President Biden hosted a summit of world leaders at the White House yesterday, at which he marked the “tragic milestone” of Covid claiming 0ne million American lives.
President Joe Biden appealed to world leaders at a COVID-19 summit Thursday to reenergize a lagging international commitment to attacking the virus. … ‘This pandemic isn’t over,’ Biden declared, …’ ‘1 million empty chairs around the family dinner table.’
The coronavirus has killed … at least 6.2 million people globally since it emerged in late 2019.
(The Associated Press, May 13, 2022)
Given that, you’d be forgiven for thinking that former President Trump was just engaging in his trademark boasting and bravado in March 2000, when he said he would give his administration high marks if it kept US Covid deaths under 100,000.
To be fair, though, Trump was merely reflecting prevailing scientific opinion. After all, here is what no less a scientific authority than Dr. Anthony Fauci said about this death toll back then:
I’ve never seen a model of the diseases that I’ve dealt with where the worst-case scenario actually came out. So when you use numbers like 1 million, 1.5 million, 2 million, that is almost certainly off the chart. Now, it’s not impossible but very, very unlikely.
(CNN, March 29, 2020)
Yet here we are – living and dying with the worst-case scenario …
In a similar vein, I was in the vanguard of those who could see as early as April 2020 that, just like the Flu pandemic of 1918, the Covid pandemic of 2020 would become a seasonal malady, aka a new normal. I expressed my concerns and vented my frustrations in commentaries like “Covid-20 Is Coming. What Happens Then…?” April 23, 2020.
What’s more, I laid out a four-point plan to live with Covid as the “new normal” even earlier in “Medics Complain about Lack of Supplies. Trump Passes the Buck…Again,” March 20, 2020.
But then came headlines like this from the November 15, 2021, of NBC News:
- Public Health Officials Say COVID-19 Is Likely Here to Stay, Herd Immunity Unattainable: the battle against COVID-19 shifts from crushing the virus, to living with the virus
That prompted me to write “Living with Covid – Like the Flu, and ‘Booster’ Means Annual Covid Shot Too,” November 17, 2021, which includes the following excerpt:
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On the August 26 edition of New Day, for example, [Dr. Sanjay] Gupta said that Covid is moving from the pandemic to endemic stage. He then claimed that we are still living with variants from the endemic stage of the flu pandemic of 1918. …
With all due respect to Gupta and Wachter, I began writing about learning to live with Covid, the way we live with the flu, over a year ago in “Coronavirus: The Worldwide Lockdown,” March 14, 2020. Among other things, I diagnosed that:
Once the novelty of social distancing and self-isolation wears off, mental depression might be competing with economic depression to become the leading cause of death among Westerners. … Again, with apologies to FDR, what we have to fear is fear itself triggering a global depression. … When juxtaposed to the seasonal flu, no closure, quarantine, or state of emergency seems warranted. …
Just imagine the panic if we reacted to every case of the flu with as much alarm as we’re reacting to every case of this virus — complete with the media fetishistically tolling bells for every death.
Even more on point, I followed up earlier this year in “‘Covid-19 Will Be Like Seasonal Flu.’ No Sh!t,” February 17, 2021 as follows:
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The Economist readily admits that the economic toll is incalculable. Still it estimates the loss to date at $10 trillion worldwide. …
Concomitant with all that, of course, is the pandemic of lockdown side effects ranging from obesity and domestic violence to stress/depression and even suicide. And there’s no end in sight.
I am no scientist. But I did not have to be to make a connection between Covid-19 and the flu. I need only refer you to my commentary titled “Covid-20 Is Coming. What Happens Then…?” April 23, 2020.
Which clearly raises the question I posed back then – as I admonished against the worldwide rush to impose lockdown measures:
- If Covid-19 becomes seasonal, just like the flu, are we going to react every time the way we are this season, namely with lockdown restrictions that reduce even bustling cities to ghost towns…?
I refer you to the four-point plan I laid out in “Medics Complain about Lack of Supplies. Trump Passes the Buck…Again,” March 20, 2020. Because experts are now prescribing those very points as the best way to live with Covid-19. But, apropos of the new normal, prepare to get an annual Covid shot along with your flu shot.
In other words, we’d be well-advised to go back to living like it’s 2019; well, except for a pandemic fetish for wearing masks and a pandemic OCD for washing hands.
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Stay safe. Be well.
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living with covid…