Can we agree that, as far as the US is concerned, quarantines just don’t work? I’m not an epidemiologist, health professional, or anything like that … what I am is someone who comments on what I observe. What I observe is that quarantines may work in other countries but I don’t think they’ll work here.
China implemented quarantines and they seem (if you can believe the communists) to have worked. But…China is a nation full of people who are quite used to saying ‘how high’ when the .gov tells them to jump. Many European countries are similar…people are used to a supremacy of .gov and believe that .gov is for ‘the greater good’. Thus, when ‘gov declares a crisis and says ‘do this’, the population usually toes the line.
And then you get the US… a nation whose entire national identity is based on BFYTW. Lots of folks already distrust .gov, no matter who is in office. And when they tell you to do something, our natural inclination is, often, to say “Yeah, no.”
So when .gov tells you, with a straight face and the wagging finger of seriousness, that you ‘must’ stay at home, avoid other people, not go to work, and generally be under house arrest…well, a lot of people are going to say ‘Yeah, screw that..I’m going to WalMart’. Some people say this is socially irresponsible and these people are selfish clowns who should be beaten with cluesticks until they stop putting others at risk….and theres some who say that individual freedom includes the freedom to make bad choices. (Although usually that argument doesn’t include those bad choices affecting anyone else except the individual in question.) But no matter which side you’re on (if there is a such thing as sides in this) I think it’s pretty obvious that quarantines won’t work in this country the way they do in others.
But…that’s why quarantines won’t work in the US. Short version: we are too individualistic to do what .gov tells us to do, and our .gov is quite reluctant to go to the measures that other countries do. The Chinese physically rounded up people off the street. The Italians have Carabinieri at checkpoints. The Germans…well…I don’t know what the Germans have but it’s probably really well-engineered and expensive…maybe some sort of virus-targetting laser robot thing. But the US is not the kind of country (yet) that rolls out nationwide roadblocks and military patrols to stuff coughing pedestrians into the back of unamarked vans for their own protection.
There are plenty of Americans who are obeying the .gov’s requests to stay at home. But those people aren’t motivated by patriotic altruism and obedience, they do it out of self-preservation because theyre in the target demographic for this thing. The young and dumb are out doing the same things as always because youth. And a quarantine is, I suspect like virginity…no grey areas. You either have a quarantine or you don’t. At this time, we don’t. And I don’t think we will, given the lack resolve to step into the jackboots of ugly-times-call-for-ugly-measures.
I am not a fan of big .gov. I’m rather pleased at the seeming impotence of .gov in terms of establishing the kind of control that other countries are exhibiting. Why? Because once you give a power to ‘gov, they virtually never relinquish it and they always find a way to use it. It’s a very personal choice, but I would rather take my chances at keeping my distance from other people, staying home as much as possible, and keeping outside trips to a minimum, by my own choice, and have a higher risk of catching this thing than have a lower chance of catching it in exchange for having guys with guns and uniforms driving around my neighborhood at night spotlighting houses looking for curfew violators.
But, it’s for those reasons that I dont think, barring some seriously unprecedented draconian responses by .gov, that quarantines will work here as well as they have elsewhere.
Sometimes, “good enough”, is.
The quarantine (and it hasn’t really been that, anywhere, but it’s a distinction without a difference at the moment) in Califrutopia was and is half-assed.
Nonetheless, ours started and continued for weeks, while the bozos in NYFC were still maintaining normalcy, and jamming 6M people a day onto the subway, and while the idjits in Nawlins held Mardi Gras.
NYFC is now Ground Zero, and Nawlins is exploding with Kung Flu cases: while Califrutopia, despite a metric sh*tton of idiots too stupid to know they aren’t essential to anything and thus breaking voluntary house arrest, is virtually a backwater in the current pandemic.
If we had 330M test kits, we could send the healthy home once, for 14 days, and the sick for 30 days, and this would be gone from the US entirely on May 1st.
But we don’t have those kits, and we won’t tell everyone to go home for 14-30 days.
Such spineless resolve is its own reward, as some of our larger cities are discovering, but even the jellyfish level of execution is having a notable difference.
For communists (or fascists if you prefer), pandemics are a phenomenal opportunity to make people disappear.
Once it’s time to “quarantine” the worker-bees, the long lists of known “trouble-makers” comes out. No place to hide, especially in the time of facial recognition technology. All those people “insufficiently loyal” to the regime are getting rounded up for a trip to a special “hospital”, made just for them.
They’ll never be seen again.
I have no doubt that the Chinese did exactly that.
Reports coming out of Wuhan are now suggesting the death toll is around 46,000 and not 2,500 as the Chinese Communist claim. In a Communist country where every dead person in cremated, it’s easy to hide a bullet hole to the back of the head!!!!
https://www.foxnews.com/world/wuhan-residents-say-coronavirus-figures-released-by-china-dont-add-up
I bet there’s a fair bit of lead poisoning in those numbers, too.
The nice thing with living in a dictatorship is you not only get to decide what gets media attention, you also get to decide what official statistics looks like.
There does not need to be a correlation, but there are reports of a lot more than 46.000 cell phones canceled since this began.
On the other hand, it could be a plan for the West to run amok with bogus numbers…
https://deepclips.com/clip/4177/the-closing-of-21-million-cell-phone-accounts-in-china-may-suggest-a-high-ccp-virus-death-toll
Ted,
Interesting for sure!!!
Great post. Agree completely.
I am willing to accept the loss of an additional 1.4% (over the normal 1.4% flu season total) if that is the price of living in relative Freedom. And yes, that includes the loss of Me. Freedom isn’t cheap and I have reluctantly (even tho extremely healthy) come to the realization that none of us is making out alive in the end.
Gonna get REAL interesting if they do try to crack down hard. As in sniping and hobby drone delivered surprises to the checkpoints.
The gov calling their lockdowns by the name of “quarantine” has soured any lingering trust from my libertarian-minded friends. The people who actually have the disease are politely asked to stay home, when they should be put under actual quarantine. Our society plays bait and switch with words, so I am not surprised it’s not taken as seriously as it should.
In part our lax immigration and foreign travel system is at least partly to blame. Back when there was a reason for Ellis Island, this virus exemplifies the reason.
Virus’s and others ill’s are spread by carriers that are unaware they are carriers. Hence, back in the early 1900’s a quarantine would have worked, but not today. To many people travel into to many places, just because of our God given freedoms to do so. Today we haven’t the common sense, willpower, or concern for others we had back then.
When this was first discovered and the severity of it became known, were a nationwide holiday from all activities for 2-3 weeks, work, grocery shopping , entertainment, sports, etc. etc. ensued, the carriers would have been known and the greatest problem of spreading across the country eliminated. It spreads because someone showing no symptoms travels freely and infects others…..
Case in point; I recently read about a virus free county in Idaho that now has a confirmed case, because some asshat from Seattle wanted to get out of the city and away from the potential, unknowing he/she was a carrier. Now they are requiring medical help in a rural area that has very limited healthcare facilities. Some rural areas don’t even have a basic clinic let alone a hospital within a 30-50 mile radius. And that is simply how it’s spread when it could very easily have been contained. Modern mans unconcern for anyones but themselves…….
The main point of the social distancing stuff is to slow the rate of spread, moreso than dramatically reduce the number of cases. If the cases are spread out over time, you are less likely to run out of ventilators for the pneumonia cases and you don’t overwhelm the hospitals so they can do some things besides treat Beer Virus, like the heart attacks and what not that still happen. So the quarantine is not all or nothing. The question is can we do it well enough to keep the local hospitals functioning, not can we do it well enough to stop the virus in its tracks.
Jeff you are spot on! Our quarantine is like a leaky boat with half the occupants bailing as fast as they can. The other half is partying like it is 1999. If we can keep the boat afloat long enough, we will make it. The alternative is disaster. The prediction is ultimately that 70% of the population will have the virus. We can ill afford to have it alll at once.
You nailed it about self-preservation. My husband & I are in the at risk population – we’re staying home. Most the people I know who are taking it seriously are also older or have health problems – or both.
Wife and I are staying home– for as long as it takes.
You don’t have to call it Marshall Law, if you call it quarantine!
Actually no one calls it that anyway. Its “martial” law.
https://gunfreezone.net/in-times-like-this-pets-also-suffer-the-stress/
(simply a bit of comic relief)
THATS some funny stuff right there!
Spot on Zero
What’s the true mortality rate? If it’s 3.5% – it’s probably not the crisis being portrayed. I think the better question may be – what percentage of those affected by covid-19 require hospitalization & a ventilator?
Is the real goal to SLOWLY let this virus run it’s course so we can treat the elderly and at risk groups? I understand that. I am not planning on seeing my parents or any other at risk people I know until this has blown over. I suspect that will be several months from now. Society should return to “normalcy” (or whatever passes for normalcy in 2020 USA) in a couple of months, but I’m not going to put people close to me in joepardy until the new case rate is almost zero or until I know they’ve been milling around in the general population for a while.
Despite Obamacare the USA still has the best health care system in the world. When it’s all said and done it will be interesting to compare numbers and see the mortality rate in the USA versus countries with less, or more developed health care systems.
According to ER doctors, the survival rate for those who require a ventilator for the WuFlu is ~15%. If you need a vent, you are in the worst category. Best thing is don’t get sick!