by Bob Luddy
We are cowering from fear of COVID-19, but quarantine is not a cure to end the virus.
The extreme measures currently being taken to shut down our nation in order to flee a virus will have grave consequences long after the quarantine ends. The future cost to America and our families will be a severe recession (upwards of 20 percent unemployment) if the healthy don’t return to work very soon.
America is suffering from a vast and severe decline in quality of life due to the shutdown measures. State mandates have destroyed businesses and the lives of common working people. Millions of Americans are now furloughed, unemployed, or have experienced significantly decreased hours and wages. Many will never return to their jobs, and their careers and aspirations are shattered. It is estimated that up to 25 percent of all temporarily closed restaurants will never reopen unless the shutdown mandates are lifted this month. Families who have spent decades building their businesses may be forced to permanently close due to lack of cash flow. Farmers, who are crucial food producers, will soon go bankrupt, reducing food supplies and causing shortages.
Health care is a problem, too. In March 2020, only 3 percent of U.S. deaths were due to COVID-19, yet the majority of health-care resources have been devoted to coronavirus efforts. Yet heart disease and cancer remain the top two leading causes of death in the U.S. (nearly 45 percent of all deaths), killing over 1.3 million Americans every year. Care for these patients is not elective; it is imperative for life.
The current political decision-makers are imposing shutdowns on industries that do not affect their own paychecks. If federal, state, and local governments furloughed all workers except for medical, military, fire, police, and those issuing checks for Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security, and the entire country suffered financially in parity, the shutdown would surely end almost immediately.
Some countries have successfully fought the pandemic without shutdowns. Sweden and South Korea have already proven this model with far better results than the U.S. and have endured only minimal job or economic destruction. Both have resisted shuttering their economies, and both continue to have very low death rates, no higher than the common flu.
Hiding from viruses is not the solution. COVID-19 will not disappear because we stayed home. Many researchers have shown that the best way to defeat coronavirus is to allow all healthy people to continue working with reasonable precautions and to keep the elderly and immunocompromised people quarantined. Most healthy people who contract the virus will have minimal or no symptoms. This solution allows millions to develop herd immunity to COVID-19, eventually rendering it a non-threat.
Part of our problem comes from treating medical experts’ predictions about the virus’s spread as settled facts. Those predictions have changed as the data changes — and the data is not always reliable. Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the key members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly on January 21, 2020, “This [coronavirus] is not a major threat to the people of the United States.” And just this week, Dr. Deborah Birx, also a member of the Task Force, openly admitted that the federal government is counting all COVID-19 patients who die of any cause as COVID-19 deaths, even if coronavirus did not lead to the death itself. It is clear that the CDC, NIH, and FDA have failed to effectively handle this situation, and worse, they have blocked potential solutions until recently.
The government purports to be solving the spread of the virus, but at what cost? And what is the plan when virus season returns later in the year? Job losses and economic disruption are measured in hours as the central planners talk about keeping citizens bound to their homes for months.
New York City is a worst-case scenario with 40 percent of all U.S. coronavirus deaths. We cannot make national policy based on worst-case projections. In most states, the number of COVID-19 cases is low and the death projections are wildly overstated. If needed, we can keep states such as New York shut down, but we cannot bankrupt the entire country, or we will find ourselves in a financial crisis.
Everything in life involves tradeoffs. Trading the entire U.S. economy to prevent coronavirus deaths that so far have not exceeded any usual death counts by any cause, anywhere in the world, is irrational. A depressed economy will lead to a much poorer and sicker society, leading to far more challenges in the end.
In the 230 years of its existence, the American republic has never shut down our economy based on any real or perceived threats. It is time to return to common sense to solve problems, not to central planning and groupthink.
It is vital that healthy Americans return to normalcy with well-thought-out precautions. The consequences from stay-in-place orders will be far worse than the possible health consequences of COVID-19.
Americans must return to work immediately and resume our normal life.
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Bob Luddy is CEO and Founder of CaptiveAire.
Our business “leadership” made statements about remaining open, standing by our clients and such, and then all of them promptly ran for the hills. Haven’t seen any of them for two or three weeks. We are open and working without them.
For God’s sake, don’t inconvenience the businesswhiners!
I hope Governor Lee reads this excellent article because his latest comments are anything but reassuring. I also hope that when Congress gets back in session, they address this issue, because the Constitution is being trampled left and right. We cannot shut down our state, let alone the country, every time a new virus comes around.
Go back to work, damn the mainstream media, democrats, Dr Fauci and the scarf queen doctor.. Bill Gates too, who made him an authority and he just in it for money any way, his computer software cannot even stop viruses. Quarantine New York city, which should have been done a long time ago, and let’s open up for business now.
Right on!
Traffic is already increasing on the roads, I think the public is about to end the stay at home orders where the Politicians like it or not.
While I will have to admit, the quarantine helped reduce the number of deaths, the stats are still below the normals death each year from the flu.
Economic pressures will end the quarantine faster than anything else, Politicians don’t need to fight it.
Fist some statistics. As of 4-10-2020, based on the 2010 population of Tennessee, which was 6,346,105, the percentage of people who are confirmed to have been infected is .073%. Those who have succumbed to the virus is .0015%. I am thankful that here in Tennessee Governor Lee has not instituted a mandatory stay at home policy. But, is there truly enough justification to drive our economy to the edge of the cliff?
The MSM has a huge responsibility for the hysteria surrounding this virus. I actually watched the national news on NBC the other day (which wasn’t easy) and the entire program was fear and dire consequences. It’s all about NYC and other major metropolitan areas. It is now being reported by the non-MSM that the cause of death for anyone who dies and is infected with the virus, no matter if the virus was the true cause of death or not, as dying from COVID 19.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/4_9_2020_16_3.html
Then there’s the so called models that projected far more deaths than have occurred at this time.
https://www.redstate.com/streiff/2020/04/09/815099/
According to the CDC, heart disease was the leading cause of death in Tennessee in 2017 (most current figures) at 16,019. Deaths due to COVID 19 up to this point are 94. It’s too bad we cannot get the same level of concern about heart disease as it being shown for the virus, it kills far more Americans ever year than will truly die from COVID 19.
I believe the MSM is driving the pandemic for all it’s worth to deflect from the coming presidential election as they know the Democrats are going to, in the words of the community organizer, get a shellacking. The other issue is the investigation by AG Barr into the corruption that took place relating to the FISA warrant and failed attempt to discredit and impeach President Trump. This is going to be bigger than Watergate and will go all the way back to the Obama Whitehouse.
Let’s all hope this comes to an end as soon as possible so we can get back to work and start living our lives again.