If
you don’t think our so-called mainstream rulers has gone off the deep end, just
consider New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent menacing tweets to the orthodox
Jewish community in Brooklyn, which has insisted on holding funerals, including
one Monday for a revered 73-year old Rabbi attended by upwards of 2,000
mourners:
“Something absolutely
unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the
middle of this pandemic,” the mayor said in one post. “When I heard, I
went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw
WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus.”
My message to the Jewish
community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has
passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even
arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this
disease and saving lives. Period.
Well, NYC is nearly a ghost
town and now its idiotic ruling pols are suggesting that, apparently, only
ghosts may attend funerals without governmental permission!
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But
actually, this photo from the offending funeral is another picture worth a
thousand words.
That’s
because by now, everyone, and we mean everyone, knows that the Covid-19 strikes
the elderly, the frail and the already disease-afflicted; and that these
vulnerable populations need to not only “social distance”, but actually stay
home and keep out of harm’s way completely.
That
appears to be exactly what happened at Rabbi Mertz’ funeral. If you can spot an
octogenarian in this crowd, or even a grandfather, your eyesight is better than
Clark Kent’s.
And
besides being preponderantly way under 50-somethings, they congregated outdoors
and virtually all were wearing masks. Yet claiming to speak for some latter day
“Committee of Public Safety”, Mayor Robespierre actually threatened to bring in
the gendarmes.
Hundreds
of people gathered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a massive funeral Tuesday
evening
As to whether the above
pictured citizens should be jailed or fined, let’s start with a tale of two
Lockdown Nations – New York City and the semi-socialist Republic of California.
Both
have imposed severe stay-at-home and business shutdown orders almost from the
day the Donald issued his unfortunate March 16 guidelines. Yet here are the
results 45 days later with respect to their mortality rates, which is
ostensibly the reason officialdom issued these draconian “cease and desist”
orders in the first place.
To wit, the mortality rate as
of April 28 was 143 per
100,000 in New York City and 4.6per 100,000
in the state of California. Essentially the same public health policy lockdown,
but night and day differences in the outcome.
Yes, New York is more dense
than California on average, but that doesn’t even remotely explain the
difference. That’s because by now there is overwhelming evidence that the
severity of the quarantine regime has essentially zero impact on the mortality
metrics.
And
folks, even the Virus Patrol hardliners don’t claim their lockdown orders are
designed to prevent 3-day hospital stays by people who get an unusually
stubborn case of the winter flu. This is about death prevention and that’s why
they run the Chyron of Death across the CNN screen day and night.
But
there is zero correlation:
- California:
Heavy lockdown, 4.6 deaths
per 100,000;
- Iowa: No
lockdown, 4.3 deaths per
100,000;
- Texas: Light
lockdown, 2.4 deaths per
100,000;
- Washington state:
Heavy lockdown, 10.0 deaths
per 100,000;
- Colorado:
Inconsistent lockdown, 12.2 deaths
per 100,000;
- Georgia:
Late Lockdown now lifted, 10.0 deaths
per 100,000;
- Maine: Heavy
Lockdown, 3.8 deaths per
100,000;
- Massachusetts:
Heavy Lockdown, 45.7 deaths
per 100,000.
We call attention to
Washington state, Maine and Massachusetts especially because even though they
all have severe statewide lockdown regimes and their overall mortality rates
very widely, from 3.8 per 100,000 in Maine to 45.7 per 100,000 in
Massachusetts, they do share one thing in common. To wit, 40-60% of their Covid-fatalities have been in
nursing homes.
In Maine, 53% of Covid deaths
were in nursing homes, meaning that the actual Covid-mortality rate for the
general population is just 1.8 per
100,000 and in Massachusetts 56% are nursing home fatalities, meaning the
general rate is 21 per
100,000.
Ironically, Sweden has one of
the least restrictive lockdown regimes in the world – schools, businesses,
restaurants and retail remain open–yet its mortality rate of 22 per 100,000 is virtually the same as the
lockdown state of Massachusetts.
Self-evidently, what matters
is not how economically suicidal the lockdown regime is from one jurisdiction
to the next, but the age, health status and general frailty/vulnerability of
the populations at issue. In the case of Washington state where the first
corona cases occurred, upwards of 40% of the 690 deaths to date have been in
nursing homes, meaning that its general population mortality is just 6.0 per 100,000.
As we
amplify below, these single-digit rates are rounding errors on the scheme of
things, even as all deaths are both regrettable and inevitable. But by what
rational calculation does Governor Inslee insist on keeping the state in
Lockdown and its economy heading into the drink?
Someone might dare inform him
that the general mortality rate from all causes for his citizens is 900 per 100,000 annually, and that, therefore,
he is imposing the economic mayhem evident in these charts below owing to a
risk of Covid death for the general population of his state that so far has
been 0.7% of the normal average.
Stated differently, had Patient Zero (aka the Donald) not been the
victim of malpractice by his doctors led by Fauci and the Scarf Lady, he might
have been advised to dial in on day #1 to the heart of the Covid-threat.
Namely, the 15,600 nursing homes in
America, which domicile some 1.5 million residents, of which one-quarter
(425,00) are over the age of 80 years.
In the case of Massachusetts, where the
majority of deaths have occurred in nursing homes, the average age of
Covid-deaths has been 82 years.
Needless to say, you did not need to be entombed
in the infectious disease tunnel at the NIH for 52 years like Dr. Fauci, a
pretentious 79-year old windbag who should have himself been put in a retirement home years ago, to
realize that nursing homes are dense-packed with the frail, disease-afflicted
elderly.
So
rather than wipe out $4 trillion of GDP via Lockdown Nation they might have
started with say $25 billion of incremental money for Medicare/Medicaid and the
state public health agencies to zero-in on protecting, isolating and treating
the nursing home residents.
After
all, we find it easy to believe that spending $20,000 per nursing home resident
might have saved or extended a lot more lives than the WHO/CDC/DR. Fauci
blunderbuss assault on the entire US economy.
Indeed,
with each passing update, the CDC data itself becomes an ever more dispositive
indictment of the madness the Donald’s doctors have imposed on the nation. It
is now strikingly clear, in fact, that when it comes to Covid-19 there are
three nations in America, and that the attempt to shoe-horn them into a
one-size fits all regime of state control is tantamount to insane.
There is first the Kids Nation of some 61 million persons under
15 years, where even by the CDCs elastic definitions there have been just 5 WITH Covid deaths thru April 28. You needn’t
even bother with the zero-ridden fraction of 1 per 100,000 (its actually 0.008)
to make the point.
That is to say, last year
there were about 44,000 deaths
among the Kids Nation – so corona-virus accounts for just 0.011% of the total, and in no sane world
would it be a reason for shutting down the schools.
Of course, the Virus Patrol
insists that the school closures are an unfortunate necessity because otherwise
the Kids Nation would take the virus home to the Parents/Workers Nation. That is the 215 million
citizens between 15 and 64, who account for the overwhelming share of commerce,
jobholders and GDP.
Yet according to the CDC,
there have been just 8,267 deaths WITH Covid in this massive expanse of the
population, which figure represents a mortality rate of, well, 3.6 per 100,000.
But here’s the thing. The
normal total mortality rate for the 15-64 years old population is 335 per 100,000. So we are talking about shutting
down the entire economy owing to a death rate to date which amounts to 1.1% of
normal mortality in the Parents/Workers nation.
Finally, we have Grandparents/Great Grandparents Nation, comprised
of 52 million citizens. But they account for 32,000 or nearly 80% of the WITH
Covid deaths as of April 28 – with 15,000 of these being among those 85 years
and older.
By way of computation,
that’s 61 deaths per 100,000 for
the group as a whole and 230per 100,000
for the 85 years and older.
Stated differently, the risk
of death posed by Covid-19 is 7,600X greater
for Grandparents/Great Grandparents Nation overall than for Kids Nation,
and 29,000 times greater for the several million
Great-Grandparents afflicted with severe comorbidity and likely as not to be in
the care of a nursing home.
Needless to say, it did not take a
catastrophic experiment with Lockdown Nation to figure this out. It was already
known from China and the history of other coronaviruses.
If there were any reason or justice
left in America, Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Lady and the whole CDC/WHO lobby that
brought about this disaster would actually be headed for their own quarantine –
the kind that doesn’t happen at home and which can’t be lifted by the whims of
the Cuomo brothers or Mayor Robespierre.
Reprinted with permission
from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
Former
Congressman David A. Stockman was Reagan's OMB director, which he wrote about
in his best-selling book, The Triumph of Politics. His latest books
are The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in
America and Peak Trump: The Undrainable Swamp And The Fantasy Of MAGA.
He's the editor and publisher of the new David Stockman's Contra Corner. He was
an original partner in the Blackstone Group, and reads LRC the first thing
every morning.
Copyright © David Stockman
