The media has riled our people into a state of absolute panic over Covid-19.
In response, Western governments have instituted strict “social distancing” protocols to contain the infection. We are not allowed to work. We are not allowed to see our friends or family. We cannot worship—our greatest cathedrals and churches were empty this Easter. Simply going to the grocery store has become a harrowing task.
We have limited our freedoms of movement and religion—thereby ignoring the fundamental precepts of liberty enshrined in our Constitution—we have ruined our economy, impoverished millions all in the name of Covid-19. Was it worth it?
No.
The data is in. Covid-19 is just the flu. Social distancing must end. The economy must restart. Now is the time for Americans to demand the government to return the control of our economy, society, and nation to we, the people.
‘Lies, damned lies, and statistics.’
The media has whipped America into a neurotic frenzy over Covid-19, a frenzy bordering on hysteria—on madness. They tell us that 5.6 percent of Americans infected with the pathogen will die.
Not only that, we’re getting off easy: up to 13.7 percent of infected patients in the United Kingdom will perish. Globally, Covid-19 is expected to be worse than the Spanish Flu, which killed some 50 million people in the wake of the First World War.
This is nothing but a pack of lies. Numerous recent studies have found that Covid-19 is little more than a bad case of the flu. As such, there is no reason to shut down our entire civilization.
Iceland was the first Western nation to issue mass Covid-19 tests. As of March 25, 2020, they had tested 3.4 percent of their entire population. They found two things. First, the number of people infected with Covid-19 was far higher than originally estimated. Second, the majority of people infected with Covid-19 were asymptomatic—they didn’t even know they had it.
This is important because it means that our infection rate is far higher than we initially thought—if we only test people with symptoms, we necessarily exclude all of those without symptoms from the infection pool. This means that we are grossly overestimating Covid-19’s mortality rate.
Evidence from America shows the same thing: Covid-19 is not that deadly.
For example, mass testing from Los Angeles County suggest that 4.1 percent of the county’s population—approximately 442,000 people—have already been infected. This is an order of magnitude more than the number of previous “confirmed cases”, which stood at a paltry 13,816.
Why is this important? Because the mortality rate is calculated in reference to the number of infected people. The more infected people, the lower the mortality rate. If we calculate Covid-19’s mortality rate using these more recent—and more accurate—figures, we find that Covid-19’s mortality rate is. 0.15 percent.
In comparison, seasonal influenza’s mortality rate is between 0.1 and 0.2 percent. Covid-19 is just the flu.
If you’re still unconvinced, consider the new data from New York State: a random sample of 3,000 people indicates that some 14 percent of individuals had already been infected with Covid-19. In New York City—the pandemic’s epicenter—21 percent of the people had already been infected.
Again, because this dramatically increases the size of the infected population, it correspondingly decreases Covid-19’s mortality rate. Plugging the number of fatalities from Covid-19 into the new infected population (which I estimate at 2,700,000 people) reveals that Covid-19’s mortality rate in New York is 0.59 percent. This is higher than the seasonal flu—but not by much.
Finally, we need to be aware that the way in which the government counts Covid-19 fatalities differs from place to place. For example, the main reason that Italy’s death toll is so high is because patients who died while infected were presumed to have died from the infection. This is not the same thing. Italy’s health minister now claims that the nation’s Covid-19 death toll is overestimated by 88 percent.
This also explains the difference in France and Germany’s mortality rates. In France, Covid-19 has allegedly killed 14 percent of people it infects. Meanwhile, it has only killed 3.7 percent of Germans. This makes no sense given that both nations have similar demographic, economic, and technological profiles—the difference can only be explained in the way that Covid-19 deaths are being tracked.
But what of the anecdotal evidence of hospitals being flooded with Covid-19 patients? What of the mass graves? If Covid-19 is just like the flu, then why is the healthcare system collapsing? One word: efficiency.
Take for example a hospital that admits an average of 1,000 people every day. This varies over the course of the year. In summer 900 people are admitted daily. In winter, 1,100 are admitted. In order to avoid maintaining extra overhead the hospital administrators equip the hospital to deal with 1,100 daily admissions.
Now imagine that a “second flu” hits and suddenly 1,200 people are admitted to the hospital daily. What happens? One hundred people are without beds. One hundred people are without medicine. One hundred people are without healthcare.
Because the healthcare system priorities efficiency over robustness, even a small increase in hospitalizations can bring the system to its knees. In fact, the healthcare system is brought to its knees every few years. Remember that in 2018 both Time and the Associated Press ran headline pieces lamenting that hospitals were overflowing with influenza patients.
Covid-19 is just the flu.
‘A horse, a horse! My Kingdom for a horse!’
America has shut down its economy for fear of Covid-19. More than 26 million Americans have lost their jobs—and this does not include all of those people who have not been laid off, but who are simply not receiving hours (these untold millions are rotting in limbo). Millions more have kept their jobs but are now working part time.
It’s going to get worse.
The Federal Reserve estimates that up to 47 million Americans could lose their jobs—one-third of the entire labor force. Add this to the already sky-high U6 unemployment rate of ~8 percent and we are looking at unemployment rates that will dwarf those of both the Great Recession and the Great Depression.
We are now experiencing the worst labor market in American history. If we’re not careful, we will also experience the greatest economic collapse in American history.
And unlike America’s experience during the Great Depression, our people will not be able to return to their family farms to eke out a subsistence living. We will be quarantined in our bourgeois apartment complexes—penned in like animals.
Mass unemployment will be catastrophic for our society. Consider that some 78 percent of workers live paycheck to paycheck, while 30 percent of adults have no savings whatsoever. One in three Americans will not be able to support themselves or their children in the coming months.
Strapped for cash and without hope, tens of millions will look to the government for help. Many will receive welfare—and on welfare they will stay. Uncle Sam is a dealer and the dole is his drug. Welfare is addictive. This is why the rustbelt votes democrat to this day, and it is why we are still living with the repercussions of Roosevelt’s New Deal almost 90 years later.
Those that do not qualify for the dole will be forced to borrow ever-greater sums to cover their expenses. Millions will become wage-slaves, working their years, decades, and lifetimes way to pay back the banks.
Quarantines will massacre small businesses. Why? Your local bakery, restaurant, and mom-and-pop shop simply lack the savings to weather a prolonged storm. Meanwhile, big chains and online stores will slink onwards, scathed but not slain. This is the start of another round of economic consolidation—the nail in the coffin for America’s pillaged middle class.
Of course, economics is a means to an end—not the end itself. We cannot ignore the social implications of the quarantine. Job losses, financial stress, and social distancing are breaking apart marriages—China has already seen a massive surge of divorces. America will follow suit.
I am a divorce lawyer. I tell you now that divorce hurts children—even when the parents do everything ‘right’. The facts make this quite clear.
Children of divorce have significantly higher crime rates, they achieve less academically, they suffer from a plethora of emotional, psychological, and physical health problems that last well into adulthood. Additionally, more broken families means lower birth rates, permanently decreased economic growth, and degraded social cohesion.
The sudden surge in anxiety, fear, poverty—hopelessness—will push many to commit suicide. Every year 50,000 Americans kill themselves. Most of these are white men. Men with broken families. Men who are out of work. Who lack a sense of purpose.
Covid-19 will exacerbate this. Indeed, suicides have already increased by 150 percent in Great Britain. If the quarantine continues more people will take their own lives than will Covid-19.
Lastly, deindustrialization has already cost America up to 15 million jobs, and pushed millions of our unemployed brothers into the outstretched arms of addition. Substance abuse. The opioid crisis is the unholy child of economic globalization—of asymmetrical trade with Mexico and China. Last year nearly 70,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. Some 70 percent died of opioids.
I ask you: how many millions will succumb to drugs and alcohol when 50 million Americans lose their jobs? When hundreds of thousands lose their small businesses—their life’s work, their family legacies? How many will overdose? How many will die?
We are prepared to do what it takes to stop Covid-19. To stop the flu. But are we prepared—can we be prepared—for the fallout?
Our economy, our society, is on the breaking point. People’s lives are balanced on the knife’s edge. An economic shutdown of this magnitude could plunge America into a depression from which it may not recover.
All this for the flu.