{"id":4990,"date":"2020-04-04T15:28:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T21:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/?p=4990"},"modified":"2020-04-04T19:45:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T01:45:54","slug":"some-good-news-about-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2020\/04\/some-good-news-about-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Good News About COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the state of affairs becomes increasingly polarized in America — degenerating with clockwork predictability into partisan polemics of the most concrete-bound sort (with, however, this bizarre twist, which, if you think about it, follows a certain contorted logic: the left now angry at Donald Trump for not<\/em> being fascist enough in his refusal (so far) to force state governors on the issue of imposing mandatory police-state lockdowns) — I urge you, throughout all of it, to not lose site of this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nor should we lose site of the fact that South Korea achieved this calmly, quietly, and without the heavy-duty draconian measures of America and China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also this<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some countries are turning COVID-19 away at the door, while others are turning the tide of the pandemic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As you can see in this chart, COVID-19 remains mostly controlled in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Taiwan is barely visible down there at the bottom, while Singapore actually hasn\u2019t had enough deaths to make it onto the figure yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And yet rather than employing the successful methods which South Korea and Singapore have successfully employed, the United States has chosen the path of panic and fear — the precise path chosen by, for instance, mainland China, an authoritarian communist regime with the highest death-toll. The United States chose bureaucracy, botched testing, lockdown, and fearmongering-over-calm-and-clear-thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As infectious disease doctor Amesh Adalja (who has been stellar throughout all this, not diminishing the danger but not overstating it either) recently put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s common sense to know your enemy. Instead, we\u2019re all hiding inside our houses as we wait around for a vaccine \u2014 that\u2019s not a good global strategy for battling a dangerous virus.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, I would add, annihilating in the process a 20<\/em> trillion<\/em>-dollar economy, the ramifications of which a large percentage of the American pubic, like American politicians, have no real conception of whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the model<\/a> used to horrify the world senseless was quietly tossed into the trash, without almost anyone even noticing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctor Michael Mina is an epidemiologist, immunologist, and physician at the Harvard School of Public Health and also a professor at Harvard Medical School. His area of expertise is vaccines, immunity, and infectious diseases. He’s logical and levelheaded — not on any lunatic-fringe — and he’s one of America’s best. Today he wrote this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In response to which, the previously mentioned infectious disease specialist, Dr. Amesh Adalja, who agrees with Dr. Mina, also pointed out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I think sage and sound the following quote, by an economist named Peter Earl<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s possible to believe that Covid-19 is potentially as lethal (or more) than even the highest estimates, contagion rates high or higher than estimates, and social distancing wise, while also believing that current government polices are misguided and tyrannical. They\u2019re not mutually exclusive views.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, they are not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They certainly are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the state of affairs becomes increasingly polarized in America — degenerating with clockwork predictability into partisan polemics of the most concrete-bound sort (with, however, this bizarre twist, which, if you think about it, follows a certain contorted logic: the left now angry at Donald Trump for not being fascist enough in his refusal (so … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Some Good News About COVID-19”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4990"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5004,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4990\/revisions\/5004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}