Six Months

The Nation has reached the six-month mark of complete or partial shutdown of everything that involves contact amongst its citizens. State and local leaders have used executive fiat rulings and orders to control our lives, where we can and cannot go or do, unlike any time in our 244-year history. 

Attorney General Bill Barr caught hell when he said in a speech that, “…corona virus closures are the ‘greatest intrusion on civil liberties’ other than slavery in US history.” He was right.  There has been, according to most legal scholars, an egregious violation of the rights granted to citizens under the Constitution.  The media has willingly abetted these orders by finding every liberal progressive voice to opine that these actions are indeed necessary. Any voice that thinks the measures are draconian is dismissed as a loon, not in command of the real facts.

What are the facts regarding the China Flu (COVID-19) Wuhan Pandemic? What is known is that according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) nearly 200,000 Americans have died from this plague. We know how many have died, but very little about the demographics of the deceased as that information doesn’t fit the narrative.  Apparently, this is all Presidents Trump’s fault.

Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden claimed Trump is responsible for every single person who has died from the COVID-19, and said as much in his CNN Town Hall “Drive -In” event last night:

"If the president had done his job, had done his job from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people — I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data." 

What in the world is he thinking? That’s just flat out baloney. All that does is feed the notion that Joe has lost his fastball and not ready to pitch at the White House. President Trump is no more responsible for those deaths than Joe Biden is responsible for the California forest fires. 

Let’s examine some data as Joe suggests. 

2.6% of the pandemic deaths are individuals under 45. The average age of those who pass is 75 plus. The vast majority of those older victims had underlying morbidities that contributed to their deaths. There is no dispute that this is a serious version of the “flu” and there is no doubt where it came from, Wuhan, China.  The actual number of deaths solely from the China Flu is considerably less than 200,000. It is also greatly under reported that when death certificates are filled out, medical facilities get more money if the cause is listed as COVID-19. 

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which oversees the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, under the federal corona virus aid relief bill known as the CARES Act, hospitals get an extra 20% on top of traditional rates due to the public health emergency (COVID-19) related admissions, which can include deaths. 

The pay-out amount varies, according to a Medicare spokesperson who said, "Medicare adjusts hospital payment based on geographic variation in local costs." 63 California hospitals received $50,000 for each eligible corona virus patient they admitted between Jan. 1 and June 10, 2020. That's $607 million.

There is a serious financial motivation to skew the numbers. Why isn’t this accurately reported?

The media has conveniently forgotten that the President shut down China travel, followed that up with banning European travel, all the while Biden was calling him xenophobic and racist.  Between hair appointments, Speaker Pelosi was parading through the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown a month after the travel ban, like a tour guide, stating that there was nothing to fear from the infection. Yet Trump is in hot water because he “downplayed” the flu.  Creating a public panic over this would have tanked the financial markets worldwide and he knew it.  

Maybe advocating masks and handwashing sooner would have made a difference but even the venerated Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn’t toting that behavior early on. Certainly, shutting down malls, restaurants, sporting events, etc., and not targeting the more vulnerable for quarantine was a mistake. Those advising the various government officials bear a shared blamed for this absence of critical analysis. Fair-minded people know that piling it on one man as the fault for the death toll is nonsense.

This Nation can ill afford another six months of economic chaos, closed schools and house arrest over a disease that reasonable measures will prevent the spread of. A vaccine will be available, and this pandemic will hopefully soon be history one way or another. 

In the meantime, wear a mask, wash your hands and let’s end the draconian shutdown of the Nation. NOW.