2020-04-05

Trump Is Right To Urge A Return To Normalcy ASAP

Trump is a lot of things to many people but he's strenuously trying to get things as close to normalcy as fast as possible while focusing on a positive disposition.

I absolutely agree this is getting a little out of hand.

I much prefer his approach (and Legault here in Quebec) than the doom and gloom 'new normalcy' doctors and people who follow as a matter of accepting appeals to authority are sprouting.

Some experts argue to not do anything until we find a vaccine! This strikes me as impractical and unrealistic.

Doctors naturally have ONE purpose: Public health. If you have to burn a cabin to save a life you do it. Except when it comes to abortion or rationing deaths of course but this is a lazy and possibly weak digression. I apologize.

They will push the precautionary principle into over drive.

We need to be careful as to not let doctors dictate social policy. Their concern isn't the economic well-being of a society as a whole. It's the pandemic. They have a role to play but it's up to leaders (assuming we have those) to make the hard decisions.

Doctors will always have their jobs. For millions of others, it's not the case.

No cost-benefit analysis has been done.

In the absence of one you get politicians (stand up Kentucky) encouraging people to snitch on one another.

I don't want to be part of this madness.

And if you're the sort of person who called the authorities on a neighbour who did you no harm, I trust karma will deal with your cowardly soul.

Trump believes in the people.

Democrat leaders believe it's their duty to make people submit.

****

Expanding on this for a sec. Doctors aren't infallible. Under normal circumstances and within the scope of a particular health issue, doctor's orders should be heeded. 'Go home, take this medicine and get some rest' is different from 'We're not sure. In the meantime, shut down and social distance until we figure this out' is a different application and another level of order of magnitude.

The first is best on medical expertise on an issue they're familiar with backed by scientific literature, the latter is less rooted in firm data while still giving orders.

In this case, I'd like to use an analogy to a conversation I had with my accountant. When he called to ask me about the spike in my Visa I explained to him it was for lease-hold improvement. Puzzled he asked why I would do that because of the interests cost associated with it.

He was right to ask this question. Why use a credit card with 19.99% interest when you can get a bank loan at a much lower rate?

I explained if it were a perfect world, sure, I would. It's the rational thing to do. But this is an imperfect world and gaining access to a $5000 small business loan for small projects was next to impossible and way too time-consuming. People who own businesses know exactly what I mean.

Put that way, he understood my dilemma. We both agreed it wasn't optimum but I chose to take a hit, pay a higher interest (with the intent to pay it down as quickly as feasible) because the cost of waiting was too high in my estimation.

Something similar is at play here with the pandemic.

****

Trump is willing to take that step forward.

Absolutely open up sports. Keep calm and carry on for the love of God. Let's limit the damage to our lives here.

At the moment, I feel like we're the elephant in cartoons that lifts its skirt dancing in fear when it sees a mouse.

So far, 10 million people are out of work in North America.
There is no complete shutdown but the ones who are face an uncertain future.
So far, there are 1 million cases....world wide.

I may be looking at this wrong but are we willing to risk a recession, if not a depression, based on this straight, raw figures?

At this point this is where the 'where's your humanity' come in?

There's no doubt some uncomfortable realities will come into play. One side is saying, 'do what is necessary' (generally, these people don't have economic worries. They have job security and money in the bank) to 'save all lives'. We can't ever save all lives; in any form. We have to come to the grim reality this virus is already here and will keeping threatening people. We're asking people to make all these sacrifices (not work, social distancing etc.) without even knowing if these measures actually work in any meaningful way or with any end point.

It's just a series of stringing people along in an effort to not 'overwhelm the health system'. The flip side to this is is we're overwhelming the welfare system and to make matters worse, throwing billions (and trillions in the case of the USA) at trying to avoid an economic catastrophe.

I can see it slowly unfold before my eyes. Now we're at the 'food lines' phase. Social distancing as a means to an end doesn't equate to the measure working. Increasingly, I find myself shopping for items online to avoid being forced into sheep mode and facing the aggravation of waiting in a line. Hopefully eBay and Amazon will be left alone to allow some form of sanity.

We're already in  the 'cure is worst than the disease' mode.

People should consider looking at the other side a little more critically. Where we pour all our energies into one play, other societal ills come up: Suicides, broken marriages, bankruptcies etc. Never mind the psychological damage of family and friends not getting to see loved ones before they pass away.

We're tearing the social fabric apart for what exactly? Think.

Minnesota already announced, in fricken April, that summer is effectively cancelled.

If anything, this whole pandemic is showing how easily the government can erase whatever freedoms we think we may have and this should concern us. People are willing to play ball for a month or maybe two. But when you go to extremes like Minnesota, people may just seize matters into their own hands.

In Ontario, the headlines warn 100 000 people could die by the end of April. That's it. No context, no further information as to how they arrived at this figure and what it actually means. My hunch they don't even know.

But we won't be calculating the costs of these unintended consequences of our actions will we, right?

Has anyone thought to ask if these computer models being used are reliable? It reminds me of all these faulty climate change models which end up being manipulated to foster a narrative. I'm sensing a similar play here. They want the precautionary principle to work but is it?

Obama once told people to get used to low GDP growth as the 'new normal'. The Trump economy until the pandemic hit, obliterated this shallow, pessimistic and absurd statement.

I'm betting the same thing here. People saying 'things will never be normal again' will only be right if we let the narrative dictate this.

Don't.

****

Biden Tweeted along the lines of 'Trump is not to blame for the virus' - PHEW! Thanks Joe for that tidbit - but he is to blame for not preparing the country!'

Cute.

I don't seem to recall 'germ waefare' or infectious disease preparedness being a part of any political platform since the days of when Bill Clinton flirted with the idea.

Since then, there's been a whole lot of 'back room' talk but not much else.

It's not like the Democrats pushed for it, right? Right. Those sons of bitches were busy chasing lies like Russian collusion and impeachment.

So if anything, the Democrats are actually more culpable of this accusation.

Maybe, had they governed the subject would have come up? Just saying.

Besides that, what was Trump supposed to do? Prepare for what exactly? This was - at least it seems like one - a Black Swan event. He could have prepared for something and chosen the wrong thing to prepare for and people would blame him for that miscalculation.

Truth is, little could be done with this. The best way is for countries to go on the offensive and put pressure on countries like China to contain and be truthful. It means sending in inspectors and monitoring China like we did during the Cold War and with Iraq.

Beyond that, not sure what governments can do to be 'prepared'.

And spare me these fucken 'Bill Gates predicted' talks.

He predicted jack shit. To someone who just begun paying attention, they get easily enamoured by public yappers. To those of us who have spent thousands of hours and dollars observing politics and history, the story and plot has been around for at least a few decades.












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