For those reading this in the future, in early January 2020, a disease emerged from China called COVID-19 (CV). It was a new variant of a family of viruses known as "coronaviruses". As a result of this disease, a huge portion of the U.S. and world economies were shut down to stem the tide of infection. It was labeled a "pandemic". Fortunately, it was nowhere near as deadly and damaging as predicted. Unfortunately, the official and public reactions painted this as another "black plague", when in fact it was little more than another bad seasonal flu.

The disease and the panic

All official reaction to CV was based on a computer model. The problem was that the code used to create this model was poor, and biased in favor of the worse possible outcome. Thus, public officials were driven to take the most extreme measures.

But there were problems.

The disease response never matched the model. There were far fewer infections and far fewer deaths than predicted. In fact, by the numbers, CV has been more or less comparable to the seasonal flu. It was not an order of magnitude worse than the flu or even close.

Public officials were badly advised. Their advisors looked at the model and agreed with it in the face of evidence to the contrary. Why? In some cases, they couldn't admit being wrong. That's always hard, particularly for people in power. In some cases, they had a vested interest in prolonging the panic. They had investments in drug companies which stood to make a great deal of money on expensive treatments and vaccines. They had to protect the reputation of the health care industry, which botched their predictions badly.

Public officials also botched their handling of the crisis. In one case, a governor sent infected elderly into nursing homes populated by other elderly people. He claimed he was acting on Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance, but in fact, the CDC recommended no such thing. The result was an epidemic of deaths, because CV tends to hit the elderly and those with prior health conditions more heavily.

Another problem was and continues to be false infection and mortality numbers. When a person is tested positive, if they come back in a few days or weeks to be retested and test positive again, they are counted as a new CV case. So infection numbers are false, whether by incompetence or on purpose. Mortality rates have been inflated by counting a CV death when an infected person dies, even if the infection was incidental, and what killed them was some other health condition. Inflating the numbers in these ways has some benefit for those invested in the continuation of the panic. But it makes the numbers false, and lends additional credence to the idea that this "pandemic" isn't anything like as bad as it's been promoted.

"Herd immunity"

Viruses like CV operate by using chemicals on their surfaces to gain entrance into cells. Once inside, they inject DNA or RNA which then are replicated by the cell. The cell becomes a factory for creating new viruses.

The human body is equipped with quite a phenomenal immune system. We are bombarded daily with germs and viruses that the body easily sloughs off. If you were a kid a few decades ago, you probably drank from the garden hose, ate fresh fruit off trees without washing it first, and skinned your knees regularly on playground blacktop. When you were young, you may have even eaten dirt. And you're still alive.

The human immune system typically recognizes foreign invaders and ramps up the body's immune response to counter them. Seasonal allergies are an example of the body operating to fight off the effects of pollen, which the body sees as an enemy.

Vaccines typically work by exposing you to a weakened or dead version of the invader, and letting the body muster its defenses in response. It's not potent enough to kill or infect you, but it is enough to prompt your body's cells to change what they're doing to meet the threat.

Living in the world, whether it's the year 4000 BC or now, is like an ongoing exercise in vaccination. People you meet, people you know, people in your family all slough off thousands of germs and viruses constantly. You take these in, either by breathing the same air, touching them, touching surfaces they've touched, or more intimate contact. And each time you do, your body responds by going into action to defeat these microscopic enemies. Most of the time, you never notice this happening. Once in a while, you get a cold. But normally you walk around like nothing happened.

This is "herd immunity". It's a well known concept in immunology. It's how you manage to stay alive, given all the microscopic invaders in your environment. As with everything else, this herd immunity works with CV as well.

It's also worth noting that some people cannot get CV. Their cells are configured in such a way that they don't allow entrance to CV. Thus, the virus can't gain entrance and cannot replicate. It is simply rejected.

The handling

The handling was an inevitable response to the flawed model. First, we must shut down the economy. Almost entirely. Of course, you could go to the store, but forget finding many of the items which were always there before. These shortages were a combination of excessive panic demand, and shortages on the supply end. While grocery stores remained open, the factories and companies which made your grocery items may have been closed in panic. Instant supply disruption.

The backbone of this country is small businesses. While big business gets the most attention and concessions from Congress, small businesses make up a huge part of the American economy. Restaurants, bars, barbers, hair and nail salons, clothing stores, and many many others. In general, these people don't have six months worth of reserves to be able to wait out a disaster. A few weeks, a couple of months, and they're gone. That's one of the legacies of shutting down an economy.

This also means the closure of schools. Suddenly children normally away during the day must be at home. And someone has to be at home to supervise them. That often means one parent must be out of work while the kids are at home. Another blow to the income of working families. The education solution is to school children via the Internet. While you probably take the Internet for granted, there is a significant portion of the population which doesn't have Internet access, or whose Internet access is so slow as to make web-based education impractical. Moreover, except for the most motivated of students, the results of online education are rather bleak. Even teachers acknowledge that when schools reopen, they will have a lot of lost ground to cover.

An additional problem here is that, in anticipation of schools reopening in a month or so from this writing, teachers unions have made fantastic and bizarre demands. Teachers will get paid whether they teach or not, and whether they do it in person or not. Since they've been fed the same lies as everyone else, they're afraid of going into classrooms with children who might carry CV. What they're ignoring is the fact that children carry one quarter of the viral load of adults. So even if a child is infected, they're only 25% as likely to spread it. But teachers' unions have put up barriers to reopening, like insisting the "Green New Deal" be enacted first, which has nothing to do with teaching or school reopenings. They're holding governments hostage. It's also worth noting that teachers unions are significant contributors to political parties.

Next up, wearing masks. CV is typically not spread by personal contact. And it doesn't survive well at all on surfaces and is easily killed. It is spread by droplets containing CV, expelled by coughing, sneezing and the like. Masks could help prevent this in persons who are infected. However, it's become apparent that asymptomatic people typically don't spread CV. So why are they wearing masks? The official line is that masks protect others from you, so wearing them is a humanitarian gesture. And sometimes people tell themselves they're doing it for that reason.

Unless masks are mandated, people wearing them typically do so out of fear of infection from others. In fact the hysteria has ramped up to the point that you're considered antisocial if you don't wear them. And again, officials who are badly informed are mandating them. This includes many stores.

But there are problems with masks as well. It's become apparent that those without symptoms do not spread CV, mask or no mask. Perhaps if you're symptomatic, but.... Worse, masks heavily increase the amount of carbon dioxide a person breaths in. My wife has personally talked to two women who had to wear masks for work and went home daily with headaches. In addition, humans inhale and exhale thousands of viruses every day as part of life. Wearing masks simply recirculates these disease vectors, including CV. In effect, if you're infected, you're constantly reinfecting yourself if you wear a mask.

Then there's "social distancing". Factually, there is no scientific evidence that this is a valid or worthwhile strategy. The idea started as a 15 year old's science project and was elevated to public policy from there. There is no more scientific validity to it than that.

Lastly, quarantine and lock-down. If CV had a death rate of 20% this might be part of a reasonable strategy. If the infection caused severe and life threatening symptoms, this might likewise be valid. But the death rate is very low, and most who are infected have no or only minor symptoms. The elderly are the most at risk, and children are virtually unaffected. Worse, the attitude is that anyone you know could have it and not know it, so we have to lock everyone down just in case.

Consider this for a moment. You've got 300 million people, the vast majority of whom are not infected. And the ones who are, have few or no symptoms. Only the very old are at significant risk. So the disease itself is roughly equivalent to the seasonal flu. But we have to isolate even the uninfected, because we just don't know who might be infected. And that means shutting down most of the country for what is essentially a flu.

How does this make sense?

The media

Maybe you weren't aware of it, but the news media does not have your best interests in mind when they report the news. They are in business to agitate people. They believe the more they do this, the more money they make and the more influence they will have. They report things which make you angry or sad, and ignore things which don't. When was the last time you saw a report of an old lady saved from injury by a good Samaritan? But the media's complicity is more profound than this. News organizations selectively report stories and selectively report the details of those stories, all designed to fit some agenda. You'd like to believe that news organizations are unbiased reporters of important events which might affect you. If you think this, you've been duped. If the agenda of the day is that X politician is bad, then every story will be written in such a way as to make that point. And any stories which don't fit that narrative will be suppressed.

And so it is with CV. News people aren't experts, so they have to rely on the opinions of people they designate as experts. Notice I use the term "designate". Those advising news organizations may or may not have any real expertise. Or they may have expertise, but an expertise only tangential to the subject at hand. Or they may have opinions not shared by others who have similar or superior expertise. The important point is that these experts can deliver viewpoints which fit with the underlying narrative of the news organizations.

Also, reporters are generally poor researchers. I follow the tech press, and I can't tell you how many tech stories are incorrect or inaccurate, just because "tech" reporters fail to understand the field they are reporting on, and do inadequate research. They often report things which are incorrect or outright lies.

And this is the case with CV. Because the media's job is to agitate, they will seek out those "experts" who can give them opinions which correspond to the narrative they are trying to forward. They will and have painted CV as the killer of the 21st century. They will frighten you into wearing masks everywhere and staying at home, because those are the marks of a fearful population. And that's their narrative.

Social media

Social media deserves their own place in all this. If you disagree with the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) or the CDC etc. If you promote the idea that CV is about the same as the seasonal flu, you are ostracized. Not, "Let's have a robust debate". Not, "Let's discuss that". No, we as the gods of social media, decide the fate of your ability to speak your piece. And if we don't agree, you're out.

Doctors

Most people never question the opinion of medical professionals. Why would they? Doctors have years and years more education than you do. So of course, they're right. Except they're not.

For example, doctors often rely on peer reviewed studies published in medical journals. But what if one of those studies turns out to be weak or false or badly executed? The journal may retract the study, but it doesn't get much coverage. After all, the journal botched it by accepting the study in the first place. Admitting it was wrong affects their reputation as well. And will all the doctors who read the study be notified that it was bogus? They're not obligated to read medical journals cover to cover. They're likely to miss a small retraction.

You've probably heard of medical studies which prove eggs or salt are bad for you. Then some months later a new study emerges claiming the opposite. Both can't be true. So one or both groups of doctors were wrong. This happens more than you realize.

It's also worth noting that medical studies are paid for. And those who pay for them may dictate the results they want, and suppress studies which don't match their agenda.

The doctor business is a fraternity of sorts. I recently had a skin cancer removed by a dermatologist. It was quite a large wound and required the skin to be stitched tightly back together. Two weeks went by and it was time to have the stitches removed. But my original dermatologist wasn't available, so I saw his partner instead. He examined the wound and decided it was okay to remove the stitches. Within two days, the wound had reopened completely. The stitches had been removed too soon. When I later went back to the original dermatologist, it was clear from his reaction that the stitches had been removed too early. Did he blame his colleague or even admit he had made a mistake? Never.

I've seen countless doctors interviewed and asked if such and such other doctor had the wrong idea or wrong opinion, and I've never seen one admit it. They dance around and obfuscate. That other doctor is part of the club. He's from the doctor fraternity. And we don't rat on our own. If you want an extreme example of this type of behavior, look to the U.S. Senate. Or the mafia.

The flip side of this fraternity thinking is that doctors will tend to buy what other doctors say without fully examining whether it is true or not. So when some 15 year old kid in Arizona does a science project which "proves" social distancing is a worthwhile thing and some other doctor agrees, well that's good enough. If Dr. Bill says so, it's probably true.

The pharmaceutical industry

Medicine is driven by the pharmaceutical industry, and has been since the early 20th century. Regarding CV, numerous studies have shown that supplementing with vitamin C and zinc go a long way toward preventing infection. Other studies have shown that CV can be effectively treated with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) or HCQ with certain widely available antibiotics (to handle ancillary infections). HCQ is relatively cheap and has been used for decades in the treatment of malaria, for one.

But pharmaceutical companies don't make much money on HCQ and widely available common antibiotics. So if it was widely accepted that HCQ easily handled CV, it wouldn't be good for their bottom line. And as a result, numerous news stories have been planted to cast HCQ in a bad light. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is heavily tied to the drug industry has strongly discouraged the use of HCQ. Instead, the pharmaceutical industry has pushed very expensive new medications with weak efficacy (they don't work well). And the promise of a vaccine. Of course, there are numerous coronaviruses out there, and none have a successful vaccine attached to them.

The pharmaceutical industry, for all the good many of their drugs have done, works in the background to increase the use of drugs which don't work very well and have numerous side effects. How many commercials have you seen where this or that drug company is pushing some expensive medicine to treat rheumatoid arthritis or lumbago? "Ask your doctor about Deoxyribonucleic Acid today!" Ever pay attention to some of the side effects? You wouldn't give these preparations to people you hate, much less take them yourself. Meanwhile, modest drugs like HCQ, or supplements like vitamin E do wonders and make the drug companies almost nothing.

Politics

Politics has played a far greater role in this crisis than you might think. First, there is a U.S. presidential election coming up in November of this year. Donald Trump is running for re-election. For five years, significant portions of both the left and right have harassed him and attempted to sabotage his presidency. Some have remained rabid since his election in 2016. To have him re-elected would be a disaster. What to do? Perhaps if we destroyed the largest economy in the world, people would vote for someone else? So we feed the hysteria. We make CV out to be the worst pandemic in memory. We close schools, factories, restaurants. We pit citizens against poorly informed governments who believe the press hype about CV. We sow discontent. Who can we get to help us? Well, the press is a willing conspirator. This is right up their alley.

Think that people wouldn't go that far to prevent the re-election of a president they don't like? Think again. Many people disliked Barack Obama, but they never made any serious moves to destroy him. By contrast, a small vocal minority has actively hated Trump since before he was elected, and worked tirelessly to wreck his presidency and his chances for re-election. Politics, like medicine is a boys' club. And Trump is not a member.

And consider for a moment the depravity of this strategy. We want to shut down the whole American economy just to prevent that bad guy from getting re-elected. How many lives and careers and families must be ruined to execute such a strategy?

But there's a deeper dimension to the politics. Almost since the beginning of this country, there are been forces which have continually attempted to sabotage it and bring it down. Most visibly, the communists have constantly moved in this direction. In case you're interested, in 1963, the Communist Manifesto was read into the congressional record. Included were 45 goals the communists were working towards. Here's a sample:

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

That's already happened. One among many communist accomplishments.

But it's not just about communism and communists. There is a class of people who seek, for various reasons, to bring down this country and the way of life we enjoy. Various high profile organizations preach one thing, but their activities reveal their true intentions. If they don't seek the complete destruction of our way of life, they instead seek to sow division, discontent and destruction on a smaller scale. There are those who believe that America is on the wrong path, and the solution is the destroy America and start all over again. Never mind the cost of such destruction.

These people thrive on fear and hate. And CV is yet another vehicle to move their plans forward. This is not an organized single entity. It's many entities and many people, but they have in common a desire to destroy what's been built, to sabotage our society.

And unless we (you and I) do something, they will succeed.

CV

Clearly the infection and mortality figures are inflated and can't be trusted. However, if you drill down, it appears that CV mortality and infection rates are comparable to the seasonal flu. Notice I say "comparable". Meaning, having death and infection rates more or less similar to flu. As in not bubonic plague. As in not 50% infection and 20% mortality rates. Typically, the disease presents with no symptoms or mild symptoms. The greatest mortality risk is in the elderly. Children carry only one quarter of the adult load of the virus, and are almost never affected. The disease clears in ten days. Unfortunately, if you've had a coronavirus infection at some time in the past (like SARS), tests may show you have been infected by this coronavirus, when in fact what the tests are seeing is reaction to the prior infection. There is some evidence that prior coronavirus infections help proof you against CV.

Except in the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, CV isn't really a very serious health threat. We have a comparable number of infections and deaths each year from the seasonal flu. And yet we've all been led a dance about how bad CV is, and told we must isolate, distance and mask up.

Conclusion

Doctors have mistakenly put their faith in faulty models, and then failed to abandon them when the data showed the model was lying. Politicians mistakenly followed bad advice from the medical community. People who are too easily scared and too spineless to question the reaction have gone along with (illegal) orders to isolate and mask up. Corporations have gone along out of fear. And in the background, a number of revolutionists and Trump haters have grinned at this whole sordid affair.

Is this what they call the "New World Order"?