I had a very nice barbeque meal today somewhere in Tennessee. Almost no one was wearing masks, and nobody working there was. It felt good. It was refreshing, for me.
I had a talk with the owner, and while he recognizes this disease is real, the response is obviously bullshit. It is the Democrats ruining America to get at Trump. And as I pointed out to him, they are not just ruining this country, but causing hunger for BILLIONS, with last I heard up to 125 million at risk of death from STARVATION. In 2020. Because of Anthony Fauci and the people operating him like a marionette.
The owner said he personally knows 21 restaurant owners in Nashville, all of whom have at least 100 seats, who will NEVER reopen. They are done. Kaput. Finished. Because of the lockdowns.
And here is the thing: the top five States, in terms of deaths per capita, are all run by Democrats. New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Louisiana.
Florida, number 12, is run by a Republican, but it is now opening COMPLETELY, and these statistics were current as of a couple days ago.
Rick DeSantis: “If you go back in March, we were told 15 days to slow the spread,” DeSantis said at a press conference. “Now people are saying, ‘hey even if there is a vaccine, it’s still going to take another year before you can operate appropriately,’ and I don’t think that’s viable, I don’t think that’s acceptable.”
Oregon and Maine, both States run by Democrats, are near the bottom, BUT THEY ARE STILL LOCKED DOWN (not sure about Maine–I wanted to go there this summer for vacation, but you can’t travel there without a very recent COVID test–but pretty sure about Oregon). At the top you have New Jersey and New York, still locked down, but with high death numbers, many due to putting sick people in retirement homes, which was the dumbest possible thing to do. And at bottom you have low numbers, and absolutely wrecked economies and lives.
Joe Biden is the candidate of the lockdowns. He is the guy who will see them reinstituted periodically the REST OF OUR LIVES. Now that the elites know how sheepishly compliant Americans are, they can and will lock us down any time they want, for nearly any reason. I fully expect this year’s flu epidemic to be greeted with masks and unprecedented restrictions. Why not? It worked this time. It will work again.
Donald Trump has got to adopt a refuse to lose mentality, and make the case strongly, persuasively, and articulately, that we can’t allow our economy to be on an on/off button subject to whims of de facto dictators. We can’t and don’t need to contemplate wearing masks the rest of our lives. That is depressing, and the science behind it is non-existent.
In and of themselves, the lockdowns seem to make things worse. It is unclear why, but that seems to be the data.
Sweden, to take the obvious example, had higher deaths for a time than their neighbors, because they remained largely open, but the deaths dropped. This is what Farr’s Law/Curve looks like. Now, they are open, and they cannot be compared to their neighbors because their neighbors have not gone through the curve yet. It comparing apples to tomatoes.
Florida is our Sweden. Their numbers may be higher than, say, California, but why would California’s numbers not go up when they reopen? Of course they will. It is the curve. It is Farr’s Law, which stipulates the amount of death under the curve is the same across all time horizons.
And I continue to want to see suicide and drug overdose numbers. We have not seen good data yet, even though it is the job of the CDC to collect it, and that of the NIH to factor it into policy.
I will rationalize this post later. But the key point is Joe Biden is ahead–IF he is ahead–because people associate all the drama and danger and pain and fear and anger concerning these lockdowns more with Trump than with the Democrats. If he can flip that impression to something accurate, I think that will win him a lot of votes.
And remember: what happens in the voting booth stays in the voting booth. You can vote for Trump and tell your friends you voted for Biden.