We’re living in Orwellian times, certainly. Consider just this: “Drone” cameras to spy on and punish us expressly while we’re in our own backyards or the middle of nowhere – and hence in places least likely to spread the coronavirus. And then there are the “Freedom Is Slavery” type slogans that seek to convince us of what is exactly opposite the truth. None of which is more obnoxious and dangerous than “We’re all in this together.”
Viruses may not discriminate, but we do. COVID-19 cases and deaths are determined by geography and climate, quality of health care, lifestyle, and overwhelmingly by age and comorbid conditions. The old and infirm are at highest risk, while the young even with other conditions are at both at extremely low risk of suffering and transmitting the disease.
That means, on the one hand, we fail those at greatest peril, as we did by falsely democratizing AIDS with such slogans as “Now Everyone Is at Risk” AIDS. Indeed, a New York Times database shows a third of those classified as dying with COVID-19 are residents or workers in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
The CDC specifically says the virus targets people 65 years and older, those who live in a nursing home or long-term care facilities, and those with underlying medical conditions — that as it happens are associated with aging. Add those with a body mass index of 40 or above, which means incredibly obese.
Even British Professor Neil Ferguson testified “as many as half or two-thirds” of deaths labeled as COVID-19 may have occurred by the end of the year anyway “because this is affecting people either at the end of their lives or with poor health conditions.”
Yes, that’s the same Neil Ferguson whose model of from around 1.1 – 2.2 million U.S. deaths probably had the single greatest effect on putting countries throughout the world into lockdowns. (And who was later caught violating the British lockdown with someone else’s wife.)
Conversely, almost everywhere children’s schools are closed even as growing evidence shows that children are the least likely to become infected, to be symptomatic if infected, and to become spreaders.
The only true risk to children is the hysteria and the very lockdowns the Orwellian trappings encourage. Indeed, according to a U.N. report, millions of children may die from the devastation we inflict on the world economy each day we refuse to acknowledge that we are not all equals and refuse to open up economies.
The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Gita Gopinath, published an assessment of what she called “the Great Lockdown,” saying it will be “the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the global financial crisis” of 2007-2008.
One result, according to the U.N. report: “Economic hardship experienced by families as a result of the global economic downturn could result in hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths in 2020, reversing the last 2 to 3 years of progress in reducing infant mortality within a single year.”
Further, it said, “… this alarming figure does not even take into account services disrupted due to the crisis – it only reflects the current relationship between economies and mortality, so is likely an under-estimate of the impact.”
Laurence Chandy, lead author of the report and the director of UNICEF’s Office of Global Insight Policy, told Voice of America’s VOA publication, “The unprecedented simultaneous closure of schools across the world is affecting alone 1½ billion children,” or “almost all children in the world.” He added, “The report also mentions the more than 360 million children across 143 countries who rely on school meals.” Therefore, children are no longer getting what for many are their only meals of the day.
But it’s not just food. Chandy said child protection services also are largely closed, leaving children exposed to domestic violence and other forms of abuse and exploitation. Further, “immunization campaigns around the world have been put on hold.” Chandy said “That will set back the global campaigns on polio by years, I suspect” and moreover “there are 23 countries we count around the world that have put on hold their measles inoculation campaigns.”
Every day we maintain the façade of being the first in history to micromanage viral spread will cost the lives of more mothers’ sons and daughters.
Michael Fumento is an attorney, author, and journalist who authored The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS and was a National Issues reporter for Investor’s Business Daily. His website is www.fumento.com.
We must demand that the federal government tabulate and report to us how many Americans have died of the Wuhan virus (medically proven) under the age of 65 and free of underlying medical issues. That number is crucial to defining how we proceed from here.
The long term effects of this hysteria will be the most telling. Suicides, child abuse, elder abuse, and all the other mental issues will be much harder on more of the population the longer this keeps going on.
I am 75 years old and my husband is in a long term care facility. I think it is time that those of us at greatest risk from covid stand up and say we are willing to take the risk of returning to normal so our children and grandchildren can have a normal life.
I don’t think the risk we would take is that grave. About 2 million Americans 65 and older die every year out of a population of about 50 million. While the death rate in our age group is high, maybe 25%, that still means that 75% recover from the illness.
Meanwhile children worldwide are out of school, facing food shortages, missing vaccinations etc. Even UNICEF has called for balance in our response to the pandemic because many more children will die if we don’t.
So how do we get started?
If you can eyeball the obesity it is not incredible, just unbearable.
And we still laugh at 17th century witch hunts. Who’s really dumber?
The issue is not food, or feeding the children, here in the US at least. Many of the children in the Food Insecurity Programs are obese, a view made by observation not elitism. Enough with the emphasis on food distribution.
The issue is about the damage being done to whole families, who have had a parent, (or parents), thrust into working a full time job from home all day, together with a mother who has been put in charge of teaching her kids full time at home with limited resources, and in some instances limited space. In many of these same “Lock Down” family situations there is a preschooler underfoot needing the love and attention they were used to getting, before their entire family was mandatorily quarantined in the home.
The damage has been done to the children.
For them to understand why their school lives, time with their friends, and the playing of sports, were taken from them so abruptly, we are required to conjure up a scary, killer virus, so deadly, it is the reason they cannot go outside forever, never see their friends again and never play anywhere beyond their small yards or balconies. We must always wear masks as a weak sign of protecting ourselves from the same killer.
This whole situation has had a terrible psychological impact on the families, especially the children, and the summation of the situation is made when one walks by the kid’s playground and the play equipment is wrapped up thoroughly and tightly with yellow tape that says “Danger-Caution” and there are signs all over warning the public to Stay Out!