No! Stop! You mean one of the most widely quoted “predictive models” among US media may be wrong, manipulated, and/or politically motivated?
Smells like…. climate change!
As someone who works in a business that relies heavily on models, I can tell you that models are highly complex, prone to major revision, are heavily dependent on changes in variables, and often yield faulty results. That’s why they are MODELS!
As anyone who knows me will tell you I am not a believer in conspiracies. No, I don’t think Covid is a Chinese bio-weapon intentionally released on the world. But in the spirit of “never let a crisis go to waste” many in government on both sides of the aisle, both elected and appointed, are letting their inner authoritarian shine through. Just look at all that has happened in a few short weeks:
Airlines probably shutdown. Restaurants and bars closed, as well as schools. Banning public gatherings of more than 50. Some countries have curfews. What’s next, martial law? Rate cuts to zero, massive liquidity injections, Feds basically guaranteeing all kinds of debt, massive benefit extensions, now they are talking about massive spending programs, giving people cash, etc. They are talking about mortgage guarantees. Supporting everything EXCEPT stocks which will likely continue to crater. I have seen this crash as a historically good buying opportunity and by every measure it should be. Not so sure now. Most indices are off 30-40% and the average stock is down 50%. The bottom could well be another 20-30% down though there were a few positive signs the past three days. At least volatility is falling from historical levels. People will soon demand their retirement money be guaranteed. The leftists and statist Feds have always wanted to get hands on 401k and IRA money.
I do not think this was planned, but the statists and globalists are grabbing as much control as quickly as they can. The response is totally disproportionate to the problem right now. Scare everyone shitless and then we will save you. It’s insane. Projections of millions of deaths if we don’t ‘”do everything” are based on models, not reality. The same type of garbage models told us the Earth would be uninhabitable by now some 20-25 years ago. Junk science. What if we instead end up with tens of thousands of deaths, less than the seasonal flu? We are looking at fundamentally changing our country possibly forever in ways a leftist/Commie like Bernie Sanders could only dream of. Constitution be damned!
Now, there will likely be some positive long-term changes brought about, so it might not all be bad. Globalism is dead. Nationalism is on the rise. Trump was right and the world government globalists like Obama, the Clintons, Soros and the minions of the EU have been discredited. Borders matter and an open border is not just crazy, it is potentially suicide. Illegal immigration may end. Key manufacturing will no longer be outsourced but will be moved back to the US. What will incentivize this to happen is lower taxes and regulatory roll-back, something that Trump has been able to implement. There will be a battle between this and the potential need to pay for more trillions in new welfare programs and heightened concern about public safety, so that bears watching.
Phony leftist vanity projects like “climate change” will go nowhere. The “Green New Deal” is dead. Catastrophic climate change is a massive con anyway. Fossil fuels are now the cheapest in over a decade and have just made “alternatives” uneconomical. A recession/depression is going to cause emissions to plummet. Nobody will worry about climate change except for the hard-core leftists: hard to be concerned about phantom warming when you fear a pandemic, never mind there is evidence that warm weather wipes out the Covid. Other leftist vanity projects like LGBTQ indoctrination will likely take a back seat as well.
Remote learning will take off. This will hurt the educational industrial complex hard, mostly a good thing. Public schools in the US, most of which are failing in their mission, will either reform or die. The public teacher’s union may be hurt badly. Higher education, already reeling from declining enrollment, skyrocketing tuition, providing a poor product and the elite’s admission scandal will see their market hit hard. This is a good thing: higher education, mostly run by leftist elites who are unemployable elsewhere are damaging this country immeasurably with their phony degrees, safe spaces, trigger warning and microaggressions. It is time the entire business needs a great big cleansing.
Far-left media may collapse. The credibility and favorability of this business is already at an all-time low, but media has particularly disgraced itself with its panic-inducing hyperventilating and outright cheerleading for an epidemic, as it might be the one thing that will take down the Bad Orange Man. It isn’t working, other than the panic part. People will grow sick of these swine, and quickly.
The US, never mind the world, is taking unprecedented steps to contain the Covid outbreak. In many cases it seems like “shoot-ready-aim”. It is already accepted fact that millions will become unemployed, heck millions already ARE, and we will have a deep recession lasting one to two quarters at minimum if not a depression. Trillions of financial wealth, wealth that millions depend on has been wiped out. Many industries will be changed forever and lots of those jobs are never coming back. A staggering 80% of US jobs are service-oriented, not that anything close to that is at risk, yet. Wholesale and retail and leisure and hospitality employ 34 million people in the US. How many of those jobs will be lost short and long-term? Probably well into the millions.
Policy makers are not thinking straight. Goaded on by our corrupt media that just wants to sell panic, and certain medical “experts” who are having their moment in the sun, many have the human urge to do something, ANYTHING! if it is seen as decisive action. So there you have it…a growing national lock-down whether voluntary or enforced.
But economic downturns have real human consequences. These are not just numbers and dollars lost. There is a direct correlation between meaningful work and health and welfare. Unemployment leads to depression, drug and alcohol abuse, family strife, cut backs on needed medical care, and even suicide, never mind long-term government dependency. Sure lives are being lost to Covid, but how many will be destroyed because of our economic self-immolation? We may well be killing the proverbial mosquito not with a hammer, but a flame-thrower! Sure, we got the mosquito but we burned our house to the ground!
I believe a proper, coherent response to the Covid would have been tightly locking-down those at risk ONLY: the aged over 70-75 and anyone 50 and up that has preexisting conditions. The rest of the country should be allowed to continue with life with a heavy dose of “how to” prevention: hygiene, taking care of yourself, and rational social distancing. The media and some politicians have created fear and paranoia not seen in my lifetime, not even 9/11 and it is very sad. One small anecdote. I went to my local grocery last night to pick up a few dozen items. Of course several key ones were gone but what struck me most was the fear in people’s eyes…and I live in a semi-rural place with so far no cases. The store was sparsely populated but more than one person fearfully gave me a wide-berth when I passed by. The fear is what saddened me. I don’t think that is changing any time soon.
I pray that we beat this thing back quickly and some cooler heads prevail. The country cannot afford more than a few weeks of shutdown. Here are some additional views:
COVID Chaos: What’s More Dangerous, the Virus or Our Reaction?
It can be intentional, like Stalin’s gulags and Pol Pot’s killing fields, or it can be inadvertent, like Italy’s response to the Covid. A prominent Italian virologist has accused the government of not acting quickly enough out of political correctness and fear of being labeled “racists”. Now, the country is currently fighting the worst epidemic on the planet as a result.
Leftism does kill.
Italian Virologist Says Concerns Over “Racism” Crippled Italy’s Coronavirus Response
Not to be outdone by Joe Biden’s 150mm firearm deaths (half the US population mind you), two journalists said “hold my beer”.
Brian Williams, one of NBC’s top anchors for years, and some nobody from the NYT repeated a Twitter rant that Michael Bloomberg’s flushing of $500mm down the election toilet could have instead been doled out to EVERY American to the tune of $1mm per person! Amazing! Uh, no Brian and whatever your name is…it would be $1. Or closer to $1.5 given that the US has around 330 MILLION people.
“Dumb as a post” does not begin to describe Mr. Williams and Ms. Gay. This is embarrassing. Either these two are so stupid they cannot do basic math, or they are so inept to not even check what is being fed them, or they are so dishonest they feel they can say anything and people will believe it. I am going with dumb, because who could be this dishonest and think they could get away with it?
This is the problem with the left – they are this stupid. They also feel they can say anything and you will believe it. Like if we tax all the billionaires we can pay for healthcare for all, forever. Classic Marxist socialist crap.
truthfreedomprosperity 