(My grandmother who died of the influenza in 1918
with her infant daughter)
"Paul’s challenge encapsulates the debate between elected officials eager to open up businesses and willing to accept the risk that more people will die, and public health experts committed to lowering infection rates and keeping the public as safe as possible.
“People are hurting and we’re destroying our country,” Paul told reporters outside the hearing room. “We’ve got to open up business we got to let people vote, and we’re not going to live in a perfect world without infectious disease, we’re still going to have it, but we got to open the economy and that’s the number one message I have.”
The Kentucky senator, an opthamologist, told Fauci he didn’t believe there would be a surge in cases if schools opened, which is not what public health experts say. Paul dismissed predictive models of the virus. “The history of this, when we look back, will be of wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction,” Paul said.
Paul then targeted Fauci personally: “As much as I respect you Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all, I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make the decision. We can listen to your advice. But there are people on the other side saying there won’t be a surge and we can safely open the economy.” CNBC
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IMO, there may or may not be an effective vaccine developed against COVID-19. Some virus bugs are never countered effectively by vaccines. There are no vaccines for the common cold, the Spanish Influenza of 1918, and many other virus strains. Some diseases must burn themselves out in a population by establishing herd immunity. Bubonic Plague is a bacterial infection, but the same thing was true of it. It ravaged Europe, but eventually the fire of infection burned out in Europe and those of us who are descended from Europeans are the descendants of the herd survivors.
COVID-19 is nothing like the Black Death or the Spanish Influenza in lethality except for the old and infirm. Suck it up, people! Cowboy up! Grow a pair! Fauci is a techno dweeb who would keep the US shut down economically until the survivors of COVID-19 would be living in a post-apocalyptic world of small communities living in poverty, a dystopian nightmare.
Rand Paul is also a doctor, and a survivor of the disease.
The Democrats are having a good time playing with Trump while the country burns to the ground economically.
Biden? Pelosi? Juan Williams? Northam? You want them? If you do, and you want to hunker down until the country dies, well then, Bless You! You will deserve what you get.
SWMBO and I, and the doggies are unlikely to be here to share your pain. pl
"What if you have 20 million sick at once"?
Walrus, I don't know. What if a giant killer asteroid hits the planet? What if volcanos start emerging and erupting under the world's major cities?
20 million sick at once isn't even close to a realistic concern. If that was going to happen, it would have already. There is nothing in the data to support such a possibility. Some geographies have people walking around at 20% infection rates based on random testing. If you're going to become critically ill from the virus, it's going to happen no matter what you do. Most who contract the virus and are under 70 years of age will not be even close to critically ill.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 14 May 2020 at 09:28 AM
"You have 300 million people. What if you have 20 million sick at once? "
We have 7 or 8 million people die every year. Forbidding cancer screenings and other medical procedures is going to kill a lot more people than Corona should this shutdown go on. But by all means the left should continue its ideological driven agenda. All the world can judge them on the evidence, which even a corrupt press is having a hard time covering up.
Posted by: Fred | 14 May 2020 at 09:39 AM
Walrus,
If we are living in a barter economy, then you won't have a healthcare system delivering the kind of care that we do now. You won't even have a system. Modern healthcare systems are the reflection of modern advanced economies, whether they are socialized or private. They run on $.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 14 May 2020 at 10:03 AM
Fred and Eric,
I guess we are going to find out who is right. I am perplexed that we seem to have discarded science when the scientists give us an answer we don’t like.
To add to our woes, an epidemiologist acquaintance has just told me that even our limited easing of the lockdown won’t work and to enjoy and make use of the next two or three weeks before it is reimposed.
Posted by: walrus | 14 May 2020 at 11:51 AM
walrus
Science indicates that COVID-19 is rarely fatal for the great majority of the population. Let me know how this all works out for you.
Posted by: turcopolier | 14 May 2020 at 12:22 PM
Walrus,
"we seem to have discarded science when the scientists give us an answer we don’t like."
I'll leave Eric to repeat again all the incorrect statements from WHO, CDC, Fauci and a slew of others.
Is your epidemiologist acquaintance in the US? See data from Georgia, plus all the US states that did not shutdown. The facts are not backing up "the science" of the expert's solution to this virus, they are simply discrediting the career experts. The political science from the left looks to be imploding. On a bright note the Democrats have found the WMD: Whitmer's Middleclass Destruction. Which is precisely why she is seeing armed protesters in Lansing. I expect a false flag shooting in a day or two, especially since St. Aubry of the Joggers didn't get any traction. Hopefully CA25 election results and even Senator Burr being forced to step down as Chairman of the Senate Intellegence Committee will calm a few folks, and warn off a few leftists, but I suspect the others will doubledown rather than lose political power for four more years.
Feel free to go back to your epidemiologist acquaintance and ask him how many people die of poverty every year and how many of the 10+million forced into poverty by executive orders are going to wind up dead, and perhaps the trade off of dead by virus verus dead by government policy should get looked at in something other than an overpaid academic's research study.
Posted by: Fred | 14 May 2020 at 01:45 PM
"Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Myers Vasquez told CNN in a statement Thursday that "five TR Sailors who previously tested COVID positive and met rigorous recovery criteria have retested positive. The Navy recovery criteria exceeds all CDC guidelines."
"The five Sailors developed influenza-like illness symptoms and executed their personal responsibility by reporting to medical for evaluation," Vasquez said. "The Sailors were immediately removed from the ship and placed back in isolation, their close contacts were mapped, and they are receiving the required medical care."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/politics/sailors-return-uss-roosevelt-test-positive/index.html
Posted by: Terence Gore | 14 May 2020 at 08:59 PM
Fred,
Yes. Millions of people die each year, but at a relatively steady rate, not all at once. In any case, we will see.
Posted by: walrus | 15 May 2020 at 02:56 AM
"The app has tracked 15 different types of symptoms, together with a distinct pattern of “waxing and waning”. “I’ve studied 100 diseases. Covid is the strangest one I have seen in my medical career,” Spector says."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/weird-hell-professor-advent-calendar-covid-19-symptoms-paul-garner
Posted by: Terence Gore | 15 May 2020 at 05:31 PM
walrus,
Yes, 7,000 to 8,000 a day, a rate not even seen in NYC with its corrupt incompetent leadership. Non-essential declarations mean no cancer screenings, amongst other procedures, are happening, which means more deaths to come, which the left will then blame on Trump.
"In any case, we will see."
I think I would rephrase that as we'll see whether an actual rebelion breaks out against these actions or the left stages a false flag first in an effort to discredit anyone in "The Resistance" - the non-pink hatted resistance.
Posted by: Fred | 15 May 2020 at 08:14 PM