Flattening the Curves

I'm sure you've all heard about flattening the curve -- probably ad nauseam.  I've even seen commercials about it and I don't even watch the news.  I don't know what the mainstream media is telling you about it but do you realize that it's not about saving lives?  It's merely to spread out the Infections and therefore hospitalizations over a longer period of time.

It's all about not overwhelming hospitals.  So we have severely disrupted 327 million people's lives in this country alone and ruined the economy all to prevent hospital overcrowding?

And the irony is that it wasn't even necessary!  There would not have been any hospital overcrowding anyway.

Here is what Rush Limbaugh had to say about it:

"In flattening the curve as a policy, i.e., social distancing, locking down, stay at home, avoiding have the virus, the same number of people are gonna get sick and the same percentage of those people are going to die except — and here’s the real point behind it — social distancing, flattening the curve was designed for one thing: to prevent overruns at hospitals, to prevent massive numbers of infections that required very sick people to go to the hospital and put pressure on hospitals, ICU’s, emergency rooms that the hospitals couldn’t handle. That’s why we have been doing what we’ve been doing, to avoid stress, to avoid overcrowding, to avoiding chaos at the hospitals." 

"Well, let’s look at the flu. Let’s look at hospitalizations. Are you ready for some shocking numbers? Do you want to hear some shocking numbers? During last year’s flu season, according to the CDC, 490,000 people were hospitalized due to seasonal flu. The year before that, 810,000 people were hospitalized due to the flu. The maximum number of projected hospitalizations with COVID-19 as of two days ago is 62,000. If we could handle 810,000 hospitalizations due to flu, if we could handle 490, 500,000 hospitalizations, then we certainly can handle 62,000 hospitalizations due to COVID-19.

"So there are the numbers in context. American hospitals have not been overwhelmed by the number of flu sufferers. Now, New York, you can find a pocket here or there. But in New York all the override hospitals, the Javits Center, Central Park build-out, the Navy ships, none of ’em were necessary. They were there to handle both COVID-19 and regular cases.

"Folks, the reason for flattening the curve never materialized — to handle an overrun of hospitals. Everything is arguable. We could reopen much sooner than a lot of people think.

"The same number of people are gonna get sick and die.

"It’s just that theoretically the hospitals will not be overwhelmed." -- Rush Limbaugh.com, "Examining Why We Tried to Flatten the Curve", April 15, 2020

Our country never needed to be shut down.  Lock down, social distancing, stay at home orders -- shutting down businesses, churches, schools, restaurants, etc. -- none of it was necessary!

Now, the Liberal Democrat media will tell you that it was because of the tyrannical lock down that kept the virus at bay.  But flattening the curve doesn't reduce the numbers, it just spreads them out over a longer period of time.  So instead of the pandemic lasting a few weeks to a few months, flattening the curve will make it last a few months to a year plus.

For some reason I thought that all of this extreme tyrannical lock down, social distancing, stay at home orders would actually bring the numbers down of those who become infected with the virus and those who die from it.  But that's not what it does.  Which, thinking about it, that makes sense.  The virus will continue to spread to people who are not immune until a certain number of people become immune -- herd immunity -- which stops the progression of the spread of the virus.  It will just take longer for the virus to run its course.

So when the Liberal Democrat mainstream media tells you that the numbers are much less than they expected because of the extreme lockdown measures -- they are lying.  First of all, their models -- which at first projected 2.2 million deaths in the United States -- those models already took into account social distancing, stay at home lock down.

When they noticed the numbers weren't ever going to come close to 2.2 million they lowered it to 240,000.  10% of the original estimate.  Then it was lowered to 60,000 projected US deaths.  Now I hear they are going to lower the projection again.

And actually the numbers are grossly inflated.  The CDC even said that anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 -- even if they die from comorbidities such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc. are still counted as a COVID-19 death.  And New York just added 4000 deaths to their tally of COVID-19 deaths because they might have tested positive.  But were never tested.

No matter what happens, the Democrats i.e. mainstream media will spin the truth and claim that the pandemic was much worse than it really was and that it was because of extreme tyrannical lockdowns that prevented even more illness and deaths.

The truth is that the same number of people are going to get sick and die regardless of what tyrannical measures are taken.  Flattening the curve just spreads out the pandemic over a longer period of time.

Remember the wise words of Waylon Jennings in The Dukes of Hazzard theme song:

Staightenin' the curves
Flattenin' the hills
Someday the mountain might get 'em
But the law never will

Makin' their way
The only way they know how
That's just a little bit more
Than the law will allow

Every time I hear, "flattening the curve" I think of this song.  Seems to apply to these days of pandemic panic.  The current tyranny we are facing is much worse than Boss Hogg or Roscoe P. Coltrane ever imposed on the Duke boys.

That's my two cents.