No Metric Will Ever Satisfy the Economy Shut-Downers
By John Fredericks and Curtis Ellis
Good news for America today as The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation – the closely watched University Washington study– updated its Coronavirus model again—two days after the last revision.
The projection of total COVID-19 related deaths is now 60,000 versus up to 240,000 just 5 days ago…and hospitalizations fell from 140,000 to 90,000 – a one third reduction.
The PEAK is now projected in three days, which is Saturday, incidentally, one day ahead of President Trump’s aspirational Easter Holiday projection of a few weeks ago.
Doctors Now Run The U.S. Economy
Meantime, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who some may be led to believe wants to shut the economy down until 2021, had to relent today, acknowledge that his modeling was flawed as well, and admit that his projections were off –and US COVID-19 deaths would be way down, thank goodness.
Oh, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in today’s presser: “All these projections turned out to be wrong.” We trust the good governor is busy asking for a refund on those 40,000 ventilators he ordered from the four corners of the globe. He left a note for the Door Dash delivery guy: “Never mind.”
Both Cuomo and Dr. Fauci were quick to emphasize that now is not the time to ease up on social distancing measures…because the shut-down is working. But the models predicted 240,000 deaths if we shut everything down. One thing we know isn’t working: the model.
Flawed Models Driving American Ruin
Therein lies the flaw with the analysis. Their model says with “scientific certainty” lock everything down and only 200,000 will die and the hospitals will not be overrun. When things improve beyond expectations, the “experts” say it’s because of the lock-down – and – according to the model that was just proven to be wildly inaccurate – we cannot let the greatest economy in the history of the earth start producing again or more people will die or be imperiled.
There is no hard evidence to support this, only computer projections. We are destroying millions and millions of lives and families and hopes and dreams based on an econometric medical model with no real evidence that shutting down the economy and destroying 30 million American jobs is helping to do anything but kill even more Americans—for reasons unrelated to catching the virus.
While the Fake News spews out “We must keep everything shut down” as gospel, there is no METRIC they ever mention.
It’s always open ended. What’s the number of beds that flatten the curve? What’s the number of ventilators we need? What’s the ICU number that is OK? All the real-world data, not models, Italian, French, swim suit, computer-generated or otherwise, but real-world data tells us in most places in America the hospitals are nowhere near close to being overwhelmed.
So in how many days can we let Americans go back to work and save their jobs—and their country?
The technocrats will never give you a number because they don’t have one. Just when it looks like we are meeting the goal – to flatten the curve, to save the hospitals from being overwhelmed – they move the goal posts. First, they said we had to cower in place so as not to over-run our health care system. Now we must stay locked in the root cellar to reduce the number of people dying. Tomorrow we will be told we can’t burn 99 cent a gallon gas driving alone in our car on an empty road in the middle of the night until the number of antibody tests performed reaches a yet-to-be-determined number of millions.
ZERO INSANITY
The only number they ever gave us is when Dr. Fauci said he’d feel comfortable opening the economy when the number of new cases is “zero.” That’s absurd.
On the other hand, shutting down the economy has real metrics:
- 10 million lost jobs in 2 weeks
- 30 million potential lost jobs
- 3 million small companies shuttered – and with it 3 million dreams shattered
- Lost wage-earning power that will take two decades to recoup
- Families disintegrating – savings depleted…depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug overdose, domestic violence, heart attacks, strokes and suicides…all of these are measurable and they will dwarf 60,000 dead.
- A generation that risks “failure to launch” and a lifetime of decreased earnings from this economic shock.
Maybe the infallible model will tell us exactly the number of incidents of liver disease, drug overdoses, suicides, domestic violence, assault, divorce, depression and other infirmities that will result from shattering the economy.
Computer simulations and projections are fine but what we are talking about are real people in the real world with real consequences.
American business and families can survive to April 30.
We need our country back.
We have seen that China has the capacity to stop our way of life.
We need to go back to work or China will have won.