Funny Kind of Epidemic

I feel the same way, John. There is so much conflicting information it’s hard to know who to believe. Except that the Prophet of God has asked us to not meet together as a church. Does he know something (has it been revealed to him, I mean) that we don’t? Or is he just ahead of the governments so that what we do is voluntary instead of mandatory? My husband’s niece in Texas has had the virus and is recovering. But that’s the only person we know personally and I don’t know how she contracted it. My wish is that the government would just ride this out without trying to “do something” which will probably make things worse overall; and of course, we know that government programs are eternal. I’m sure looking forward to General Conference!

Agreed.
The address military vehicles being positioned around and even I’ve seen school buses parked around.

There are a lot of reasons why that could be. Some of them not good. Now I’m not advocating resistance or even obsessive paranoia. But when you essentially ban churches, in the best way, by getting them to close themselves, and you ban assembly, you’ve created a population that is 100% ill equipped for any organized resistance.

Any group that does meet to even discuss options, imagine the initial Continental Congress, sticks out line a sore thumb and can be immediately identified and suppressed.

So whether or not this panic is being used for direct nefarious means (and certainly there must be some of that happening), at the very best and most angelic assumption here, it lays the groundwork for some future would be tyrant to take and maintain control.

You don’t even need a made up disease, just start infecting part of try population and swoop in and institute control.

For all we know China started this, or at least they certainly have the benefit of no worry over protests spreading out of Hong Kong. And those are gone now too. I wonder how many of those protestors and organizers have since disappeared?

We as a nation are literally looking at dictatorial China that never saw a negative statistic they didn’t massage and lie about, and saying we should copy their tactics to protect us from getting sick.

Even now on social media, the mob is doing most of the enforcement itself. People are terrified of sickness and death more than loss of liberty.

The flip side to all of this, is that the Lord knows we’re not a virtuous enough people to deserve this liberty. Which is where I conclude in time our nation will become no better than the petty despots across the world and throughout history.

Today, as we continue with the second week of school closure, my county’s massive school district, which had 165,267 students enrolled on September 30th, reports the first positive test of a school district employee.

Rozy,
There are a few possibilities about the church response:

1. They are naive and wrong in seeing the best intentions here without observing the devil in the shadows. I disagree with this strongly. If anyone saw those leaked videos awhile back, the church leadership was having regularly meetings and discussing who is behind some of this cultural corruption rather frankly. They are very attuned to the secret combinations. But, it’s not as if God gives them power to stretch their hands and smite everyone with ulterior motives.

2. So then the other option is they see they need to make friends for the time with Mammon in order to preserve an area of freedom where we can progress. What’s more important now that the kingdom of God is in the earth? Fighting for the freedoms of others to commit all manner of immorality? Or helping as many as possible to get closer to Christ? It’s clear the position of the Lord himself in his own time. The Book of Mormon does demonstrate both situations of fighting back and situations of compliance. And situations of subtlety. We’re not at the fighting stage and we’d likely never be unless prevented from practicing our faith in areas where we are strong.

I imagine they prophets see what’s going on and recognize a principle like Brigham said of the Indians – it’s cheaper to feed them than to fight them.

We’re not yet at the stage of a federal army coming in to close our temples, because we didn’t dare them to. We closed them down on our own to give the aggressors no would be propaganda against us. The whole world would turn us into scapegoats making the problem worse.

No, the devil will ultimately have to reveal himself at some point, he won’t get a chance (this time) to make our stalwart continued practice of faith make us look like the bad guys.

I almost think, that if there are secret combinations around the world, part of what they hope for is a rebellion in response to their overreach. So then they’ll be justified in further control and can turn us against each other. The devil is the architect of this strategy, whether our civil leaders know it or not.

We don’t need to play into that game. Be prepared. Trust God

An older lady in the building I work at tested postive. I had took most days off for the past two weeks and starting today am teleworking.
The big question in my mind is why death rates are so low in Germany compared to Italy. Intra-hospital transmission?

As for government controls I think restrictions will be almost universally flouted within a few weeks. These $X trillion bailout slush funds seem like the bigger threat to permanent balance of power.

Yes, when I read of the trillion dollar proposals was when I first realized the actions taken in the name of COVID-19 will be what destroys the nation and kills more people than the infections.

Jacob,
Regarding Italy…
“Italy created direct flights from Wuhan and allowed over 100,000 citizens from China to move to Italy and work in their factories”

Italy’s population is the 5th oldest in the world.
Almost 1/4 Italians smoke. That number goes up drastically for the older population.

Ironically, “World Healthcare Rankings” rates Italy as the 2nd best in the world. I don’t see why. Their hospitals are a disaster. It also ranks then behind France and multiple coworkers have had terrible experiences in French hospitals compared to Germany for instance.

Unfortunately, not funny at all. The wave us coming to the U.S.

I just posted this on Bookslinger’s earlier thread.

The numbers from Italy are really bad compared to deaths last year.

https://www.ecodibergamo.it/stories/bergamo-citta/quasi-mille-morti-nella-bergamascai-sindaci-ma-sono-molti-di-piu_1346006_11/

Almost 1,000 deaths in the province of Bergamo, Italy, but the real toll is much much higher. Some small towns in the province:

Bagnatica: From Feb 27 to date of the article: 16 deaths, 3 officially from the virus, compared with 28 deaths in all of last year.

Dalmine: 70 deaths so far this year. 2 from the virus, compared with 18 deaths in all of last year.

The town of Caravaggio (yes, that is where Michelangelo Merisi came from): 50 month to date, 2 officially from the virus, versus an average of 6 deaths for the same period in preceding years.

This is serious, my friends. Wash your hands, keep your distances, and stay home to the extent you reasonably can. The crisis will eventually pass, and our industrial plant, farms, labor force, etc. will be largely intact, but right now and for some weeks or months into the future we need to be very careful.

Why so much focus on Bergamo’s deaths? (Bergamo’s population in 2017 was 1,112,187.) Johns Hopkins puts the current worldwide COVID-19 death tally at 20,806. For Italy (estimated population 60.3 million) the COVID-19 death tally is 7,503.

Some people will be killed by this virus. Some cities and regions will be hotspots. Looking only at the hotspots would be bad sampling.

My point is not that hot spots are representative of the whole world, but that the hot spots are hotter than the official statistics from Italy indicate. If you drill down into the data, the deaths are being significantly undercounted.

From the link I posted and via Google Translate:

“We launched this message to give a more realistic representation of the very serious problem we are facing….The data is the tip of the iceberg. Applies to infections, hospitalizations and unfortunately also to deaths. Too many victims are not included in the reports because they die at home.”

See also

https://www.ecodibergamo.it/stories/premium/Cronaca/troppi-morti-rispetto-ai-dati-ufficialii-sindaci-chiedono-piu-trasparenza_1345446_11/ Again via Google Translate:

“The official cases: The tip of the iceberg. We have a different perception of the data from day to day it is getting worse. The numbers they give us are not very reliable. Unfortunately the deaths are many more than those of the reports. These are the words of the Bergamo [province] mayors, sentinels of the frontier in a territory slain by the coronavirus.”

This is not the end of the world, and we shouldn’t panic, but we should listen to the sentinels.

Sute: leaked videos of general authorities talking about secret combinations?

My impression is its just deadly enough that its worth dealing with. I can see governments taking liberties (hah!) which leads to home church being extended much longer than one would like to project (hence all the home church preparations the last couple years).

Could also be there will be other ruptures i.e. natural disasters, riots etc which turn the coronavirus into a very different problem than we would project it to be.

The thought has occurred to me, too, that this is a dress rehearsal for some truly dreadful, even apocalyptic, events down the road.

In other words: Maybe the Church is being pressured to overreact, maybe not. But it’s an opportunity to see how well we could function in a real emergency.

Vader – I think that is absolutely correct. We do not emphasize commandments equally at all points of our lives. That isn’t necessarily wrong. But this is definitely the rain storm before the Flood.

It is time to be prepared, temporally and spiritually.

One has to not only be prepared, but stay prepared when the threat temporarily recedes.

California once had mobile hospitals and a ventilator stockpile. But it dismantled them.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/california/story/2020-03-28/coronavirus-california-mobile-hospitals-ventilators

This has never been about the elites saving lives. Surely no one is that naive, but the truth was long ago observed that the people will more easily believe a big lie than a small one.

The goal is to break the economy in a way that the population will clamor for the salvation from the ones doing the breaking.

When you see that, it all makes sense and predicts this pandemic will not end until it’s been broken and remade. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have to endure multiple stages of on and off again pandemic responses, with ever more health, social, and economic cures coming as a result.

Bob duck, I recall videos of the apostles getting web conferencing updates with then Seventy member Elder Gong about how even cultural things such as Pirates of the Caribbean movies illustrate the cultural acceptance of villains and undermine authority. With some questions, such as “who is behind this”. Surely, they are engaging this issue deeply on additional dimensions beyond what’s at the surface of reported cases and deaths.

Many reports are out quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci that the U.S. is may see 100,000 to 200,000 die due to COVID-19, and to emphasis the unfathomable tragedy that will be, those reports tell us that is twice the number of U.S. soldiers who died in Vietnam. The reports could have instead made the comparison that 100,000 is almost as many people as died in the U.S. from the flu in the last two years, but that wouldn’t have the same cataclysmic ring to it.

A four or eight percent rise in deaths from year to the next is a significant matter worth dealing with. It is not worth shutting done all “non-essential” activity and confining citizens to their homes.

Next year, after coronavirus subsides, when the next new influenza strain starts spreading, there will comparisons that influenza could kill half as many people as the coronavirus did, so we need to take major steps to stop it, like the ones we saw in 2020.

In my state of six million people, there have been 1,414 confirmed cases so far (less than one out of every 4,000 people) and 17 deaths (0.03% of the deaths in the state in 2017, or an eighth of the daily average of 137 deaths). For this the governor decided yesterday it is time to go beyond shutting down all commercial and community activity and has now issued a stay-at-home order.

There is a cute carve-out in the order:

For avoidance of doubt: This Order does not require the closure of, or prohibit the movement of any staff or volunteer traveling to, from, or in connection with their duties at any:

i. Any federal, State, or local government unit, building, or facility;

ii. Any newspaper, television, radio, or other media service; or

iii. Any non-profit organization or facility providing essential services to low income persons, including, without limitation, homeless shelters, food
banks, and soup kitchens.

The order is to those being told, not those doing the telling, or any of their NGO buddies.

John,
I share your concern.

The right to assembly is one of the most sacred rights because it’s necessary for the people to assemble if government tyranny or overreach is to be corrected.

Whether or not this is not tyranny (it sure seems like we’re leaning that way if it’s not already), this is certainly setting a precedent which will enable it in the future.

When the people can be made afraid of their own rights and start criticizing others for using their basic rights, and have government officials accost them for “hiding behind the constitution” (so much could be said about that), we have a real problem.

Consider the concept of a much maligned militia. Of course, that’s now illegal. But can you imagine a more ripe situation for government overreach than one in which public gatherings of any kind (let alone for legitimate security concerns) are outlawed?

If you don’t think this is a problem here, because the USA is all cotton candy and happy nice people giving free health care, what about the rest of the world which are following these policies?

What do you think is happening in oppressive regimes across Asia, Africa, South America and Eastern Europe? Are they tightening their control now that the people are less free and are in fact afraid of each other and willfully giving up their rights so they can be protected from a virus?

Far more harm will come from this overreaction than good. For generations in ways we can’t even imagine.

And right on queue, some benign totalitarianism… This is from the relatively open and free places.
“Kenyan police shot dead a teenager on his balcony during a coronavirus curfew crackdown”

Sute: Do you see the “implied because” built into that headline? They do that on purpose. The “implied because” is rarely the true “because.” If the “implied because” doesn’t make sense, that’s a good indication the headline writer is leaving out other pertinent details.

Similarly, “In Ethiopia, police shot dead a man who failed to abide by a ban on visiting bars.” But in all this wide world, there will always be cases like that somewhere with or without a health quarantine. In a rural part of my state a man was arrested for refusing to disperse a bonfire party of 60 people. 146,000 people in his county and 40 reported coronavirus cases.

“The Hogan administration’s highest priority is keeping Marylanders safe.” Many a science fiction story was premised on a computer maintaining society with that highest priority as its directive. Quadrupling unemployment (so far) is a pretty high cost for many millions to bear.

I know one person who’s child needs life saving surgery, and that surgery keeps getting postponed – all for the “overwhelming wave” of COVID-19 patients (that has yet to materialize). A lot of the hospital is in fact idle, as they prepare for numbers that aren’t appearing – all while people can’t come in because – well, not sure why they can’t get their surgery, other than “THE PANDEMIC! DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO DIE?”

The precautions will have their own death toll. The 200+ million Americans now idled or hampered in their work were doing a lot of useful things needed by themselves and others.

Essential services in the U.S. and virtually all of the world are still running: utilities (water, electricity, gas, sewer and sanitation, etc.), fire and police protection, mining, oil production and refining, transportation (albeit significantly reduced), education (albeit remotely), farming and food production, etc.

Non-essential work is being postponed or restricted but eventually will come back as is typical after a blizzard, hurricane, or other natural disaster.

Medical services are running, but are severely challenged in some locations. A major motivation for lock downs was to reduce anticipated pressure on health services.

Denmark, which locked down early with good compliance, is looking at gradually reopening their frozen economy after Easter and over the summer.

Via Google Translate: “If we stand together over Easter for the next two weeks and if the figures remain stable over the next two weeks, the government will begin a gradual quiet and controlled opening on the other side of Easter,” said [Prime Minister] Mette Frederiksen.

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-03-31-restriktioner-langt-ind-i-sommeren-saadan-kan-danmark-aabne-gradvist

Different sectors of the economy will be gradually reopened depending on the risks of reigniting a rapid spread of infection. In this regard, restaurants, cafes, bars are particularly tricky, having been hard hit economically, but also a place for potentially passing infections.

I am sure other countries are making their own calculations. Sweden has been more relaxed in their restrictions, and the Danes are watching the Swedish experience closely and vice versa as the Danes and Swedes are traditional rivals.

Ignoring the politics of this news article, I found one part quite startling:
https://www.newsweek.com/utah-medical-provider-pay-cuts-coronavirus-pandemic-1495247

“while some physicians are experiencing “extremely high demand” during the pandemic, others have seen a reduction in work by between 30 and 50 percent.”

Why are they reduced 50%? Basically, people are dying because they can’t get care, because maybe we might be overwhelmed, possibly. Some doctors and nurses are overworked, but others seem to be taking a break and sitting idle.

Certain hotspots like New York are likely overwhelmed, but I don’t see why rural areas are refusing to admit anyone to hospitals, even if it’s for lifesaving surgeries, just because of “worst case scenarios” that may or may not happen.

Almost a quarter of US coronavirus deaths have been in New York City (1,584 out of 6,921 today on Johns Hopkins’ site). There is something big going wrong in New York City beyond simply being ahead of the rest of the country. Listening to Governor Cuomo insist that it is not just a New York problem reminded me of circa 1988 when it was insisted that everyone, every single one of us, was at risk of AIDS. Yes, everyone of us, if we were to behave quite promiscuously, especially with homosexuals, was equally at risk of AIDS. The novel coronavirus is far more egalitarian and un-intimate in its contagion than HIV, but New York City or Bergamo levels of disease and death are exposing something special about those places.

JM: In NYC it was the international travellers. The vectors were China to Europe, and Europe to NYC. NYC’s mass transit system, and the general population density, also likely came into play, increasing the R0.

In the Lombardy region of Italy, it was direct flights from Wuhan to Milan. Also hundreds of thousands of retired Chinese living there (Lombardy to Chinese retirees is like Belize to US retirees) and many thousands of Chinese workers also working on projects there, and going back/forth to home every X weeks.

Italy is also not known for community hygiene (restaurants, etc.). Lombardy population is known for a very high average age. Italy in general also has a high smoking rate, I heard 25%.

Detroit’s hotspot is being attributed to not cancelling the primary election in March.

New Orleans hotspot is attributed to Mardi Gras not being cancelled. High case fatality rate there is attributed to obesity and smoking.

Utah, not a hotspot, but above average… uh, let’s say “international travel.”

Iran: Connections to China. Poor hygiene. (Kissing shrines.)

South America: Via connections to China and the more left-wing/dictatorial regimes. And, Iran has connections there building mosques.

I haven’t heard/read anything about why Spain is a hotspot with a higher case fatality rate. Anyone heard anything?

Over 20% more people smoke in Spain than Italy.
Spain still has a high elderly population compared to the USA.
Many areas of Spain is a crowded disorganised mess with everything pretty tightly packed.

One thing people don’t take into account is the fact that everyone still goes to the grocery store. Almost all grocery stores are pretty small in Europe. Spain and Italy even more so.

Pot smoking is one thing I wonder about. NY has a lot of it. It will be interesting to see the correlation between medical,ie mostly recreational, marijuana states and severity of corona impact.

Three weeks since we were directed to work from home and report in daily, there are as of today two confirmed COVID-19 cases among the 2,000 people who were working at my facility a month ago. Both individuals have fully recovered and will be medically cleared to enter work environments next week.

Meanwhile, news outlets such as the Washington Post have told me to brace for a week of major mortality.