Enter the Fools
We live in interesting times. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists will be studying 2020 for decades to come.
How we have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic will become the subject of many scholarly works, as people looking from the safe viewpoint of hindsight castigate the errors and decisions being made throughout this crisis. Conspiracy theories will abound.
All this has already started, with pundits and politicians pointing fingers and trying to blame the president for not doing what he’s done and for not doing what he did soon enough. Much of this is nothing more than the ongoing attempts by the left to make the president look bad, but there’s an element of it that goes beyond that. I sincerely believe that if we had a Democrat for president, the Republicans would be doing the same thing.
Hindsight is still 20/20, or perhaps I should say it’s 2020, for this is clearly the year of hindsight. Countless people, on both sides of the political aisle, are looking back and twisting the timing of actual events and their effect, to meet their particular vision of what has happened. It doesn’t matter if they forget that the nationwide lockdown was ordered to flatten the curve because they are saying that it was unnecessary or because they think we should stay shut down until there is a vaccine. Either way, they’re ignoring what actually happened.
One story that will need to be told is the
story of the wise and the foolish. The Bible actually has a couple of stories
like that. One is of the ten virgins, five of whom were foolish and five of
whom were wise. The other is of two men, a wise one who built his house on the
rock, while the foolish man built his on the sand. There may be others as well,
as the Good Book seems to like contrasting the foolish and the wise.
But this story is the 2020 story of the
foolish and the wise. I’m not sure how folklore will portray it, but I see it
unfolding before my eyes.
The story has several chapters, but the one
we’re seeing today is perhaps the saddest. It’s the one in which the foolish
truly prove who they are. For you see, it’s the chapter where they take opening
up businesses to mean that they can do anything they want… and doing so costs
them.
I haven’t followed how the reopening of America has happened in every state; I just don’t have enough time to track all that. But I have seen at least some, especially in Texas. Realizing that the parallel can only be taken so far, I see that example of being indicative of what’s happening nationwide. It’s perhaps significant because Texas is one of the first states to be opening its doors.
Friday, May the 1st marked the beginning of the opening of Texas. As midnight rolled over from April to May, Governor Greg Abbot’s stay at home order came to an end, allowing small businesses and restaurants to open. Open with restrictions, but open nevertheless. The people rejoiced, going out to eat, picking up their lattes, and frequenting their favorite local businesses. But few of those people were wise; few bothered to wear a mask.
It seems that many people have looked to
the “opening of America” to mean that everything was okay and that we could get
back to life as normal. But countless doctors, who are experts in dealing with
disease, have come forth, stating that COVID-19 is going to be with us for a
while; anywhere from 18 months to 2 years.
Clearly these people haven’t heard those voices… or perhaps they didn’t want to. My guess is that they were the same ones who were ignoring the advice to maintain social distancing, wash their hands, and wear masks all along. Perhaps there have been some additions of people who have been staying at home as much as possible, but I doubt that.
Here’s the thing, these COVIDiots are making things worse for all of us. They’re not only the ones who are going to get infected themselves but will end up infecting others. Because they won’t wear masks, once they are infected, there’s nothing to stop others from getting COVID-19 from them.
Statistically, who has the mask on is of utmost importance. If we take one infected person and one who is healthy, here’s what masks do:
I know there are lots of people out there
who don’t like wearing masks. I get it. I’m not real fond of them myself. But I
like the idea of my family getting sick and some of them dying even less. If
wearing a mask is the price I have to pay, in order to protect others, then
that’s a price I’m perfectly willing to pay. Unfortunately, not everyone sees
it that way.
So what do the numbers say about opening up America, or at least Texas? On May 6th, there were 14 new cases of COVID-19 in just one county and 10 new cases May 7th. Before that, the highest number of new cases in one day was 9, when they first got the testing program off the ground and besides that, there were a couple of days where it was 5. That’s quite a difference.
To put that in perspective, the incubation
period for COVID-19 is 2 to 14 days (a few have gone as long as 28 days), with
an average of 5 days. I doubt it is a coincidence that there was a jump in
cases exactly five days after businesses started opening their doors.
The thing is, if all those COVIDiots out
there would just put a mask on and join the wise, those numbers probably
wouldn’t have happened.
Hey, I get it; this is America, the land of
the free and the home of the brave. So people have a Constitutional right to do
what they want, as long as it’s not against the law. I believe in those rights,
even there are plenty of people who take that as permission to be fools (and
I’m not just talking about not wearing masks); but what about our
responsibility to our fellow man? Doesn’t that play in here somewhere?
There are a lot of people, including some
medical doctors, talking about herd immunity these days. I get it. The idea is
that enough people develop an immunity to the disease, that it can’t spread.
This is what has happened in the past with other pandemics. Some people died,
while others lived; and those who lived developed an immunity to the disease
(especially with viral diseases), preventing them from catching it again and
infecting others.
Evolutionary theory has a name for this,
it’s called: “natural selection.” The strong, by whatever sense of the word,
get to survive, while the weak die out. This supposedly makes a species
stronger. So are we just interfering with nature by trying to curb this
disease?
To start with, there are 328 million people
in the United States. To reach herd immunity, 60 to 70 percent of them have to
get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19; that’s a minimum of
196.8 million people (at 60%). Of those, how many people will die?
We actually don’t know that number. But for
argument’s sake, let’s go with the figure that people who are anti-lockdown are
saying. That is that there’s a 98% chance people will survive. So, 2 percent of
the 60% of people who have to get infected works out to 3,936,000 people.
Almost 4 million people in the United States, or 936 million worldwide, will
have to die, in order to reach herd immunity (world population is 7.8 billion).
Am I the only one that’s done this math?
I don’t know about you, but I’m not
prepared to let that many people die, just so I’m not inconvenienced. Don’t get
me wrong; I’m not saying we shouldn’t open up. What I am saying though, is that
we should use wisdom in how we open up.
You see, the wise take everything into consideration,
before taking action. Then they do what’s best for everyone, not just
themselves. So I have to wonder about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of those who
are running around without masks on and not practice social distancing.
On the other hand, there are doctors who are camped out in tents that they’ve set up in their garages so that they don’t inadvertently give COVID-19 to their kids. Considering that they know more than we do about the disease, I have a hard time believing those who are calling this all a conspiracy theory or saying that the government has been lying to us all along. Maybe there are things the government is lying to us about, but I don’t think the fact that we’re dealing with a dangerous disease is one of them.
From everything I’ve seen, and I’ve been
studying this disease’s progression, devouring every bit of information I can
find out about it for almost three months, if we would all just apply a few
simple measures, we could all go back to living our lives more or less
normally, without a whole lot of danger. Yes, those measures are an
inconvenience; but being without a paycheck or spending a month in the hospital
is a whole lot more inconvenience.
Are those measures a perfect solution? No, I’m sure they’re not. But I know this; my wife and I have been practicing social distancing, decontaminating things before we bring them in the house, using hand sanitizer whenever we come into contact with anything outside our home and wearing masks every time we go anywhere. We’re both considered “at-risk” in a number of different ways and yet we haven’t gotten sick yet. Maybe, just maybe, that’s because we’re doing the right things.
I know this, I’m doing the best I can to avoid catching the disease and keeping from spreading it on to others. My wife, who has just gone back to her office after having spent the last six weeks working from home, is doing the same. While we know there are no guarantees in this life, we are using the best wisdom we can; not out of fear, but out of a reasonable sense of caution.
What if this disease was worse? What if we hadn’t had the lockdown and we were looking at hundreds of thousands dead by now; would that make a difference? Would people be practicing those precautions? It seems like an awfully high price to pay, in order to find that out.
Bill White is the author of Conquering the Coming Collapse, and a former Army officer, manufacturing engineer and business manager. More recently, he left the business world to work as a cross-cultural missionary on the Mexico border.
Bill has been a survivalist since the 1970s, when the nation was in the latter days of the Cold War. He had determined to head into the Colorado Rockies, should Washington ever decide to push the button. While those days have passed, the knowledge Bill gained during that time hasn’t. He now works to educate others on the risks that exist in our society and how to prepare to meet them.
You can send Bill a message at editor [at] survivopedia.com.
Wear a mask, wash, and this pandemic will end. Shutting down the economy is not needed. States that continue to shutdown should not be bailed out.
Just simply, “No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service” . And social distancing.
We, too, have done the math, but you leave out one thing the major media keeps omitting, and the gov’t leaders omit as well. There are preventive treatments that minimize the cytokine storm and other effects of this (probable bioweapon; evidence upon request) COVID 19: Vitamin C in higher doses is being used in medical settings all over the world (oral and IV), vitamin D deficiency is found in most of those who have severe cases so taking vitamin D (or getting out in the sun is to be encouraged), other supplements are being used that also boost immunity, prevent the blood coagulation issues from arising in the first place.
Nothing you or I or anyone does will prevent the infection from getting to us for all time. It just puts it off, and that for many has been good, because they’ve found better treatments now. They’ve learned from the mistakes when the disease was not understood as well. it’s not just a respiratory disease but a blood disease and deaths arise from inflammation/cytokine storm and coagulation issues in the blood (with ferritin coming out of the hemoglobin and preventing the red blood cells from carrying oxygen so all cells/tissues are deprived of oxygen).
In other words, the scenario of 2% dying is if nothing at all is done, and that is a bogus scenario. People all over the world heard that Chinese doctors were successfully using IV Vitamin C to treat Covid 19 patients and have been taking increased vitamin C (and others) ever since, even though the media has censored people mentioning what people can do to improve their body’s immunity while decreasing the over-reaction in the immune system which is why most people are dying.
The virus (any virus) cannot be “stopped,” it will spread eventually everywhere, and eventually, the entire world will get to “herd immunity” anyway. You can slow that down somewhat but you can’t stop it. And any time you open up, there will be spikes of infection. There is no way to avoid some harm, but total harm is what needs to be looked at: the effects of an economic recession, bankruptcy, and supply chain destruction will certainly lead to more deaths than the virus itself, Rioting, suicides, crime, societal chaos will arise when the shutdowns destroy unnecessarily people’s lives.
Wearing a mask and washing our hands is ok and slows down the spread; it doesn’t actually prevent the eventual spread. Once a virus is in the “wild” it’s like Pandora’s box, it can’t be undone. So helping people deal with it as mentioned above, is wise, and the leaders and media are saying nothing at all about that but physicians are. Even the Eastern Virginia Medical School/Group has their protocol they’ve found to be effective and it includes these supplements. (I’m not from there but this was just released as just one example of what real medical ICU docs are suggesting and using) evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_medicine/EVMS_Critical_Care_COVID-19_Protocol.pdf
They have suggestions to other physicians for different levels of infection and symptoms, but take a look because the supplements they are using can be used at home. The medications they use of course, are within the medical setting.
Of course you had to make a “straw man” argument. This is not about “convenience”. This is lives vs. lives. Destroying the economy will kill more people than the virus. More suicides, People not able to get health care. People are denied cancer treatment because is it deemed elective. (actually happening) More alcohol and drug abuse. More obesity. More depression. More homeless when they lose their homes because they can’t pay mortgages and rent. More people losing their livelihood either from their own business or their job shutting down forever.
Additionally:
We are spending Trillions and Trillions of dollars we do not have. This will lead to rampant inflation. Just when we now have 30 million American out of work???
States are grabbing more and more power. We are losing our rights and liberties.
The icing on the top? We have tested millions and millions and millions of Americans. We learned 2 things: The virus is far more widespread than we originally believed, which is good because number 2,, it is far less deadly than we originally thought. It is now far below 1%. on the level of the Spanish flu we still get every year. Yes, the seasonal flu is the mutated offspring of the Spanish flu from 100 years ago.
We can not wait until there is a vaccine or treatment:
A majority of viruses do not have vaccines. We may never get one for the Wuhan flu. We do not have a true vaccine or true “treatment” for the Spanish flu. We may never get one,. Those annual shots are not vaccines, otherwise you would not have to take them annually. Many times they don’t work.
It made sense in the beginning to make decisions based on what we knew at the time. But we have to be wise and change tactics when we learn new information. It is a fool that proceeds with the same plan despite new evidence and information. It is a fool that cannot adapt. It is a fool that only looks at one side of the equation and does not look at the consequences of one course of action. Our plan of action should be one of ever adapting to new information and not making decisions based on what we believed 2-3 months ago.
Saying you have good intentions while destruction reigns all over is a cop out and spineless because it follows the general consensus, which is usually wrong.
Sorry to upset the Covid-19 Nazis, but I aint wearing no mask, period.
I’ll continue to come and go as I please and do what I want to.
Now I aint saying I’ll be gettin into anybody’s face and coughing and sneezing on them and I’ll keep my distance from those with masks on, I can respect that but be given me the side eye cause I aint got one and dont be tellin me about rules and lock down, I’ll give you a lock down!
Well, that was a real intelligent comment, but judging from your grammar and threat, you’re obviously neither educated or mature. As you admittedly refuse to be part of the solution, you’re by default part of the problem. Grow up dude!
The comments here reflect the comments everywhere and pretty much the divided state we’re all in when it comes to this pandemic and the whole situation, economy included. Yes it’s a matter of “natural selection” at the bottom because 1) we really don’t know much about all this going on and thus 2) If acting this or that is 100% effective or the best way. We know some and can assume some but realistically it’s still a bit foggy so it’s hard to pass a hard judgement. I’m in no way saying all is bad, or good. It’s just the way it is. There’s really no right nor wrong: there’s only the price to be paid individually and collectively by our choices and actions, also on personal and collective levels (measured in many ways such as lives, economy, etc.). But eventually we’ll figure it out, hopefully sooner than later. None of this will make us humans perfect, but certainly a little bit better as it happens with all the hard lessons.
Am I the only one who thinks it to be just really disturbing that;
Some previously unknown virus has been thrown at Americans while there is a census going on?
And that of all the pictures I have seen of people who get paid directly from the govt none of them are wearing masks?
Are they immune to it?
Have you seen any police wearing masks yet?
I watched somebody’s video of 2 police pulling a man off a public transit because he was not wearing
a mask, and neither of the cops involved were wearing masks. That is really hypocritical in my book.
I have watched the police cars going by my house, and none of them are wearing masks.
Does that mean that the police are somehow immune to the covid?
The schools have all been shut down, they would make great makeshift hospitals for all the sick, then the sick
could be quarantined and the rest of us could go back to work. Instead the healthy are put under house arrest and where exactly are
all those sick people?
Why are the medical people being told to report that everyone who dies right now, has died due to covid, even when that is not true?
Who is telling them to do this? Can’t be the medical organizations. By reporting that someone has died due to covid when the person died
of something else, is turning everyone of them into felons, doing acts outside of their oaths. What is the possibility that few people will ever
believe the diagnosis from their doctors ever again?
I firmly believe there needs to be a class action lawsuit against every medical professional who falsely claims a person
has died from covid, when the truth is the person died of something else. Where are the lawyers with the backbones to start such lawsuits?
The Bill Gates sponsored IHME are responsible for coming up with a computer program that said there would be 2.5 million people dead
by the second week of April. Because their numbers were not being matched with reality, they kept downgrading their predictions. But then,
when you sit in front of a computer and you put data into a program that you created, I’m sure you can make it say all kinds of things, true or not,
which is exactly what the IHME has done. Have you looked up the IHME yet? It is Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation. And that is nothing more
than a computer program run by a person with a Bachelors in Computer Programming and his team are University of Washington Students who are in
training learning how to input data into a computer program.
Wisconsin Governor got hit this week with a lawsuit declaring the house arrest is unconstitutional. Surely there are lawyers in every state who have the balls and
the backbone to stand up and file the same form of lawsuit in every state. Put the sick under house arrest.
Bill,
your argument has at least one fatal flaw; those 4 million deaths are not in addition to those who die every single day. people with cancers, breathing issues, failing organs, advanced age are the most likely to go and are falsely being labeled as covid deaths regardless of cause. they are admitting this.
“If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death.” Dr Ngozi Ezike
the numbers are BS
Is it even real?
If is is real, then why was this “disease” allowed to enter own way of life?
Ah, but there are many more questionable question to be asked…..
I think the big question here is: Exactly how many “actual Covid deaths are there?” As Dr. Ezike director of Dept of Public Health stated: They count EVERY death as covid if someone has been diagnosed (even if that is not the cause of death) So, if you were diagnosed, such as we all get the flu but don’t think anything of it and drop over dead of a heart attack it is counted as covid. So, how many actual covid deaths are there?? If 80,000 people (as they say died in the US from covid) there could be an actual number of 40,000. WAY less than the 2017-2018 flu and pneumonia deaths. The numbers are so skewed! We never heard about the other epidemic numbers that were higher. I can not believe the entire world has panicked so much over this. Yes, there is a virus, maybe it was biological warfare from China? The big joke is everyone shutting down and panicking. It is understandable that people with a compromised immune system have to be careful, they are the ones that need to wear a mask and stay safer at home.
Bill, while I appreciate your opinion and article, the data indicates your assumptions are incorrect. First, and most importantly, the death rate is not anywhere near 2% you have inflated that value by a factor of at least 10. Random samples of people with the “antibody” already exposed to covid in largely populated areas like NY and CA show that far more people have had it and were asymptomatic or were not tested. That proves the real death rate is 0.3% -0.1% which with an infection rate of 60% is 200k-600k total. Did you you know that the normal death rate is 1% a year? 250k/month or 3MM per year! Even the worst case scenario of 0.3% infection rate is less deaths than we loose per year to heart disease. Do we shut down the economy and starve the rest of the planet because of heart disease? Are you favor or outlawing french fries and bacon because they will kill more than covid? History will look back on this as the worst governmental blunder ever. This is a political lie to destroy the economy, oust Trump, and test the waters to see how easily the US citizens will roll over and give up our rights and freedoms.
We are the land of free and home of the brave. We are not land of slaves and home of the cowards. People stand up for your rights and don’t believe this corrupt media bought and paid for China and the Globalists.
Enter the Fools
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