A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-COVID Strategy
Extracted in part from Hillsdale College IMPRIMIS magazine article • Volume 49, Number 10
In March of 2020 we were promised relief and “safety” from this virus…
- If all of America locked down for 2-3 weeks in March “to flatten the curve" and ensure the hospitals weren’t overwhelmed
- If all of America “Practiced Social-Distancing”
- If all Americans wear masks to protect each other from infection
- If we shut down schools until September 2020.
How well did this strategy work?
- Lockdowns are still ravaging the society. Hospitals were never overwhelmed. The curve never flattened.100,000 businesses have gone under.
- We’re still “distancing”, but the media and “scientists” (those that are politically correct) continue to instill fear by telling us “cases” are going wild and only masks and lockdowns will fix it.
- We’ve been “masking” for over 6 months, yet the infections are increasing while death rates have plummeted??
- It’s December and most schools are still closed for in-person learning
In the process, most states defined “essential businesses”, indiscriminately picking winners and losers. Most small businesses became the losers. And Churches became BIG losers while casinos, liquor stores, abortion clinics, and politicians were able to carry on their business as if nothing happened.
Note that NEVER in the entire history of man have viruses been treated in this way. It has always been the protocol to isolate/quarantine those who are sick or most vulnerable. Never has a nation quarantined the healthy and least vulnerable.
For good reason, Christians should question these decisions which our government and institutions have made without our consent. It certainly appears that the drastic steps they have taken have been highly uncalled for, illogical, unscientific and discriminatory. Continuing on the same course will only make things worse for us all, so the question is what should we be doing? The first thing is to become factually informed.
Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, recently co-authored “The Great Barrington Declaration” – a document signed by (at this date) over 50,000 medical and public health scientists and medical practitioners as well as more than 682,000 ordinary people - that lays out what they call “a sensible and compassionate anti-COVID strategy”.
Here are some highlights from this timely article:
“We have heard much this year about the ‘case fatality rate’ of COVID. In early March, the case fatality rate in the U.S. was roughly three percent—nearly three out of every hundred people who were identified as “cases” of COVID in early March died from it. Compare that to today, when the fatality rate of COVID is known to be less than one half of one percent.
“In other words, when the World Health Organization said back in early March that three percent of people who get COVID die from it, they were wrong by at least one order of magnitude. The COVID fatality rate is much closer to 0.2 or 0.3 percent. The reason for the highly inaccurate early estimates is simple: in early March, we were not identifying most of the people who had been infected by COVID...
“In April, I ran a series of studies, using antibody tests, to see how many people in California’s Santa Clara County, where I live, had been infected. At the time, there were about 1,000 COVID cases that had been identified in the county, but our antibody tests found that 50,000 people had been infected—i.e., there were 50 times more infections than identified cases. This was enormously important, because it meant that the fatality rate was not three percent, but closer to 0.2 percent; not three in 100, but two in 1,000.
“It still seems to be a common perception that COVID is equally dangerous to everybody, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a thousand-fold difference between the mortality rate in older people, 70 and up, and the mortality rate in children... the fact is that for young children, this disease is less dangerous than the seasonal flu. This year, in the United States, more children have died from the seasonal flu than from COVID by a factor of two or three."
Unintended Consequences of the Unprecedented Lockdown Policies
- “The U.N. has estimated that 130 million additional people will starve this year as a result of the economic damage resulting from the lockdowns.
- “People stopped bringing their children in for immunizations against diseases like diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and polio, because they had been led to fear COVID more than they feared these more deadly diseases. Eighty million children worldwide are now at risk of these diseases.
- “Large numbers of Americans, even though they had cancer and needed chemotherapy, didn’t come in for treatment because they were more afraid of COVID than cancer.
- “Mental health problems are in a way the most shocking thing. In June of this year, a CDC survey found that one in four young adults between 18 and 24 had seriously considered suicide. Human beings are not, after all, designed to live alone. We’re meant to be in company with one another.”
I encourage you to read the entire article from Hillsdale College’s Imprimis Magazine by clicking HERE.
As you become more informed you will become less fearful of this virus and wiser in how you can respond in a manner that benefits everyone around you.
You will also be calmed as you see how fearfully and wonderfully God has equipped our bodies to fight off infections of all kinds.
“I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” For He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and buckler.” -Psalm 91:3