Listening to the mainstream media and other liberal news sites these days is doing nothing to lift our spirits. All they talk of is the number of sick and dead and how President Trump is lying to the American people every time he tries to offer us hope. In one example, Joel Shannon of USA Today wrote this headline: 10,000 now dead of Coronavirus, more battlefield fatalities than six wars combined.
A columnist writing about the stupid headlines in various newspapers commented that this was unfair since we never compare the 24,000 to 63,000 flu deaths estimated for this year, or the 70,200 people who died of drug overdoses in 2017, or the over 37,000 who die in motor accidents on average EACH YEAR with the number of war casualties. But I wanted to know exactly in which six wars we lost a total of less than 10,000 soldiers. Here is what I found out with a little help from Google.
Battle fatalities:
Revolutionary War (6,800)
War of 1812 (15,000)
Mexican War (25,000)
Spanish American War (4,068)
WWI (117,000)
WWII (407,000)
Korean War (36,574)
Vietnam (58,220)
Persian Gulf War (1,143)
2nd Iraq War (4,424)
Afghanistan (2,440);
The Revolutionary War and the Spanish American War alone are well over 10,000. The Persian Gulf War, the 2nd Iraq War, and Afghanistan total 8,007 fatalities, but add them to any other war and you are way over the 10,000. And those are only three wars! What six wars was Mr. Shannon talking about? No doubt wars in which none of us knew we were involved or “conflicts” where we were in no actual war but where some of our soldiers were sent to keep peace. A journalist who makes such a statement should back his claim up by naming the wars and the fatalities that he claims occurred. But such grandiose and misleading statements along with downright mistruths drip constantly from the pens and tongues of liberal media who seem tickled at the thought of the harm to Americans if it will somehow damage the President and cause him to lose the election in November.
But while every single death is a tragedy, death is an unavoidable part of life. 2.8 million Americans die every year, many of them from entirely preventable causes. Over 680,000 estimated deaths were from cancer in 2019. Yet, the media hype about the coronavirus and its apparently easy spread from one individual to another has ground our economy and our lives to a halt. President Trump hoped to open the economy back up to some degree by Easter, but instead listened to the advice of Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, and left our economy shut down for the remainder of April. Tucker Carlson, of Fox, has urged the reopening of the economy, saying “You want to keep Americans from dying before their time? Then don’t impoverish them.” Yet the experts seem to cling to their models which have predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths, even though Great Britain has revised the estimates from their models downward at least three times.
Douglas MacKinnon, a former White House and Pentagon official spoke to a number of doctors over the past weeks who all believe that the computer models are flawed and who strongly oppose the current lockdown policy. They certainly have merit. The university model that the government bases most of their policies on began by predicting 2.2 million American deaths if we took no measures to social distance ourselves. That number quickly was revised down to between 200,000 and 300,000 deaths, then to just over 80,000 deaths and today, down to just over 60,000 deaths. In the 2017-2018 flu season about 80,000 Americans died of the flu and the media scarcely took notice at all. Certainly no businesses closed, no one went about wearing masks, and there was no lockdown.
Today, Dr. Fauci announced that the decrease in hospitalizations, decrease in admissions to the ICU, and decrease in intubations as well as lower death numbers, suggests we are “turning the corner” on the virus. So, even he, though still tied to the models, begins to think the end may be in sight. If in fact, the national peak in the disease is supposed to be this week or next, we will see a decrease in number of fatalities and one can assume logically that that number will then be no greater that the number leading up to the peak. So, after all the hype, we may end up with only 24,000 – 30,000 deaths, less than are attributed yearly to the regular flu.
There is another problem associated with the number of deaths, now over 12,000, attributed to the Coronavirus or COVID-19. The CDC’s guidelines are unrealistically broad, insisting that anyone who has COVID-19 and dies is counted as a COVID-19 death. Even if doctors only think the patient might have COVID-19 when he dies, it must be counted. But a wide gap stretches between dying with COVID-19 and dying from COVID-19. In an actual case, no doubt one of many such cases, a man in a nursing home was on hospice care – the care that is provided to keep a dying patient comfortable for his/her last few days or weeks. No one goes into hospice care who is not in the process of dying imminently. This individual died, as he was expected to. But before he died, everyone in the nursing home was tested for COVID-19 and like many of his fellow residents, he tested positive. So, when he died, as he had always been expected to, his death was counted as a COVID-19 death, even though it was not COVID-19 which killed him!
Thus, the 12,000 plus deaths that the CDC currently attributes to COVID-19 most certainly contain many patients who died of unrelated illnesses, and who, in other countries, would not be counted as COVID-19 deaths.
This, added with the unreliable number of deaths admitted to by China, for example, tends to make the U.S. look as if we are hardest hit, no doubt, as the media would have you believe, because President Trump is mishandling the crisis. However, let us remember that 12,000 deaths out of a country of over 330,000,000 people is only 0.00003636363% of the population, and again, many of them probably died with the Coronavirus but not from the Coronavirus.
As for the “lockdown” conditions, most of the most invasive of these are coming from individual state and local governments who are becoming ridiculous in their rules, and not from President Trump. In more than a dozen states, residents face fines of thousands of dollars and jail time for leaving their homes. Putting someone in jail where he or she will be in close proximity to others is the exact opposite of what the states claim to be trying to do. But governments have grasped power over their residents and are using it in draconian ways. In Colorado, Alaska, Maryland, and Hawaii, residents who leave their homes without proper cause face up to a year in jail. One man was arrested for taking a drive, just a drive. Alone. In his car. With the windows shut. Who exactly was he endangering? Another young man was arrested for surfboarding on a deserted beach, by himself. And in Seattle, if someone calls you a nasty name, and you think it is hateful, you can call 911 and the police will respond to arrest the name-caller! Really? And we are letting our elected officials do this to us?
So where are we really? Millions are out of work temporarily although some government aid in the form of checks is on the way. Businesses are closed and although some may not be able to open again, I have faith in the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans. Banks are currently offering small business loans and with President Trump at the helm, more will be done to prop up the economy until it can find its feet again. The stock market has already begun to regain some of its losses as hope of a treatment for the virus and decreasing numbers of new illnesses suggest we may be winning the battle against this disease.
Much has been said about the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the virus. The President has spoken with great hope about the drug. Over 6,000 doctors around the world have agreed in a survey that it is the best treatment. A Democrat State Representative in Michigan, Karen Whitsett, was gravely ill with COVID-19 and thought she was dying. She was given hydroxychloroquine and within two hours began to feel better. She credits President Trump with her survival, but the mainstream media are not so generous. Despite the fact that when asked if he would give it to a patient of his, Dr. Fauci answered “Yes” without reservations or conditions, and despite the fact that the FDA has approved it to treat COVID-19, the media continues to talk it down, claiming it is dangerous to use it, that it has not been approved, and that Dr. Fauci says it needs more clinical trials. As Dr. Fauci himself understands, the time for clinical trials with a drug that has been used for years to safely treat Malaria and Lupus, is not in the middle of a pandemic, especially when thousands of anecdotal cases from doctors are proving its efficacy.
So, we may be seeing fewer illnesses and deaths, and while we yet have no vaccine, there is a treatment, hydroxychloroquine which is working in patient after patient. Even among the elderly and those with underlying ailments, it has cured them. A doctor in New York treated 72 COVID-19 patients in their 70s and 80s, all with underlying ailments. He gave them all hydroxychloroquine and after at least 5 days of treatment, none of them had to be intubated. It seems to be working even among that most vulnerable group.
In addition, a university lab in New England has a vaccine ready to test and a clinical trial of another vaccine in under way in Washington State. Hope is here.
And every day, despite the ridiculous questions from some members of the press, the President and Vice President give a briefing on the virus to the country. And they are always hopeful, as I am hopeful. To go farther, I believe they have faith as I have faith: in this great country, in its people, and in the God in whose name it was founded.
Columnist Salena Zito is less hopeful. She writes, “That dry cleaner where you dropped your shirts off to be pressed every week may never open its doors again. The deli that makes your favorite tuna melt might not have one ready for you right when you walk in the door every Friday at lunchtime. The waitress who knew you by name may have moved back home with her parents because she couldn’t afford that apartment anymore, even when she shared it with three other girls.”
But I don’t think she is right. I think the dry cleaner will be back, the deli will have been serving delivery and curb side throughout the lock down and will hire back its wait staff. And the waitress who may have moved back home will move right back to take up her job again. You can’t keep Americans down! And with a businessman at the helm, this economy, powered by you and by me, will take off like a greyhound on a race course.
Another columnist, Robert Charles, feels much as I do. He says, “We Americans are an incredible lot, never stronger than when we pull together, lift together, work together, hope and pray together. We are – objectively, as history is our unwavering witness – unstoppable.”
So where are we really? On the road to recovery!