There's a lot of revisionist history going on in America right now. Trump was responsible for Covid. Biden was responsible for Covid. Fauci was responsible for Covid. The Chinese were responsible for Covid. Your local State Governor was responsible for Covid. You know who's the most responsible for Covid, at least in America?
The Ghost of George Floyd.
Now let me explain. Covid kills at a rate that makes it controversial. I have stated before that I was scared to death of Ebola in the 1990's. The death rate for Ebola in Africa during that decade was between 60-80%. Luckily Ebola was hard to get and was concentrated to mostly a few isolated locations. Until the year 2016, no Ebola Outbreak had affected more than 500 people at a time. If Ebola was airborne and killing every other person in America, shutting the country down would have been a no-brainer.
Covid, though, has now been confirmed in a half a billion people. It has killed over 6 million people. There is an extensive data set collected over 2 years time which translates to about a 1.2% death rate. That number is consistent with the 1.4% death rate we wrote about in the Spring. A lot of healthy Americans liked their odds, especially knowing Covid mostly killed the fat, 50+'s. (A group to which I belong, by the way.)
I just want to refresh your memories as to what was going on in the Spring of 2020, because Covid Fog seems to have wiped out many people's recollections. When Covid first appeared at our shores, many schools and businesses closed immediately. Americans were unsure as to what was about to wash across their shores because China was very uncooperative when it came to sharing virus information.
At first there was a novelty for most of the country staying home. Tiger King became a nationwide sensation because by April of 2020, entertainment options were drying up. Just a reminder, sports were cancelled, movies were cancelled, everything was cancelled.
Remember "flattening the curve?" By May of 2020, citizens were ready to get back to normal, 99% of them didn't die, so their patience was already wearing thin. The Murder of George Floyd took place on May 26, 2020. Some cities nationwide had lifted their Covid lockdowns, some hadn't, but the riots in Minneapolis started almost immediately. They spread to nearly every metropolitan area in the United States by May 28, 2020.
Lost in the George Floyd Timeline was the fact that he had Covid when he died.
What does that have to do with anything? Let me show you a few maps:
This is an interactive map of all the protests that broke out within a week of George Floyd's Murder. Click on the link to be re-directed to a more exhaustive portal.
For a country on a soft lockdown (compared to China) somehow the first wave of Covid had washed across nearly every major city of this nation, mostly sparing the rural areas. Coincidence?
Somehow, someway, a virus quickly became a political football. Riots criss-crossed America as the absurd notion of defunding the police became real public discourse. Of course there was no link between social justice riots and Covid, half of America exclaimed. I cannot find a single reference to support such a notion on the internet.
Then something magical happened. Joe Biden was elected President and overnight people's opinions got all topsy turvy. Trump supporters went crazy and rioted in Washington DC. The New York Times SCREAMED that a one day riot in the Nation's Capital was a SuperSpreader Event.
And, all of a sudden, you should TRUST your government's response to Covid. Everyone on Team Blue's opinion on Covid changed and everyone on Team Red's opinion changed. As wave after wave of Covid continued to hit America, no one could agree on the country's next course of action.
The virus reaction has never stopped being political. When Donald Trump got Covid in 2020, just over a month before the Presidential Election, CNN did an exhaustive day-by-day account of his struggles, hinting he was contaminating people on the campaign trail and that he was sicker than the White House was letting on.
Less than 2 years later, Joe Biden had both his shots, both his boosters, and STILL got Covid. The White House assured CNN that Biden was fine and the multi-national news corporation took U.S. Government officials at their word. Then Biden showed up 10 days later with a rebound case of Covid.
One of the libertarian websites that I follow used this stinging analogy "substitute the word POLIO for COVID! If I got 4 shots to prevent polio, then got 2 mild back to back cases of it, I'd still be pretty f%^&ing p#$%ed."
And since we're talking about Libertarians, this is usually the part of the article where I chirp in that the Democrats and the Republicans were both equally at fault. Not this time. Libertarian jerkwads turned the mask into a medical rights issue.
My day job is at a local school district. During Covid, we based our decisions off of what was dictated by the state in the big picture, followed by the instructions from the county on a day to day basis. These 3 anonymous parents exemplified the problems with Covid in the public schools.
Student A was a senior in High School in the Special Education Program. When students first returned to school after the initial Covid outbreak, the liberal parents of Student A demanded online options for their student's education. They then took to social media and screeched that they weren't going to let the XXXX local schools kill their child. So the school gave the parents an online option on the fly. Within 6 months, Student A was back in the school building, Mom and Dad had apparently forgotten how hard it was to home school a student that required a full time aide. I was later informed that multiple families threatened to sue the district unless there was on online option for their students' education. They didn't want to send their kids into a Covid infested building, but they also didn't want their students to fall a grade behind their peers.
Student B was an average Middle Schooler whose very conservative parents demanded that the schools stay open. They demanded the schools stay open and demanded that the busses were running their routes, even if they were empty. The parents of Student B said they were lawyering up and would sue to keep the schools open. The leaders of the XXXX local schools assured the parents that we would stay open, which we did. In a private conversation with a school administrator well after the fact, I made a smart alack crack about the parents of Student B and I was informed that Student B's parents weren't the only ones threatening to sue, there were dozens of others, Student B's parents were just the loudest. Each one mouthed the same refrain, "we don't pay taxes for the schools to be closed." Luckily we burn our teachers out at a young age, so we didn't have a lot of older teachers in the Covid high risk groups. (1)
Student C was a below average Grade Schooler. Grinding through the epidemic, the Libertarian parents of Student C informed the district that their mask mandates were illegal and DIDN'T threaten to sue, they tried a different tactic. They said that if any school official tried to put a mask on their child, they would have them arrested for child abuse. Then a smattering of other parents tried the same ruse. So in the depths of the Covid crises, when mask mandates were in full swing, there were a dozen or so kids running around with mask waivers.
If those parents were true libertarians, they would have pulled their kids from the public schools. But in all 3 cases a common thread emerged, which is the parents were dictating their agenda to the schools. You say that's the way it should be? When parents want diametrically opposite things, someone is going to be unhappy. Does a district try to do what's "right?" Or do they opt for the majority? Or do they opt for mob rules? You can't have a mask mandate, except for the parents who don't want a mask mandate.
The schools were a microcosm of what was happening in this country. We did not pull together and treat Covid like a war-level event. That specific division can be traced back to May of 2020.
You know there's a list of famous Covid anti-vaxxers that died, right? Some repented, some went to the grave clutching their politics like a family heirloom.
Did local loudmouth anti-vaxxer Mike Trivisonno die of Covid? WTAM doesn't have to tell you. (But I did challenge them to tell me.)
What's being under reported is that the death rate for 75-79 year olds due to Covid increased tenfold over the general population. Again, cherry picking facts to portray a certain narrative, some people argued that the elderly would have died anyway, others argued a reverse ageism, where the young didn't care about vulnerable older populations. A virus, any virus, evolves and strengthens or weakens through nature. Man does their best to fight the virus, but the virus itself doesn't have a narrative.
Your retort is that Covid is old news, the pandemic is over? This screen shot is from 3 months ago.
Joe Biden declared the Covid Pandemic "over" in the third week of September, 2022.
Just because people stopped talking about Covid doesn't mean Covid went away. Why would Joe Biden declare the pandemic over? The midterms are coming.
What absolutely no one wants to talk about were the Excess Mortality Rates from May of 2020 to today. Each Covid wave sent out a statistical aftershock. According to Our World in Data:
The raw death count gives us a sense of scale: for example, the US suffered roughly 470,000 excess deaths in 2020, compared to 352,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that year.
When you do the statistical deep-dive into death counts, it is feasible that 1.5 million died in America due to Covid related causes. You want to accuse me of playing fast and loose with the numbers? I can only "prove" that a million people died of Covid?
When did we become so blasé about death in America? When did we become the country of bickering partisans who couldn't agree on the concept of fighting a disease? We should be a nation in mourning, instead we are a nation that points fingers at one another.
A Single Death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. - Stalin
What ever happened to the simple act of compassion?
George Floyd had 5 cops kneeling on him. You know how easy it would have been for Derek Chauvin to stand up and help with crowd control, while the other four officers detained George Floyd with tactics already found in police manuals?
Likewise, there's a million of dead Americans that passed from Covid, many of whom perished in a gruesome and dystopian fashion.
How can so much death be so easily glossed over?
(1) That sentence was mostly sarcasm.