Don's Tuesday Column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   4/21/2020

   Verifiable, discernible and predictable

Reality—or the way things have been, are and will-or-ought-to be— has a way of percolating up through suppression, propaganda, disinformation and spin. Our nation labors under not only an unprecedented infectious disease threatening the health, lives, livelihoods and way of life of Americans, but also a divisive political onslaught unseen in over 150 years.

The right-left divide has simmered, steeped in real or quasi violence, under ideological advocacy of an undeniable, discernible effort to overthrow 220 years of constitutional rule and rights. It is no longer debatable that the political left—whether as liberalism, progressivism, democratic socialism or even technological “guidance”—sees the current “crisis” as their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For what?

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before" (Rahm Emmanuel). “Eric Holder is Encouraging Dems to Pounce on the Coronavirus Crisis to Make Drastic Structural Change” (Townhall.com); “Eric Holder: Here’s How the Coronavirus Crisis Should Change U.S. Elections—For Good” (Time.com); Coronavirus “…could permanently change US elections” (NewYorkPost.com).

Closer to home: “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” Gov. Newsom said. “So yes, absolutely we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.” Nothing says “Let’s restore the pre-Chinese Communist Party Coronavirus economy to its inherent market freedom and abundance”—like putting “Green New Deal,” impeach-Trump-at-all-costs, fossil fuel Richey-Rich Tom Steyer in charge (Gov. Newsom’s choice).

Local center/right readers will enjoy the following (the left, not so much): It is now verifiable that the models have wildly overestimated the actual deaths from the Wu-flu (the Chinese Communist Party Wuhan Influenza). Predictions in open, honest countries haven’t followed the “worst case scenario” (or even the “best case”) for the number of fatalities. America’s models started out predicting up to 2+million, lowered to 100-200,000, then 80,000, 68,000 and now (until the next computer prediction) 61,000+ deaths.

Now we’re finding out that, by mandates or advisories, the “Coronavirus” death totals are being artificially padded. Those in vulnerable, likely groups who die may have Wu-flu imputed as the cause—even if it was only a contributing factor or not. Reportedly, there’s more money from the feds for such diagnoses.

Bottom line: The nation’s economy has been ground to a halt—with undeniable, predictable consequences including depression, drug addiction, criminality, child-and-spouse abuse, suicide, etc.—based on provably flawed, even manipulated data. It’s estimated that child and elderly mortality (from delayed-but-essential medical care) was in the 100s of thousands worldwide during the financial crash.

Will anyone dare pronounce that “the emperor (models) has no clothes (or reliability)”? The only closed populations—the Diamond Princess cruise ship and Iceland (numerous searchable sources for both)—have shown that 1) widespread testing reveals a high percentage of the exposed population to have the virus; 2) most of those experience mild, if any, symptoms; and 3) a small portion require hospitalization, and an even smaller portion die.

Our doom-and-gloom, New York/tri-state area centered news media flood us with non-stop reporting of the “crises” occurring a short drive from their studios. America’s death rate per million population is as low as 8^th in the world; removing the New York-area yields a rate that is below 10^th. Governor/Mayor Cuomo/DeBlasio never shut down the primary spreader of the Wu-flu: subways. Did you know all that? Most of America outside the cities could return to normal life with little risk, based on data.

While the national or world death rates hover around 4 to 5 percent, both of those tested groups give us death rates among the infected approaching 1 percent or lower; that compares to about 0.1 percent mortality for the seasonal flu, which kills from 30-80,000 people a year. It’s still fatal to that sub-group but—here’s the missing part of the analysis—there are undeniable, fatal trade-offs to any given “mitigation.”

We could ban automobiles and trucks, save lives and improve health. Or would we? No one alive experienced life where towns and cities were literal outdoor troughs of horse urine and excrement. No one can honestly propose conducting all of life’s activities, shopping and commerce on foot, bicycle or public transportation, which just trades private for group pollution. Some radical (even mainstream) environmental/climate alarmists fantasize those fossil-fuel-free versions of civilization. Get real, I say.

Any serious, honest analysis of China’s duplicitous non-revelations in December and January—together with the W.H.O. credulously parroting China’s lies—has to conclude that there was no rational support for President Trump to implement draconian emergency restrictions on Americans at that time.

Trump has played several minutes of the media, Democrats and experts downplaying the Coronavirus threat. He 1) cut off travel from the epicenter in China, 2) likewise for Europe which infected New York due to Europe allowing travel from China, 3) inherited depleted supplies of hospital masks because they were not replenished after Obama’s response to the H1N1 flu, and 4) was opposed and lied about for all of it.

For a truthful big picture, look up “Trump Rewrites the Book on Emergencies; For the first time in U.S. history, an administration is responding to a crisis with deregulation and decentralization” (behind paywall at the Wall Street Journal). Trump, responding to the Wu-flu, has ingeniously used state and local government, private sector and deregulation to reverse the trend of centralizing power in Washington.

The “right of the people peaceably to assemble…for a redress of grievances” is not cancelled by the Wu-flu emergency; onerous overreactions by governors, mayors and health officials should be protested. I hope thousands descended on Sacramento yesterday.