When Governments Switched Their Story from "Flatten the Curve" to "Lockdown until Vaccine"

[rangerrebew]

When Governments Switched Their Story from "Flatten the Curve" to "Lockdown until Vaccine"

 

05/07/2020Ryan McMaken

In the early days of the COVID-19 panic—back in mid-March—articles began to appear pushing the idea of "flattening the curve" (the Washington Post ran an article called "Flatten the Curve" on March 14). This idea was premised on spreading out the total number of COVID-19 infections over time, so as to not overburden the healthcare infrastructure. A March 11 article for Statnews, summed it up:

    “I think the whole notion of flattening the curve is to slow things down so that this doesn’t hit us like a brick wall,” said Michael Mina, associate medical director of clinical microbiology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It’s really all borne out of the risk of our health care infrastructure pulling apart at the seams if the virus spreads too quickly and too many people start showing up at the emergency room at any given time.”

In those days, it was still considered madness to suggest outlawing jobs for millions of Americans or "shutting down" entire national economies in an effort to flatten the curve. Thus, the article lists far more moderate mitigation strategies:

https://mises.org/wire/how-many-lives-will-politicians-sacrifice-name-fighting-covid-19

[PeteS in CA]

The Dems' goal is to keep things disrupted until November 4, 2020. So the goalposts will be in constant movement until then.

[jmyrlefuller]

Probably that darned Imperial College "study."

It seems like once the "stay home forever" crowd wanted proof to legitimize their draconian scheme, then ran with it ignoring the rest of the evidence. You saw the same thing with hydroxychloroquine. Once touted widely around the world as a potential treatment, once the VA report came out, all other investigation seemed to vanish. We were supposed to have study results a couple weeks ago but none have ever turned up. (But hey, the extremely expensive remdesivir is available. Hmm. Nothing against it because I think we need a robust arsenal in the coming months, but seriously, which would you rather have in the face of an outbreak? A generic, low-cost and widely available antiviral with decades of safety records, or an extremely expensive, proprietary and unproven drug?)

[roamer_1]

Probably that darned Imperial College "study."

It seems like once the "stay home forever" crowd wanted proof to legitimize their draconian scheme, then ran with it ignoring the rest of the evidence. You saw the same thing with hydroxychloroquine. Once touted widely around the world as a potential treatment, once the VA report came out, all other investigation seemed to vanish. We were supposed to have study results a couple weeks ago but none have ever turned up. (But hey, the extremely expensive remdesivir is available. Hmm. Nothing against it because I think we need a robust arsenal in the coming months, but seriously, which would you rather have in the face of an outbreak? A generic, low-cost and widely available antiviral with decades of safety records, or an extremely expensive, proprietary and unproven drug?)

It's all about the Benjamins. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

The Dems' goal is to keep things disrupted until November 4, 2020. So the goalposts will be in constant movement until then.

 

[240B]

The worst nightmare of Democrats is that America will overcome the pandemic and get back on track. They are determined to disrupt and sabotage any effort to make that happen.


Democrats want death, as many deaths as possible, unemployment, bankruptcy, chaos. Remember always, Democrats consider America to be their enemy. So the more damage done to America, the better they like it.

[Hoodat]

Democrats want death, as many deaths as possible, unemployment, bankruptcy, chaos. Remember always, Democrats consider America to be their enemy. So the more damage done to America, the better they like it.

"One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic."

-Josef Stalin-