By Randy Rossi -
Life has always been and will always be somewhat dangerous. Our ancestors understood that reality and took on high risks to accomplish magnificent things. But sadly, our government’s overreaction to the Coronavirus and the public’s timid acceptance of it prove how far our culture has declined. Which is worse America, allowing the government to shut down our economy which will ruin the lives of tens of millions of Americans who will lose their jobs and incomes or live with the risk of catching the Coronavirus which has a fatality rate for most healthy Americans under 60 roughly equal to the normal annual flu? Which risk would you rather take, a 100% probability that we will all suffer massively by shutting down our economy or a 0.1% chance that those under 60 will die from the Coronavirus?
The Wall Street Journal predicted that shutting down our economy to protect us from the Coronavirus will destroy tens of millions of jobs and millions of small businesses and it has already caused a $10 trillion reduction in the 401Ks and retirements of 52% of all Americans who have 401Ks because of the incredible losses of the stock market. By mandating that all restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters, and other businesses close and all American stay home and shelter in several states; we are destroying those businesses and taking the incomes away from tens of millions of Americans. That will cause massive economic damage to all Americans and dramatically hurt our quality of life. On the other hand, the fatality rate of the Coronavirus for healthy people under 60 is roughly equal to the annual flu which is around 0.1%. The only people who have a higher fatality rate are people over sixty with other health issues, many of whom are already retired. Instead of ruining the lives of everybody in America, shouldn’t we focus on isolating those vulnerable older people and allow younger healthy people to keep our economy vibrant and strong? It is worth repeating that shutting down our entire economy has a 100% chance of causing massive long term damage for all Americans while allowing healthy people under 60 to live their lives and keep our economy strong while isolating people over 60 is the rational, adult solution that our ancestors would be proud of and will keep our economy strong!
As you ponder this let’s review some facts. So far this year 29 million Americans have caught the normal flu and 20,000 have died from it. Did we shut down our economy? Of course not. Every year we deal with that reality and the flu kills between 20,000 to as many as 70,000 which it killed in 2017. We have learned to deal with that reality. After all, roughly 30,000 Americans die in car accidents every year and we keep driving cars. So far this year roughly 22,000 Americans have caught the Coronavirus and 281 have died from it. Every death is a tragedy but death is a part of life. The original fatality rate of the Coronavirus was highly overestimated because of a lack of testing. Many people who get the Coronavirus don’t even have symptoms or just get a cold. That creates a math problem because it artificially increases the fatality rate. The more people that catch the Coronavirus and survive reduces the fatality rate. The best data comes from South Korea which conducted 140,000 random tests of Coronavirus. Of that 140,000, 6,000 had the Coronavirus and 35 died . That means the odds of catching and dying from the Coronavirus is 0.00025. The odds of dying from it if you catch it are roughly the same as the normal flu. On top of that, the fatality rate for people under 60 is very low and no child under 9 years old has died from it anywhere in the world. People over 60 with other health problems are the ones with the highest death rates.
There is some good news. There has been some testing of a medicine in France which appears to be very effective against Coronavirus called hydroxychloroquine. That medicine is over 50 years old and has been used to fight malaria and arthritis and when used on 40 people who had Coronavirus in France, it was 100% effective. The other good news is that drug is very safe and it is now a low cost generic. While it may take over a year to develop a vaccine, Americans now have the option of having their doctor prescribe this medicine to help them fight Coronavirus with low risk and high odds. Some people have attacked this option until more testing is done, but as President Trump said, if you have Coronavirus “What the hell have you got to lose?”. If you add up the low odds of dying from the Coronavirus for most Americans with the availability of a low risk low cost medicine that can fight it, do we really need to butcher our economy for everybody?
So here is the question America, should we cause massive pain to our economy and 100% of our people based on this hard data, or should we focus our efforts on isolating, protecting, and treating people over 60 and let healthy young people continue to live their lives and keep our economy strong and prosperous for everybody which puts less than 1% of our population at risk? It is time to speak up America and let the politicians know your opinion before the massive economic damage they are doing unnecessarily crushes everybody.
