up to 60,000 people died here in the U.S. We have seen close to that number of deaths already and obviously many more to come, and all that is despite the incredibly draconian and strict measures that were implemented all over the world. In my humble opinion it is logical to assume the number of deaths would be far, far greater than the worst flu season had no measures at all been put in place. But even with the extreme measures in place we have failed. The U.S. population is but a few percent of the world but we have more than 25 percent of the deaths. We sadly missed the opportunity early on to rein this in.
I agree though that our county needs a healthy debate on how to address the pandemic in the most reasonable way possible. I think the U.S. is having that debate now but our politics are so poisoned, people so polarized, and our faith in our political leadership so lacking that it’s an ugly, unhealthy, hate filled debate. Too bad the centrists are gone. They’ve been eviscerated from the public arena to the detriment of our country and its future.