What do I think of the Democrats’ COVID-19 management? *UPDATE*

A truly thoughtful, open-minded Democrat friend asked me what I thought of the COVID-19 lockdowns. This was my first pass answer.

I am opposed to the lockdowns. Fortunately, I’m in an economic class that can handle them. People who cannot telecommute or live on their savings are being destroyed. I believe what is happening now is evil.

We know a lot more about the virus than we did in the spring. We have better treatments and we know who’s at risk. The smart thing is to protect the vulnerable, masks in crowded places or for those who want them and get back to normal. And here’s something for you to chew on: John Hopkins did a study showing that deaths in 2020 were average overall, a study that was pulled because the authors didn’t like that people made use of it to advance arguments with which the authors disagreed. The bottom line, as many conservatives have argued, is that COVID-19 hastened the deaths of those who would have died anyway. A tragedy? Most certainly. Losing even one day from a loved one is a tragedy, but you don’t offset tragedy by destroying a country.

Right now, I can’t help wondering what’s driving people like Oregon’s governor. Has she decided that avoiding a single coronavirus death is worth destroying millions of lives, with the attendant increase in suicide, depression, substance abuse, crime, spousal and child abuse, deaths from untreated diseases such as cancer and heart disease, etc.? Can she explain why you can’t have people in your home or go to the Mom & Pop store, but Walmart and Costco are just fine? Also, can those governors explain why they were copacetic with mass riots in the spring, at the peak of the virus, but God forbid you celebrate Thanksgiving?

And the hypocrisy — the Denver may, Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, and more — they all made it clear that the rules don’t apply to them. That either means they think that, godlike, they are immune or, more likely, they know that what they’re doing makes no difference to the virus. If that’s true, all their rules are either because they enjoy the power or because they’re achieving a goal other than the spread of disease. The obvious short-term goal was to destroy Trump. The longer-term goal seems to be to break the back of the middle- and working classes that are not on board with the Democrat party’s agenda.

People will go along with this for a while, especially if the leaders keep them in a state of fear. However, at a certain point, time blunts the fear and people begin to realize they’re being used and abused. Then, you have a true revolution, not the carefully choreographed BLM rallies, but true revolution. I fear that.

One Democrat with whom I spoke accused me of heartlessness because “people will die.” People will always die and a pandemic that, averaged out over the country, has a 99% survival rate should not merit killing the country to “save” it.

UPDATE: After I posted the above, I received a link to the video below. It’s very long (almost two hours, although I listened to it at 1.5 times normal speed), but it goes through all the data to conclude that the lockdown is not merited.

Image: Flags image from Rawpixel; prison bars image from pngimg.com,  as modified in Pixlr.