Doomsday-Sale at Best Buy

It's quite creepy leaving your house and seeing streets empty, everything dead, people with masks on driving their car. Somehow, though, the most disturbing thing I've witnessed was at Best Buy this weekend. I was driving around and getting a sense of how many sign-flyers were still on the streets; quite a few, actually. They all say that the vagrant community is quite healthy, though there are vans coming through with forehead scanners daily. If that doesn't paint a perfect portrait of a dysfunctional society, I don't know what would.

After my brie f survey ,I ended up at the Destiny parking-lot. Although I had expected everything to be closed, signs advertised "Contact-less Pickup" proudly, like it's the new white-glove delivery. I guess Best Buy is considered essential, who knew? Apparently many people knew as cars were lining-up for Mother's Day sales, so many that I eventually got blocked-in. I watched for a while as suited and masked essential employees strapped giant TVs into the back of pick-up trucks so that the upper-crust could enjoy their lockdown in state-of-the-art comfort. It sent chills down my spine.

So lockdown isn't the same for everyone. If you have a nice large house and plenty of streaming subscriptions it goes easier than the poor crammed into their duplexes with several other people. No wonder they are out on the street in large groups whenever the weather lets-up. But the upper-class in their large houses don't know this, they stay home assuming that everyone else is doing the same, hypnotized by the media-machine, ratting-out their fellows. You can't blame them, can you?

Meanwhile the data keeps coming in bits and pieces, never connected into coherence by the media figures who only play one note all day: FEAR! CNN reports that genetic analysis of corona proves that it spread everywhere in about a month:

They also found genetic evidence that supports suspicions the virus was infecting people in Europe, the US and elsewhere weeks or even months before the first official cases were reported in January and February. It will be impossible to find the "first" patient in any country.

We are in a never-ending lockdown to supposedly stop a virus which is able to spread around the world in a month? Is it really plausible to think that lockdown can stop such a virus, once it has infected 12% of the population of NYS? It truly requires laudable doublethink to both believe that the virus is some terrifying super-bug, while also believing that a partial lockdown (ignored by at least half the population) will stop it!

But Georgia is opening-up, the sky hasn't fallen there. Florida is opening-up having never seen the doomsday predictions materialize. South Korea is doing fine, and they never imposed lockdown. And on and on. We are getting a clear picture of how COVID behaves and thinking people are able to calm-down. Remember that the major threat was always the possibility of over-loading the hospital system. This is not a real concern anymore. 

What is concerning is the infection of nursing homes and other high-risk environments. Perhaps we should have spent our money and resources on protecting those people instead of wasting it all on lockdown policies that don't protect those who need it most? Cuomo failed abysmally in this crucial test, forcing COVID into the homes with his infamous directive and then doubling-down on it.  But it does seems he has quietly backtracked and we are now allowed to protect our elderly, after paying a terrible price. The best thing we can do for our elders is to open-up immediately and let the virus finish it's growth cycle so they can come out of isolation. The longer this goes on, the more we "flatten the curve," the more of them will succumb to loneliness and despair. When all the comparisons are done I expect other states like NJ that had similar ghoulish mandates will be also be high-death outliers. It just goes to show that panic is not the proper way to handle a virus!

The virus is slowly stopping itself through natural burn-out. It was here un-noticed in December/January and has been petering-out since the peak in early March. Hero-doctor Erickson of Accelerated-Care interviewed Knut Wittowski last week and they went over the basic situation. Herd-immunity is quite close, it does not need 100% antibody protection to kick-in. In places with relatively low population density Wittowski says that large spikes are not likely even without antibody protection. There are also many people who shrug the virus off like nothing and are not effective spreaders. We are long past the worst of things and what we really need to be worried about now is the collateral damage of lockdown. At least you and I have to be worried about it, those people grubbing on-sale electronics are doing just fine! That's what really scares me.