Sheltering at home is proving a bigger risk for Wuhan coronavirus infection than being out in the world among other people. New York City is seeing an uptick in hospitalizations, and the demographics of the new patients are disturbing.
The new cases have been staying at home, per the orders of Democrats Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Not riding the subways, not front-line workers, not residents of jails or homeless shelters. They have been staying at home since the beginning of the virus outbreak, like the “experts” told them to do.
They have not previously been exposed, and now that the city and state are beginning to reopen, they are getting sick. It amounts to a repudiation of the standard approach the U.S. has taken to the Wuhan coronavirus.
Cuomo, for his part, is baffled.
“This is a surprise. Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he said Monday. “We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees were getting sick because they were going to work. That this maybe was nurses, doctors, transit workers — that’s not the case.”
It should not come as a surprise. Sweden provides the data that “shelter-in-place,” a phrase used as though the virus is an active shooter, is not the only approach. It may not even be the right approach.
Sweden never shut down. They adopted what essentially is a “herd immunity” strategy. Shops, factories, schools and businesses stayed open. The result is they have suffered one death for every 3,087 people. The U.S. closed down almost everywhere and we are still seeing new cases, having suffered one death for every 3,992 people. The difference is all but insignificant.
What, exactly, is herd immunity? Herd immunity happens when so many people in a community become immune to an infectious disease that it stops the disease from spreading.
This can happen in two ways: Either many people contract the disease and in time build up an immune response to it (natural immunity), or many people are vaccinated against the disease to achieve immunity.
Herd immunity can work against the spread of several diseases. There are a multitude of reasons why it works. Herd immunity works as well as isolation, it appears, and that raises the obvious question, was the shutdown necessary?
Sweden chose not to go into lockdown or impose strict social-distancing policies. Instead, it rolled out voluntary, "trust-based" measures: it advised older people to avoid social contact and recommended that people work from home where possible, wash their hands regularly and avoid non-essential travel.
The strategy’s architect is Dr. Anders Tegnell, an epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency. It is an independent body, unlike the CDC, but the government follows agency recommendations in matters of health issues.
Dr. Anders Tegnell is the architect of Sweden’s “herd immunity” strategy that has yielded similar Wuhan coronavirus numbers to the U.S., which has largely used the shutdown strategy to curb the disease. (Photo: Jurgen Wiesse/Aftonbladet)
The approach has sharp critics. Among them are 22 high-profile scientists who last week wrote in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the public-health authorities had failed, and urged politicians to step in with stricter measures.
Sound familiar? Like U.S. critics of President Donald Trump, they point to the high number of coronavirus deaths in elder-care homes and Sweden’s overall fatality rate.
Sweden’s death rate is higher than its Nordic neighbors — compared with one death per 10,893 people in Denmark and one death per 23,883 in Finland, which have adopted lockdowns. However, both Denmark and Finland shut down tight as a drum, even more severely than even New York or Michigan.
Even so, those two countries are seeing a sharp rise in new cases as they begin to relax their stay-at-home orders. Denmark has 78 new cases as of this morning, a three-fold increase over the last few days. Finland has only 19 new cases, but they have seen only single-digit increases for two weeks.
In other words, they are experiencing the same type of increase in new cases as New York City is seeing as the quarantine is relaxed. Dr. Tegnell defended the choice Sweden made.
“I do not believe there is a great risk,” Tegnell said in a telephone interview with AVC Reports. “The public-health agency has released detailed modeling on a region-by-region basis that comes to much less pessimistic conclusions than other researchers in terms of hospitalizations and deaths per thousand infections. There has been an increase, but it is not traumatic as critics predicted.”
The economic toll of the U.S. shutdown is well documented in our tragic unemployment numbers, our small businesses that may never recover and the money Congress has had to allocate to try to keep the country afloat.
There is another death toll to consider, however, that is just as concerning as deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus. That is the mental health death toll. Suicides, deaths from drug overdoses and alcoholism have increased across the board since the shutdown began March 16.
Suicides, for example, usually total 47 per day. They have skyrocketed to 125 per day during the lockdown. Alcohol and drug overdoses per day are typically around 37. They, too, are nearly 125 per day during this time frame.
Suicides, drug overdoses and deaths from alcohol have all increased nearly three-fold as a result of feelings of hopelessness, anxiety and depression during the U.S. shutdown. (Photo Illustration: ACV Reports)
That is 9,642 more deaths, since March 16, that would not have occurred if not for the nationwide shutdown. If this shutdown continues to the elections, as the Left obviously wants, another 29,000 people could die in addition to the dwindling number of Wuhan coronavirus deaths by Election Day.
This is completely unacceptable. If the measures taken to prevent the spread of the disease and the death it causes actually result in more deaths than would occur without those measures in place, their implementation is absurd.
That hasn’t stopped many with a sociopolitical agenda from urging those measures be enacted anyway. The reason? They have a political agenda only. They do not care about the American people, they do not care whether there are better ways to do things.
It helps them achieve their goals of globalization, societal control and the implementation of a police state that cannot otherwise be realized.
Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has said the shutdown should not be lifted until we have a vaccine. The media continually criticizes the president, warning he is placing priority on the economy over people and that “death and destruction will follow!” Among other disinformation the Lamestream Media is fond of spreading.
Today’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee hearing is exposing Democrats’ desires to keep the shutdown going. Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) led off the questions by trying to scare the American people into staying at home and hiding under their beds.
She heavily criticized the Trump administration, spewing rhetoric about how the president “has failed the American people” and other nonsense. It is obvious their intent is to push to keep shutdowns in place until the November elections. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) later added to the hyperbole, claiming there are “25,000 new cases a day and 2,000 deaths a day.”
The reality? As of today, there were 1,577 new cases nationwide and 116 death in the last 24 hours. She deliberately lied to the American people in a Congressional hearing. Dr. Anthony Fauci corrected her, and yet she insisted on reading those numbers into the record again.
Sen. Rand Paul, however, took issue with the emphasis on heavy-handed methods to prevent the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, citing the very same statistics listed in this article. He put Fauci on the defensive, the allergens and infectious disease expert admitting that “I’ve never claimed to be the only voice in this. I give opinions, and offer guidance when asked.”
Yet Fauci has continually cautioned against states opening up too soon. He did so again in the hearing today.
There are obviously opposing political forces at work during this outbreak. Increasingly, it is clear that the Trump Administration is interested in doing what is best for the American people.
The Democrats? That can best be summarized by former Obama Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s philosophy: “Never let a perfectly good crisis go to waste.”
The answer to the question posed above, therefore, is no, the lockdown of our nation’s economy, our people and our national spirit was totally unnecessary. Sweden proves that. We cannot let the Left take over this nation by pushing the “virus narrative” that has devastated us for far too long.
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