Everybody's talking about Corona virus, otherwise known as COVID-19.

     The New York Times added their deeply emotional front page for Corona virus casualties. This is sappy sanctimony is lots of ways, but there are four that stand out.

     First, most obvious, is that most of these people almost certainly died of something else. The rate at which financially-strapped hospitals are taking the COVID-19 incentive on death certificates is overwhelming. I see this on media and from personal anecdote. Of the hundred thousand alleged COVID-19 deaths maybe ten thousand of them died of it, maybe one thousand, maybe fewer. I also know that I and others I know would be seeing more cases than we do if the COVID-19 numbers were as bad as they say. I know people who had the Hong Kong flu, I know people who had the regular flu in 2020, but I haven't found anybody who had this bug. It's a lie and they know it's a lie.

     Second, about a million people have died for medical reasons so far this calendar year (2020). Why are their deaths of such secondary importance? This is a difference between conservative and liberal thinking these days. Rather than take a broad view of a landscape, they seem to pick one example and focus only on that. For example I'm told over a million children are incarcerated because their parents are incarcerated for breaking the law, but they focus only on the two thousand at the Mexican border. When I tried to point out that other flu-like deaths were as important as corona-virus deaths, one high-school classmate "unfriended" me in a spasm of self-righteous rage for being so uncaring.

     Third, about half a million people have died of flu-like diseases so far this calendar decade (2011-2020). While this planet is biologically good to us, even the rain has nutrients in it, it also has things that kill us and eat us. I've been in central Africa where such things are an important fact of life for tourists. There have been two flu outbreaks in my lifetime far worse than this one is reported to be, Hong Kong flu in 1969 and Asian flu in 1957. For various reasons, SARS in 2009 was severely under-reported just as there are reasons COVID-19 is over-reported, so it, too, may be worse than this disease.

     Fourth, what about those suffering from forced lock-down? These people's lives have value and many have been lost from the devastation of poverty and hopelessness. I see something sickeningly sad in those who display this sappy sanctimony sans sarcasm.

     It was great when the New York Times devoted their front page top to the moon landing or the end of World War II. There's something evil about the notion that this one sliver of all the deaths from all the causes in the world is appropriate front page news just because these promote their political agenda.

     Update 2020 May 29. The whole thing is a post-modern lie. I don't have a close-up view of the front page, only the images posted on Facebook, but I'm told it never says these are COVID-19 deaths. Well, a friend did some research and folks who investigated some of the names on the front page found they're aren't COVID-19 deaths at all. One was a car crash and others were other causes of death. It's bad enough that this disease seems almost entirely to afflict those who already have one foot in the grave from old age and some other medical issue, but that the folks at 620 Eighth Avenue didn't even spend the time to find actual deaths from Corona virus is even more appalling.

     Shame on them.

     There is no increase in respiratory-infection disease in 2020 at all. COVID-19 really is the Boogey-Man.

     A buddy I trust checked some CDC data and found something interesting. We all noticed hospitals have been claiming Corona-virus deaths where the true cause of death was clearly something else. They get money for COVID-19 deaths, even more if they intubate them, so they are highly motivate to lie, even more so as government restrictions and general fear prevent them from doing must of the usual revenue-producing health care. Still, we would like to think all this scare is about some increase in the death rate from COVID-19. Well, CDC counts for respiratory deaths in 2020 seem to be lower than the same periods for 2019 and 2018. In other words, there is no increase in total death rate at all and, therefore, there is no reason to be more worried about dying of a pulmonary-infection disease like flu or Corona virus in 2020 than there was in recent prior years. No shit!

     So there was no threat, none at all. The lock-down and their associated suffering were not a reaction to a threat because there was no threat. Therefore the lock-downs themselves were a criminal act, the use of force to close down businesses and deprive people of their livelihood and those who supported lock-down are therefore criminals, never mind what the criminal-justice system decides to do. Those who supported lock-down for COVID-19 are solely and directly responsible for the horrifying losses of liberty, livelihood, and life from the lock-down. Yes, it's entirely their fault.

     Here's my reasoning. Andy shoots Bert claiming that he was aiming at Carl coming at him with a gun behind Bert. We excuse Andy's killing of Bert because of his reaction to the threat Carl presented him. Now we find Carl was never there, Andy was not threatened in any way other than the normal threats a human being encounters behing outside like car crashes, meteor strikes, flu, lightning strikes, and cancer. How kind should we be about his decision to shoot Bert?

     Given that the community of flu-like viruses including COVID-19 took no more life than last year or the year before, so there was no threat beyond the usual yearly toll, how kind should we be to those who took the action of promoting lock-downs because they were afraid? Those actions caused 38 million Americans to lose their livelihoods and some reasonable fraction of those to die of suicide, drug overdose, family violence, et cetera.

     Well, what about all the scary forecasts? Remember in "Men in Black" when Agent J (Will Smith) says "We ain't got time for this cover-up bullshit. There's a alien battle cruiser about to--"? Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) interrupts him. "There's always an alien battle cruiser or a death ray or an intergalactic plague about to wipe out life on this planet. The only way these people get on with their happy lives is they do not know about it." Every year there are new flu-like respiratory diseases coming from somewhere on the planet and maybe three times every twenty years one is serious enough, such as Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, Zika, swine flu, SARS, bird flu, or West Nile, to merit attention. Life goes on and we don't, or we shouldn't, turn it into a political issue and we certainly shouldn't give up liberty, livelihoood, and lives.

     If the total dying is the same and people are dying of COVID-19, that that means they aren't dying of something else, or at least their death certificates say they're not.

     Let me ask a hypothetical question: If I go to a major hospital with a pistol and shoot every cancer patient just as the doctors are going to pronounce time of death for them, then no cancer deaths will go out of that hospital, right? They'll have a serious upward trend in gunshot deaths, but the total remains the same. Any claim that I cured cancer by eliminating cancer deaths by doing that would be silly. Similarly, putting COVID-19 on 100 thousand death certificates of people who were dying anyway is similarly silly. The fact that maybe 1000 of those actually died of COVID-19 doesn't make it less silly, does it? Since the total respiratory deaths hasn't changed, that just means that this Corona virus is this year's player in the viral mix that humanity is facing in 2020.

     By the way, for what it's worth here is a study of CDC data showing lock-down didn't reduce reported COVID-19 deaths.

     Here is some early stuff I wrote and some other stuff on Corona virus.