When is Right Time to Downscale COVID19 Pandemic Measures?

Today, the UK scientist responsible for much of the COVID19 pandemic panic rolls retreats on his alarmism to admit only a fraction of predicted deaths are likely. As panic abates, rational minds consider when normality should be allowed to return.

Here are some thoughts on the issue.

My brother-in-law retired from the lower management ranks of Chrysler some years back. He speaks with some knowledge about driverless cars.

I believe the first application will be for long distance truckers cruising the wide-open spaces of the U.S. Interstate highways, with minimal to no traffic. Just like an airliner is switched to autopilot, it is reasonable that long distance trucks will be equipped with autopilot, allowing the driver to rest and even doze with an alarm to awaken him should traffic thicken or obstructions appear on the road. Of course, the driver would take command in heavy traffic areas and certainly to exit.

When will all this happen?  It depends upon when “is it good enough”.  The same can be said about the Coronavirus.

The political blame game can only persist for so long. Certainly, we have respiratory maladies like influenza, pneumonia, SARS, and MERS. We also live with AIDS and HIV.

From the Coronavirus we have learned the importance of maintaining a significant quantity of ventilators. General Motors (one of those large corporations so vilified by the Leftist Democrats) is converting a plant in Indiana to crank out ventilators in large numbers. When this crisis passes, these ventilators will be distributed to all medical centers and clinics across the Nation. FEMA will store any excess ventilators for rapid deployment.

Virologists and related medical researchers are on the front lines in seeking cures. Those learnings in testing and methods will stay with us. All praise for their efforts.

Returning to the comparison with driverless cars, the containment and extraordinary measures for Coronavirus will reach a point where it is deemed to be “good enough”. All professions have these practical limits. Medicine is no different.

As President Trump has observed, there reaches a point where economic issues overtake the virus in our concerns. In both the Great Depression and Great Recession, homes were lost, marriages dissolved, those with anxiety or vulnerable mental faculties broke down and even resorted to suicide.

At some point, when we have adequately “flattened the curve”, we will have to say, “this is good enough” and return to normal living as all Free People must do.

I still have a faded spot on my upper arm from my small pox injection as a child. I recall trooping down from my elementary school to the local fire house to receive a sugar cube saturated with the oral polio vaccine. Small pox and polio — gone — in the span of my life.

We have not only learned so much in practical measures, I am much of a mind that the youngsters who seem to invent boogie men ( i.e. Greta the Climate Scold) will look about them to understand that the media and government agencies hide many things from us and control us with misinformation.


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Comments (4)

  • Avatar

    richard

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    I don’t believe governments actually wanted to lock down but it was thrust upon them.-

    “Yet the Canadian government is planning to enforce a two-week quarantine at a Canadian Forces Base in Trenton for the 211 apparently healthy people being evacuated Friday from the epicentre of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. Quarantine measures are being invoked worldwide, from the United States, Australia and Hong Kong to a pair of cruise ships anchored in Asia, one of which is carrying at least 251 Canadians.

    The Diamond Princess cruise ship with around 3,700 people on board, including 251 Canadians, sits anchored in quarantine off the port of Yokohama, Japan, on Wednesday after 10 passengers were confirmed to be infected with coronavirus.

    Infection control experts say there is no health-based reason to justify Ottawa’s quarantine measures. The decision is more likely a political response to a different epidemic: the spread of fear and anxiety.”

    So they had to play the game , lock down to please the populace and the foolish, alarmist MSM. But at the same time you have to get the country back up and running. The UK locked down the country and now have announced it will peak in two weeks. The game has been played the population have been assured even though there was no problem. It is all smoke and mirrors. They can be told this lock down has worked the experts have said it is ok and the story is complete with the happy ending.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Jerry Krause

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      Hi Richard,

      Started my other comment before I had read your comment.

      “Infection control experts” know there is not prevention against the common cold. And to my knowledge (which is limited) the common cold does not commonly kill old people even with other health issues at the rate this disease does. Yes, old people with other health issues have died from previous flues.

      Now, I need to review another fact. There are fewer people between 90 and 100 than between 80 to 90 etc. down to the age when these numbers reverse. Hence, since it seems the older are most at risk the numbers who die will be less than those numbers of a much greater population. Now what ones does depends, in this present case, upon home much we need to protect the aged who are going to some die anyway. Sound harsh but that is, in this case, an issue. Want to make this decision with limited information and no documented ‘sure prevention or sure treatment”??? For it seems we are not close to
      “Small pox and polio — gone”.

      Have a good day, Jerry.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Jerry Krause

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    Hi Richard,

    I don’t know much but I have read (https://principia-scientific.com/before-coronavirus-china-bungled-swine-epidemic-with-secrecy/) : “All this happened long before China’s coronavirus outbreak, which has claimed more than 3,000 lives worldwide in less than three months. For the past 19 months, secrecy has hobbled the nation’s response to African swine fever, an epidemic that has killed millions of pigs. A Reuters examination has found that swine fever’s swift spread was made possible by China’s systemic under-reporting of outbreaks. And even today, bureaucratic secrecy and perverse policy incentives continue undermining Chinese efforts to defeat one of the worst livestock epidemics in modern history.”

    I have read question after question: Where did this virus come from? And no one here at PSI has connected this March 8 posting with a possible answer to this question. And I have heard no mention as to this possible source of the coronavirus. Reading further: “With swine fever, Beijing set a tone of furtiveness across government and industry by denying or downplaying the severity of a disease that the meat industry estimates has shrunk China’s 440-million-hog herd by more than half. The epidemic has taken a quarter of the world’s hogs off the market, hurt livelihoods, caused meat prices to spike globally and pushed food inflation to an eight-year high.” From a graph of these meat prices we can see that the prices spiked to a high in October 2019 and dropped sharply and then began a gradual increase near the previous high by February 2020 after which it dropped slightly.

    Now African swine fever is a known swine disease whose cause is known and there is vaccine for it. I do not know if the Chinese swine producers vaccinated their pigs but if they did it obviously wasn’t very effect. So I expect this was a ‘new’ cause as it possibly created the ‘new’ virus which seems to be creating a new human disease.

    Among swine producers it is well known that swine herds must be quarantined as much as possible from each other because of swine fever irregardless where it first originated to prevent what has just happened. And once one animal is know to have the disease the only really effect solution is to kill the whole possibly healthy members of the whole herd and burn them or bury them deeply. Which clearly wasn’t done for whatever reason.

    But secrecy among the swine producers was not the problem. The problem was possibly was there was no known vaccine for the disease. Know I do not know if many readers know how fast the turn around for swine is. Five month from birth to market at about 200 pounds. Hence, herds can be replenished somewhat quickly, as a litter should average 10 or more piglets per sow. That is if there is a vaccine to prevent the ‘new’ disease. This much I know from experience as a small swine producer for a few years.

    So I believe that a new vaccine for the swine was be attempted to be created at Wuhan as that would have been the only solution to the swine fever problem and will be the only solution to COVID 19.

    Have a good day, Jerry

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Bolton Davidheiser

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    Fellas. This will never go away. This is just the beginning. Complete control over the populace.

    Reply

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