They want America to be punished for existing. They have made this very, very clear, over and over, and across a very broad time domain. It has of course gotten worse particularly in the Obama era, since he echoed them, but there is something masochistic about the economic and emotional devastation this whole quarantine is bringing.
I think particularly the effect on emotional health is really being understated. If you think about, for many decades–going back, I think, well into the 19th century–media does not cover suicides. They found long ago–it may have been Durkheim, who was helping form the discipline of sociology as I recall the history–that reported suicides creates copycat suicides. Imagine if they were admitting now that locking people into tiny apartments by the millions, with no access to jobs or money, is causing an unusually high–perhaps extraordinarily high–number to kill themselves. The reaction would be immediate and huge.
For that reason, I suspect this is a major problem no one will talk about, as most likely is psychiatric hospital admissions, and of course drug and alcohol abuse.
In my view, as I understand it, Sweden has taken the correct approach. They are doing a bit of social distancing–no waiting on tables in restaurants, but you can be seated once the table is ready–and probably cancelling or altering larger events.
But their society is open. Bars are open. Theaters are open. The old are being encouraged to self quarantine, and anyone sick to stay home. Otherwise, they are going after it hard and fast.
IF their model works, what I would expect would be steep increases in both deaths and reported cases. IF Oxford is right, that this thing is both vastly more contagious, and vastly less dangerous than has been reported, what will be happening in Sweden is that the ACTUAL number of new cases will be skyrocketing, but most people will not be symptomatic. Unless they test the population as a whole effectively, the global media will portray it breathlessly as a disaster. But it won’t be a disaster. The disaster is waiting for the rest of the world, once we open the gates back up and start counting the businesses who are not coming back at all, who died economically during the long wait for nothing.
But it will be ugly in Sweden for a minute. Then it will be done. That is the goal. That is the aim. The same number of people die who are going to die in all the other countries, but in one go.
Those of us idled are wasting time and bleeding money while our hospitals sit empty. I read today, and it seems to be corroborated, that coroners are calling all deaths which happen where COVID-19 is present “COVID-19 deaths”. This would apply to asymptomatic carriers who had heart attacks or died of cancer . Even those who commit suicide.
This whole thing is disgustingly dishonest. My hope is that when we get to the other side people’s blind faith both in experts and government is shaken to the core, in permanent and profound ways.
Perhaps ten days ago I quipped, pace Twain, “Lies, damned lies, and fucking experts.”