Seeing a Pandemic

What you see is seldom what you get
depends on your needs, depends on your bet,
depends on your angle, depends on your debt.
depends if you’re hunting or struggling in a net
depends if you’re begging or 1st class in a jet.
You’ve probably not seen the worst or best yet.
But you’ve probably seen that life has no reset.

Dartwill Aquila

The Covid-19 pandemic has infected the world with many questions, most of which remain unsolved. Contradicting answers show up in different places. Even national authorities fly opposing views and claims from other nations and authorities.
Let’s stick to what is known.

Politics rides the wild pandemic sitting on a medical saddle. Politics rather than science shapes the public view. Powerful interests fog the atmosphere. The numbers tell one story, the media narrative tells another. This “pandemic” has caused the death of 0,003% of the world’s population. That differs insignificantly from a typical winter influenza. But the impression is formed that a Middle Age plague has been resurrected.
Politics. The politics of fear.

The death statistics beat drums of doom. Out of context. The daily tally rings a chilly toll. The elderly contracting the virus are portrayed as receiving a death sentence. “So and so many over 70 have died today”, we are told every day, and are given a comparison with the day before.

How refreshing to hear an interview with Professor Kim Woo-joo from (South) Korea University Hospital, one of the world’s leading experts on virus epidemics. When asked about the death rate for Covid-19 victims in Korea, Kim quoted the following statistics:
80 years of older = 11.6%
in their
70s = 6.3%
60s = 1.5%
50s = 0.5%
40s = 1 patient
30s = 1 patient
No deaths under 30.

Compare these figures with deaths among populations in general and discover that Corona isn’t a particularly dangerous medical condition for older people. Older people die more often than younger people. Surprise! Surprise!

Covid-19 statistics can also be compared with other causes of death. Take any death-causing disease and shout out the daily sum every day in every news report and watch that disease become the celebrity health-eating monster. Suicides have been increasing for years. I suspect the latest figures show an even greater increase because unemployment affects suicide frequency, and a tsunami of unemployment has resulted from the tactics to deal with Covid-19.

1% increase in unemployment causes an increase of 4000 to 40000 deaths in the USA depending the sources. 4000 or 40000? Big BIG difference. There is however not the slightest doubt that unemployment causes death. Even using the lowest estimate (4000 for 1% increase) we can see that the isolation response will kill far more people than the pandemic itself. This is a real life-taking monster in the room. But let’s not talk about that. It’s enough to drive some people to suicide. And death is only one aspect of unemployment. Megan McArdle called unemployment “A fate worse than Death” in a Time article (Feb. 19, 2014), and added, “Unemployment will always be one of the worst things that ever happened to you.”

Not true Megan. A politicized money-oriented way of life based on private-power (as opposed to a people-oriented way of life based on community power) is THE worse thing that has been happening to us for thousands of years. An open debate and honest research throughout a people-powered world would have answered all questions and equipped us to deal with this (perhaps severe) bout of influenza in short order while protecting those most vulnerable. In other words, 1% of the richest people on the planet are the least competent to deal with the health of 99% of the people. Yet they rule. Profit rules. Greed rules. As witnessed by science (truth) being subordinate to politics in the form of private power.

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The West Bank is now the Judea-Samaria area.