Sunday, April 05, 2020


The shutdown will be deadlier than the virus

We are in the midst of the strangest event of our lives. Societies have shut down. Families and whole nations face financial ruin. Walking the streets is now a crime from Paris to Sydney to Mumbai. And all of this has occurred not despite the will of the people but because of it.

The reasons are well known. There is a virus on the loose. It is transmitted by humans and is killing tens of thousands. It is an existential threat at which all resources must be thrown and all energy expended.

This is the popular mantra. And if true it would justify the incredible events we are witnessing. The problem is that it appears not to be true, a fact few are willing to entertain amid the hysteria that prevails. Yet its falsity is indicated on a cursory review of the best available data.

That data is provided by Italy, an early epicentre of the virus with many deaths recorded.

On March 26, the country’s peak health organisation — the National Institute of Health — published a report with details of the 6801 deaths the country had recorded to that point. This is a considerable sample size, and the figures are revealing.

The first statistics of note are those about the average age of casualties, which is 78. The median is 79. A little more than 95 per cent of victims were over 60, and zero deaths were recorded for people under the age of 30.

Then there is the method of designating the virus as the cause of death, which includes anyone who had tested positive for it before dying. In other words, many were said to have died from the virus when in truth they merely died with it.

Third, 98 per cent of casualties of a random sample of patients had a pre-existing chronic illness, or comorbidity, at their time of death. About 21 per cent suffered from a single comorbidity, 26 per cent from two, 51 per cent from three and just 2 per cent with none.

Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy’s Health Minister, recent­ly reported: “On re-evalua­tion by the National Institute of Health, only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus.”

The overwhelming majority of Italy’s deaths involved chronically ill and elderly patients.

This is not to diminish these tragedies. But the questions arise: why are we surrendering our hard-won civil liberties and committing economic suicide when this virus poses a danger to only a small portion of our society? Why do we not pour all of our resources into protecting the vulnerable?

The answer is that a 24-hour news cycle, with its morbid tallying of deaths, images of corpses and sensationalist reporting of outlier cases has whipped the public into a frenzy that politicians have had to take extreme measures to appease.

And anyone who questions the collective unreason is denounced on social media as a bloodthirsty mercenary who favours the economy over human life.

History shows time and again the reaction to a perceived crisis becomes the true catastrophe. Like the execution of witches until the mid-18th century or the scapegoating of Jews for poisoning wells during the Black Plague, evidence and logic are of no use to us now. There is an existential threat, and anyone who denies it is not just a denier but the cause.

None of this is to say this virus is not dangerous. It is. But the level of threat it poses is being exaggerated, and the response to it exaggerated as a result.

This is especially true in Australia, where infection rates appear to be relatively low and the government containment methods are among the most draconian worldwide.

If the government has compelling data to support this strategy, it should release it. But there seems to be no correlation between the scale of the threat and the economic and social damage we will suffer responding to it.

There is a disaster afoot. But it is not the COVID-19 virus. It is the putative remedy, a fact we will not appreciate until it’s too late.

SOURCE  





No ceasefire in feminist attacks on men   

Bettina Arndt

The famous Canadian men’s rights activist and former Ottawa English professor, Janice Fiamengo, has produced a new video, expressing dismay that the world-wide health crisis has not led to a ceasefire in the attacks on men. She says it is obscene that the “poor me” rhetoric still dominates, with article after article appearing suggesting women are most affected by the virus, despite the fact that men comprise up to 70 per cent of COVID-19 deaths.

As Fiamengo points out it has hard to imagine a scenario where a pandemic was causing women to die in much higher numbers than men and have that not be a front-page news item and major focus of investigation.

Here’s Fiamengo spelling out the craziness of what is going on:


“I have yet to read an article on gendered impacts that paused over men's higher mortality rate, lamented it, quoted anybody distressed about it, or suggested that special measures might be taken to protect men.

“I have yet to see a feminist journalist suggesting women could take over most activities involving potential exposure given women's greater immunity.

“I have yet to see a feminist article worrying about the men who face risks in their jobs.

“Instead the articles move with jaw-dropping indifference about men to discuss what are glibly called the ‘secondary impacts’ or the ‘social impacts’ of the virus on women.

“Many of these impacts are speculative and short-term and hardly compare in severity to dying. The most serious is that women comprise the majority of healthcare workers and thus are ‘on the frontlines of the COVID-19 fight’, as one World Economic Forum article put it. The other frequently repeated complaint, far less onerous, is that women are the primary caregivers for children and other relatives, especially elderly relatives and are thus disproportionately burdened by school closures and the pressures of looking after sick parents. These may be true as far as they go but they certainly leave a great deal left unsaid."


Here’s Fiamengo’s excellent video: Coronavirus: More Men Die, Women Most Affected - The Fiamengo File Episode 116

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1_B9ICpzP8&list=PLHt1Hh27h4Bs5mBB3yqacXvLpgfLxPS-_&index=13&t=0s

Email from Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au





The left-wingers who love the police state

Just a few months ago, prominent left-wingers were on the streets protesting against what they saw as Britain’s ‘hard right’ and ‘authoritarian’ Tory government, which had supposedly seized power in a ‘coup’. During the election, they warned voters not to back the ‘extreme Tory right’.

In the words of Guardian columnist Owen Jones, Boris Johnson ‘has appointed the most hard-right government in modern times, an administration which threatens our hard-won rights and freedoms. Don’t underestimate this menace, and prepare to fight.’

So when that ‘hard-right’ government announced a full-scale lockdown of society last night, demolishing those ‘hard-won freedoms’ by effectively placing over 66million Britons under house arrest, you might have expected a flicker of resistance, or at least concern about how these measures might be exploited, from the millennial left.

Clearly, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. The Covid-19 crisis is undeniably a major emergency. But, as many of these lefties correctly argued, prior to the lockdown, debate over the government’s handling of the crisis is necessary.

The problem is that these left-wingers, in tandem with the mainstream media, have been at the forefront of demanding ever-more repressive state crackdowns. And so when the lockdown eventually arrived, Jones was ‘relieved’.

SOURCE 






'Coronavirus can't be allowed to destroy democracy': Alan Jones slams social distancing rules which threaten Australians  with jail or harsh fines

Radio broadcaster Alan Jones has slammed strict new social distancing laws as undemocratic and un-Australian.  

The recent New South Wales health order tackles the spread of COVID-19 by stopping people from going outside without good reason and enforcing severe penalties.

Speaking on 2GB, Mr Jones argued that the coronavirus measures were too harsh.

The health order dictated that there were now only 16 'reasonable excuses' for a person to leave their home.

These included exercise, shopping for essentials, seeking medical care, providing care or travelling to work.

Any person found breaching these rules could face six months in jail or a fine of up to $11,000.

Mr Jones said that he disagreed with the way the measures were implemented.

'The rules were implemented via regulation in NSW, not legislation, which means they were not debated in parliament and they were not subject to possibly sensible amendments,' he said. 

Mr Jones also argued that the strict measures were confusing and unfair.

'This order in NSW, by a Liberal government, should never have been gazetted. It's badly thought out, it's undemocratic, it's hopelessly un-Australian, it treats us as if we're all either completely stupid or servants of the state,' Mr Jones said.

Gatherings of more than two people, apart from immediate family, are also banned in NSW as are all non-essential activities. 

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the new social isolation rules would last for 90 days and hopefully not longer.

'It is 90 days. People will have gotten the message by then, hopefully,' he said on Thursday.

'We won't be talking about the powers, we'll be talking about what does it look like coming out of this.'

The number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in NSW has reached 2,298.

The state's death toll sits at 10 - almost half of the country's tally of 23 deaths.  

Positive coronavirus cases across Australia have risen to 5,103.

SOURCE  

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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