Thread by @the_brumby

MORE COVID THOUGHTS

Since my last “random backlog of covid musings” thread was popular, I thought I’d give it another shot. 22 quick thoughts/analogies/quotes/metaphors that I haven't had time to share previously:

1. The ppl who now claim it unreasonable to instantly give up masks & go back to work after 15 months of “new normal” r the same who scolded others for displaying any hesitation when forced to give-up an entire life’s work in Mar ’20 & embrace the criminalization of everyday life

2. The eagerness w which lockdown supporters are now embracing lab leak leads me to believe they view it as a scapegoat for why their abysmal policies didn’t work. ie NPIs/lockdowns would’ve stopped a natural virus but were no match for this manmade lab-freak. Don’t fall for it.

3. If the virus caused economic collapse rather than lockdowns (which I can barely type without vomiting), why does the chart of the Chicago Fed Nat’l Activity Index, designed to gauge overall US economic activity, look like this when COVID peaked in Jan 2021 not Mar 2020.

4. I am told Taiwan controlled COVID via masks, testing, and contact tracing. And the US should have simply followed suit (even though Taiwan is a small island). This is what is currently happening in Taiwan. Where is the follow-up story?

5. Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in their bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, & handed on for them to do the same”

Wow does that ring true. We came close this past yr. Thx federalism

6. The avg life expectancy in S Korea is 83.5 (#11). In N Korea it is 72.9 (#115)

To what exactly is this delta ascribed if not “the economy”?

The “choice” between lives & economy was always a false dichotomy; they are inextricably entwined to the point of being one in the same

7. Calif. Gov Newsom claims to care about equality. But he closed more small businesses than any other state & kept the most kids out of school. And now CA is sitting on almost 10 mil vax doses that could be shared w countries in need. And the result: 45% of LA got COVID anyway

8. CDC, in defending its collusion w/ teachers unions: “longstanding best practice for the CDC to engage w organizations, groups that r going to be impacted by guidance & recommendations issued by the agency” So I assume all those small businesses asked to be permanently closed?

9. According to the American Hospital Association, U.S. health spending fell for the first time in 60 years in 2020, with a 7% decline for hospital care.

Save the hospitals ... from bankruptcy.
aha.org/news/headline/….

10. When the gov’t promises that its restrictive measures to combat covid are temporary, recall global central banks said the same about their emergency measures / increase in balance sheets to combat the 2008 GFC. This is the course their “temporary” asset expansions have taken.

11. As lableak goes mainstream i can’t help but think of the long-game. Will countries seek reparations? Will that cause the “with” vs “from” distinction to undergo formal analysis? Will China say all lives would’ve been saved if US/others had just locked down harder like them?

12. For parents, serious question: acknowledging there is minimal risk of your child getting covid at school in the first place (and masks don’t make any difference), would you rather your kids (a) get covid or (b) have to suffer masks and distancing for another year?

13. In some respects, the COVID debacle reminds me of Enron’s collapse. It was a house of cards built of lies upon lies. You tug on 1 & the entire narrative falls apart. Just like prior immunity, asymptomatic spread, lab leak, lockdowns, aerosolized transmission, seasonality,etc.

14. In math, there’s a problem called the Yamabe Conjecture, for which mathematician H Yamabe offered theorems & provided a proof in 1960; it was “solved” for 8 yrs until Trudinger realized it was incorrect in 1968. In something as objective as math. “The Science” isn’t a thing.

15. I guess my memory must be fading as I get older… I don’t even remember the lockdowns in this picture. But we must have done them, right? I mean since behavior is the only thing at play in the spread of respiratory viruses? 🙄

16. One of my favorite proverbs from Greece: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in”

I had never considered what the opposite of that might be, but I now realize its basically what we did last year.

17. In hindsight, perhaps we are lucky Fauci doesn’t understand GDP is directly correlated with health & life expectancy – otherwise he would have demanded to seize control of the means of production.

18. In Jan 1944 NYTimes, Arthur Koestler writes “the BBC are quite competent at their job. For almost 3 yrs, they had to keep this country going on nothing but defeats & they succeeded”

I can’t help but notice now the opposite: holding people in fear amid a sea of good news

19. People often remark on the competing market for your attention (screens). However, I think the more important market (esp. over the last yr) is the one for your inattention. Inattention to numbers, wrong predictions, “fact-checked” hypotheses, censorship, critical thought,etc

20. Often when socializing with an acquaintance, something numerical pops up & they giggle (proudly) "I'm so terrible at math" I think we are currently witnessing the negative ramifications of that mentality on a global scale. Why is that ok? No one ever brags of being illiterate

21. RE: lockdowns UNICEF warned “an additional 6,000 children could die EVERY DAY from preventable causes over the next 6 months…due to reductions in routine health service coverage levels & an increase in child wasting”

By comparison, peak 7 day avg US COVID deaths was ~3,400

22. In Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles says “I believe that the people who institute our laws are the weak and the many. So they institute laws and assign praise and blame with themselves and their own advantage in mind.”

It was written 2400 years ago.