4/24/2020 The Morning Papers Quick Hitters

I woke up a little earlier than usual today. For no special reason, I was just up and decided to make my coffee and muffin and go through my morning papers. After I read the sports page stories of interest, I started working through the news and opinion sections. I found myself underlining bits and pieces of the various articles on the CCP Virus and it's devastating impact on life in the USA in 2020. I underlined so much, thinking that I'd use the excerpts in my blog today, that it got to be way too much. So, rather than posting the excerpts, I'll just make some bullet point "quick hitter" observations:

• Way more people have been exposed to the virus than had been previously thought. In New York City, more than 20% of people tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies. That equates to 1.8 million New Yorkers. Similar testing in both Santa Clara and Los Angeles, CA yielded similar results. This is telling. This stuff was around BEFORE we knew it. It's more contagious than we thought it was. Lastly, as a percentage of people infected, the mortality rate is just a little higher than it is for the annual influenza epidemic, WAY lower than the rates early models and strategies were predicated on.
• This virus targets old people. Half of all fatalities in New York were over 75. 95% were over 50.
• Nursing homes are the most dangerous place as far as catching the virus goes. There were 3500+ deaths in nursing homes so far in New York State.
• Nearly all (94%) coronavirus hospitalizations had other underlying ailments. Surprisingly, asthma was only present in 9%. High blood pressure (57%), obesity (42%), and diabetes (34%) were the biggest, and were cited as being present in many of the fatalities.
• New York City accounts for 16% of all CCP Virus cases in the USA, and 32% of all CCP Virus fatalities in the USA.
• New York City has 141,754 (53%) CCP Virus cases in New York State (263,460), but has 98% (15,411) of the total fatalities (15,740). There is either something very fishy about those numbers or.... no, there IS something fishy about those numbers. 
• 1/4 of New York City's 8.6 million could go hungry as a result of the pandemic. New York has 500,000 newly unemployed people, many of them primary breadwinners.
• 26.4 million Americans are out of work due to the CCP virus, with 4.4 million new claims were made for unemployment.

What's it all mean? Well, first off, as a raw number, it doesn't change the number of fatalities. A more accurate accounting of those fatalities would, in my opinion, but I didn't see that addressed in the papers specifically. How do I think a more accurate accounting would change things? As I have opined before, there is a big difference between someone dying WITH the virus and someone FROM the virus. The number being used to count CCP Virus deaths is tainted, as it is a WITH number, not a FROM number. Federal aid and reimbursement policy has incentivized hospitals inflating the death count. Also, at least in New York, a good number of the deaths attributed to the virus were not attributed based on tests, but rather it was based on symptoms. I don't see how those can be counted and assumed to have validity. But be those built in inaccuracies as they are, the real raw number is still what it is. In other words, a number is a number, regardless of what percentage of other larger numbers it computes to be. This stuff can and will kill you, being old and or having other illnesses moves you way up the list.

In many ways, this is a New York problem more so than anyplace else. Or I should say, it is a much bigger problem in New York. Why? Think subways, buses, elevators, ferry boats, crowded crosswalks, and large apartment buildings. Chances are where you live you don't come into near the amount of contact with other people that New Yorkers do. Not even close.

We are barrelling toward a new Great Depression because of the jobs lost from this pandemic. The worldwide economy is taking a beating. So is ours. Our government, in trying to help has amassed debt upon debt and we're in a hole that will already be hard to dig ourselves out of. In my opinion, the sooner we start to climb out of this hole, the better.

How do we start to climb out of this?

• Option 1 is to do nothing, to wait for cures and for a vaccine. Option 1 will just continue the digging. I can't endorse option 1.
• Option 2 is to lift all restrictions, let life return to normal. I don't know that there are many proponents of this option, but I think it's stupid. Sure, we will see the herd immunity we hear discussed soonest, but at a higher cost in lives lost.
• Option 3, targeted measures, is the answer. Keep social distancing rules and guidelines in place. Carefully determine what activities can and which can't take place while following whatever restrictions are deemed necessary and sensible. Make decisions on local, city, and state levels on what restrictions make sense. New York isn't Florida and Florida isn't Wyoming, and Wyoming isn't Ohio, etc. And New York City isn't Syracuse, or Cooperstown, or Watertown, or Elmira, NY, either. Whoever is using the analogy of peeing in just one end of the pool, please stop. People in Montana don't need to lose their businesses and their life savings because New York City has subways, buses, elevators and crowded crosswalks. On the other hand, people in New York City may need to endure restrictions for some longer period of time just due to the nature of life there. Continue to protect and isolate older Americans and Americans with illnesses that put them at high risk.

One last observation: I see people in the paper blaming the Mayor, others blaming the Governor. On social media and in the mainstream media many blaming the President. It's a goddamned virus people. If you want to blame, blame the Communist Chinese who hid, lied, and jeopardized the world with it by doing so.

Time for Option 3! Sooner, not later.