Let’s be clear about it: the Wuhan Coronavirus is not a pandemic.
If we were in a normal situation, and the disease hadn’t been politicized, we could rely on recorded statistics to tell us whether or not COVID-19 should be classified as a pandemic. Unfortunately, this is not a normal situation. Statistics on the infection have been gamed and manipulated to inflate both incidence and fatality rates. I have no confidence in any of the aggregate statistics put out by state and federal governments.
Therefore I am forced to focus on anecdotal evidence and utilize common sense. For the past three or four months, during my very limited social interactions (mostly involving family and close friends), I’ve made it my habit to quiz people about their personal experience with the coronavirus: Do you know anyone who has contracted COVID-19? If so, did any of them die of it?
For myself, I don’t even know anyone who has tested positive for the disease, much less died of it. And the overwhelming majority of the people I asked don’t know anyone who has had it. Out of all the people I have asked, only one person knows someone (a very elderly person) who died of the WuFlu.
If this were a real pandemic, we would all know multiple victims of it. Every family would have seen at least one fatality from it. Every person would be able to give a lengthy roster of friends and relatives who had contracted it, some of whom would have died.
But this is most definitely not the case with COVID-19. The only encounter we have with alarming news about the disease is when we watch TV.
[An aside — I’m certain that nurses and other front-line health care workers would are exceptions to what I just described; none of the people I have talked to fall into that category. However, the experiences of medical professionals do not invalidate the general conclusion that COVID-19 is not a pandemic.]
The evidence is overwhelming that there is no justification for the draconian shutdowns and mask mandates and forced social distancing. The “pandemic” is all hype and hoopla aimed at credulous people with the evident intention of scaring them witless.
I have a couple of other points to make before I conclude this evening’s Corona rant.
Gates of Vienna’s long-time British commenter Mark H has compared the measures taken against the coronavirus — primarily the mask mandate — with those used to combat drunk driving. I have the highest respect for Mark, so it pains me to say that this is an inappropriate analogy. If contracting COVID is like a deadly encounter with a drunk driver, then the strictures imposed on the British public by Her Majesty’s government are like requiring ALL drivers to get off the road until the drunk drivers have all been neutralized. No one would be allowed to get into his or her car for fear of interacting with a drunk driver somewhere out there on the road.
A sane approach to the issue would be to help the small minority of people who are severely at risk — Mark is one of those — to deal with their situation. Detailed, unsensationalized information should be made widely available about the dangers of COVID-19 for the very elderly, people with respiratory diseases, diabetics, and acute sufferers from other chronic diseases. The resources of the state could be utilized to intervene with and protect people in those at-risk groups — to help them in their homes, deliver food to them, provide sanitizing materials gratis, etc. Meanwhile, relatively healthy people — the vast majority of the population — could go about their business unhindered.
That would be the sane approach to the issue, but governments throughout the West are collectively insane at the moment. It seems that scaring the bejeebers out of ordinary citizens is their preferred plan of action.
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The Disney Corporation announced that it will lay off 28,000 employees, mostly because of the fact that California’s COVID restrictions are keeping Disneyland closed. This despite the news that in September the USA experienced its strongest private sector job growth in three months.
I reported last weekend on the 
