Dr. Fauci, Calling Dr. Anthony Fauci...

Dr. Fauci, I want a second opinion. Or, I should say, I will get one unless you come up with better answers for us for when this shutdown should come to an end.

Your professional opinion is causing me concern not only for you but our well being and peace of mind.

You have said that the guidelines (which are now really executive orders in most states) are an "inconvenience". I beg to differ. Losing your job or business for no economic reason,  losing your schooling, losing your church or losing your ability to live a normal life are not inconveniences, they are disasters and tragedies. They are, in fact, to use a phrase from your own Hippocratic Oath, harm. People are entitled to know when that harm will end and how, now.

You have said that the Shut Down, yes, the Shut Down, with all of the impossible, China-like oppression involved in it (despite all of our oaths to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) could last EIGHTEEN MONTHS or until a vaccine is developed. Dr. Fauci, I do not think that is a realistic plan or projection and one which has never been applied before. No previous virus of this type saw an end to any stringencies (which were nothing like the ones in place for this one) only when a vaccine was developed. So why are you recommending it here? One hopes that it is not so that we are forced to listen to you and follow your advice as long as you deem it necessary.

You have said that the Virus would determine when and if the Nation would open up again. Again, I respectfully demur. We did not elect a doctor, a statistical model or a virus President. The time honoured tradition in your country is for the direction and management of American affairs to be handled by the People and those it delegates by election. One hopes that that tradition will continue even well before the last person is diagnosed with COVID-19. For, if it does not, much more will be endangered and for much longer than was menaced by Novel Coronavirus.

We have faced countless hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, and cyclones, city wide fires, crime waves, panics, crashes, recessions and a Great Depression, terrorism, the British Empire, the Kaiser, fascism, Nazi Germany, communism, the Soviet Union, the constant spectre of nuclear war, two World Wars, wars of every description, and contagion of every type and somehow have emerged triumphant without the need of a blue ribbon panel to tell us how to do it.

All we want is some reasonable metrics about how and when we can go back to work. And that does not mean doubling down on the Hospitalization, Death and Infection models that have been so wrong so far and telling us we need to wait until April...2021 to get back to work and even then (and this is a direct quote from you) we won't  be able to shake hands. No. If there is more doom and gloom without reasonable explanations, no reasonable metrics or plans for at least partially opening up (for instance, keeping only the sick, exposed or elderly under lockdown) and above all a target date for doing so (as Austria, Denmark, Czechia and Norway, all possessing doctors at least as smart as you and numbers as bad as the US, have done), then the Nation needs to consult someone else as soon as possible.

If you cannot do that, offer reasonable plans to return to normalcy and rely on the good sense of the People who have followed your draconian orders so far and apparently with good effect, then, we will have to simply shake hands, ah, er, I mean bow, and ask you to bow out.

Modelling COVID

It seems to me that the one thing missing in most of those projections as to COVID deaths is a time frame. Once the Headline number of deaths is claimed, no one tells us over what period. For example, it took almost a year for 18,000 to die from Swine Flu. How long will it take for COVID to kill 240,000? Well, on past performance, probably, well...a long time. Even if you believe 12,000 will die every month (and 10,000 have died in the past 6 weeks at least), then it will take almost 2 years to kill 240,000 Americans. But, if you assume that this will mostly be over by July, then about 70,000 would have to die every month. Neither scenario seems plausible on its face with hot spots elsewhere dying down amid maybe 80,000 deaths worldwide. Again, whether it's Ontario or the US, it's time to explain where they're getting these less than model "models" from.

Oh and BTW, the total death toll from the common flu last year in the US was 34,000 with a similar number coming this year. The "Deadly" Coronavirus still trails both it and Swine flu in mortality and infection (33 million common, 60 million swine) with 335,000. All this is boring I am sure to our News mavens but, as the great man once said,"That, too, is reality".
--
John M. Farant

Thanks A LOT, Doug!

I cannot think of something more piercingly irritating and insulting than hearing the Premier announce that, in this time of Crisis, he will reduce our electricity by TWENTY DOLLARS. Well , thanks a lot, Doug! Some of us thought that his government would do things differently - like getting rid of the larcenous feed-in renewables contracts that make us all pay HUNDREDS every month more than we should in return for..,. nothing. (We have the same rate of renewable energy (2.5%!) that other comparable jurisdictions in the continent like Ohio have but pay much more for our electricity.)  But, no. 

Even in a once in a lifetime emergency like COVID, these people who are supposed to be our representatives could not bring themselves to kill those contracts with the ultimate emergency tool of Queen's Park - force majeur laws. Instead, we are offered the equivalent of less than we would pay on one trip to McDonald's per month. What is more, killing these Hydro Rip Off Schemes would have cost us nothing and saved us all billions when we all could use a little more money in our pockets, business or individual.

The only people hurt would have been the Green Profiteers that rook us with these infamous "deals". There is no better proof here that our elected leadership neither care about us nor represent or protect our interests. They only care about themselves and their donors (many of which hold these contracts and no doubt have made contributions to all the political parties) even in a crisis like this.

It's an "Emergency"?

The President has only announced a national emergency to target a disease twice since 1960 - both by Clinton in 2000 to deal with the spread of the West Nile Virus in New York and New Jersey. Remember West Nile? In other words, I was wrong.

It looks like Obama did not even declare a national emergency to combat the Swine Flu, which actually killed 18000 Americans, not 16000 as I suggested before. This is a dangerous double standard and I can only believe that it is because of hatred of Trump. Finally, shutting down anything at this time simply feeds the false narrative that Wall Street is crashing over. It becomes then a stupidly self-fulfilling prophecy.

I believe that all of these things, except for isolating New Rochelle and the Washington nursing home, like China did Wuhan, have been for nought. Worse, they will have been self inflicted wounds at best, an indication of human folly at worst. I do not believe that almost any of these steps save for the border shutdowns and the proper "behaviours" that doctors recommend anyways during flu season, have been the result of medical advice or even business advice but political advice.

Exponential - something that the "spread" has stubbornly not been (why, for instance did it not take even a bare foothold in Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai or Beijing?) in the infection or the killing. This is especially in North America where steps were taken early to stop flights from China. What has been exponential in its spread has been panic and fear spread by the media shamelessly and negligently and, above all, stupidity. It reminds one quite chillingly of the constant, willfully reckless and dishonest coverage of the Russian Collusion story. And therein you find the answer to why the coverage has that tone - both have one other type of disease in common - Trump Derangement Syndrome.

BTW, if CNN, Wall Street, NYT, Congress and others really believe that this is any where near as bad as they propagandize, why don't THEY work at home?

70000 out of 130000 infected by COVID-19 are now recovered. Sadly, the 6 billion infected by being dumb may never recover.

Math Apocalypse

Glenn Beck joins Angela Merkel (who said 70% of Germans would get C19 - Gee, I wonder why The Potus cancelled European flights?) the NP, Brian Williams, Biden, the NYT and countless "experts" in failing at Math. Today the Doomster (he still sells Gold and Food Can Packs for the Apocalypse) declared that "We're all going to get it." Well, it just put its ugliest foot forward in China and they have about 100000 cases out of 1 billion plus people, out of 15 million Wuhaner's.  It's death rate has been 3% at worst, infection .01%.

If the death rate is really 1 %, then Beck would be predicting effectively (affectively?) that 3 million Americans will die from this! Less than 4000 have died from this worldwide. I understand that maybe the idea is to prepare us mentally for the worst case scenario Ben Franklin style. But, when the facts get in the way, how about thinking before you talk for a change? How about NOT making people feel and think worse than they are when you hold in your hands the responsibility of such an enormous megaphone as a nationally syndicated radio show? Oh and BTW, get some remedial math studies done.

Beck suggested, no doubt, jokingly in the same bizarre riff that there would be zombies after this is over. Well, if Glenn Beck and the others who needlessly and recklessly stir the flame of panic over this relatively un-deadly virus outbreak were zombies, they'd only eat their own or each other's brains. Then Heroic zombie-fighters would not have to kill them because they'd just starve to death.

Don't panic, SVP

SPECIAL EMERGENCY BLOG -

SARS - (China) 8000 infected - 774 dead (10% mortality)

MERS - (Middle East) 2000 - 720 (36%)

Ebola - (West Africa) 28646 - 11323 (25-90%) ("Emergency")

H1N1 (Mexico-Asia) 100's of millions INCLUDING 60 million Americans - 151-575000 (0.1-0.8%) ("Pandemic" - WHO, June, 2009 - Obama declares "National Emergency" in October

(ALSO - did not discriminate as to age) Almost certainly, this means AT LEAST 60000 Americans were killed by it!

COVID-19 - (China) 130000+ - 5000 (3.2%, 1% for those younger than 60 AND there are only 14000 left infected out of 80000 in China, with only 18 NEW CASES!)

As of now the Americans have suffered 1380 infections with 79 "new" cases,38 deaths, TEN "serious or critical" cases!

THUS, perspective and insight and, yes, some caution, too, is desperately needed. COVID-19 is less deadly and more discriminating, and apprently less infectious than nearly all the previous threats, especially, SWINE FLU AKA H1N1. Meanwhile, I promise that I will NEVER use so many capital letters for emphasis in my writing again!

Moral Turpitude of the Highest Order - Parts 1 and 2

Part 1 -

What's worse than breaking the Rule of Law and then using your state powers to cover it up? Using people dedicated to breaking up your country to continue the coverup. Introducing the new Liberal-Bloc Coalition (not as seen on TV or advertised as such in our last election campaign). The Bloc just helped the Liberals block even "studying" the SNC matter any further. And you can be darn sure that the Bloc mob will use their perfect blackmail position (as if Quebec's position in Confederation in that regard was not already "perfect" enough) to halt any further action on Bill 21, to halter any projects that add even one iota to our carbon emissions UNLESS it benefits Quebec and to extort whatever other pork they deem fit. Every time these Liberal moral defectives sermonize to us about anything, they should be reminded just who they take their orders from: crooked companies like SNC and racist separatist thugs like the Bloc. 

Part 2 - (With no apologies to Edmund Burke)

And then the scene of legal, political, fiscal and moral vandalism takes us to...well, Ottawa again. Wherein the City of Ottawa's Council approved a multi billion dollar project, the so-called "Phase 2" of the LRT, last year without key documents that would have shown that the bid approved was grossly inadequate. The Mayor was the only councillor to know the truth and still voted for it. We are told then that the rest of the Council then "had" to vote for it. Well, apparently words of command and imperative like that are not even available when dealing with people coming into this country who were exposed to COVID-19, so there was no "had to" about it. 

Indeed, three councillors out of the 23 voted against because they "had" the quaint feeling that, because they were denied access to these key documents by the City's staff, they would not be doing their own due diligence before voting at all. The other 20 voted for it despite being kept in the dark. The Mayor voted for it one can only surmise for his own greater glory. The Corporation of the City of Ottawa should be renamed the "Bureaucracy of Ottawa" where the democratically appointed agents of the People of Ottawa are not even given the same powers as the Queen in its administration.

What does any of this have to do with Burke? Back in Law School, we were taught his Address to the Electors of Bristol in which the politician and philosopher extolled the virtues of MP Independence. It seemed laudable enough an idea, even at at time when almost no one in Bristol was allowed to vote and Burke, operating in the 1700's, would never have been bothered with his electors from day to day and probably spent little time there as he was too busy being, well, Edmund Burke. We all want our MP's to think independently from time to time, in our best interests, and even vote against our interests if they feel it is in the National interest.

But we all know that's not what's happening now. At best, this moral has been used by scoundrels, who can hardly ignore or be "away" from their constituents in some splendid isolation in this day and age of the Tweet and the Like, to commit all sorts of political and electoral fraud. As for "thinking", one can hardly use that term now to describe the meanderings of most of our MPP's, MP's or Municipal agents. They are, for the most part, glorified pension clerks and trained seals who do as their Leader tells them or, as the Sainted Jack Layton once put it, "Messenger Boys".

It's clear that, in both of the Ottawa cases cited above, the "message" from the Leader was, "Shut the @#$% up and vote for my favourite project!" In the case of the Mayor, that was his LRT Legend Embiggening project. In the case of the PM, it was...the PM, of course. For, the Bloc could not have Bloc'd the SNC study without the help of his Liberal Digits. The question is, where does this leave Responsible Government? The answer is, in a very bad place indeed. For there is no evidence (except that evinced by the three councillors who voted against) that any major party or politician cares about this, unless it is of political benefit to them.

 Where are the Press in all this - defenders of our liberties and turn-er out-er of our governments? The stories are there, God knows. But the follow up and pick up is absent. One is tempted to feel that it would be different if the culprits in these stories were conservatives, but, I am not convinced. Until our political system is reformed from top to bottom, we will be hostage to the character of our governors and thus, too often, suffer under the despotism of Civil Service tyranny and its accomplice corrupt, craven and ignorant politicians.

THERE ARE NOW 96 DAYS LEFT FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA TO DISALLOW BILL 21