Coronavirus: Facts, Anyone?

 

Perspective is helpful, and critical. Panic is not.

Consider the figures:

 

Japan:

Just under 5,000 deaths per year from bathtub drownings;

just over 5,000 deaths per year from traffic accidents;

27 deaths from coronavirus, as of March 16

Italy:

3,300 deaths from traffic accidents per year

2,158 deaths from coronavirus as of March 16

US:

40,000 deaths per year from traffic accidents;

77 deaths from coronavirus, as of March 16

and,

200,000 deaths per year from pharmaceuticals taken correctly, and prescribed correctly, according to the US government’s own figures

Are we banning cars? That would be more rational (though of course we would need a five to ten year phase out while building mass transit infrastructure, to end the car dependency and addiction). Are we concerned with mass deaths due to the extreme over-use of unsafe pharmaceuticals? That would be rational. Panic and draconian measures over the coronavirus are not rational – these *responses to the virus*, are extremely dangerous, however.

But few people care about facts in a time of mass hysteria.

Moreover, in China, the “pandemic” is winding down, and essentially over.

80,880 were infected; 3,213 died – overwhelmingly the very old and immune-compromised (about 0.0003% of the population of the country – vastly fewer deaths than those caused by motor vehicle accidents, pollution, or the common flu); 67,819 have recovered.

But while the “pandemic” is winding down in China, in the West the panic and draconian measures are just winding up. Now that is something to be worried about.

Wash your hands, eat your vegetables, take vitamin C – and question everything: especially the media and the government.

Then again, if the US government was truly serious about preventing human suffering and death, it would stop slaughtering people on a daily basis across the Middle East for oil.

This, by the way, is not “anti-Americanism” – it’s anti-murder. It’s anti-war, anti-imperialism, and anti-murder. If Washington is concerned about human health and human suffering, the first step would be to stop practicing mass murder for oil and other resources.

And if Canada, or the Canadian government, was truly serious about protecting human life, it would cease to be the biggest per capita arms dealer in the world, selling weapons to murderous governments such as the US and Saudi Arabia.

Neither of them is at all serious about protecting human life, or they would stop the slaughter they are neck deep in blood engaged in.

The lies must end now. War, poverty, obesity, poor diets, car accidents, climate change and pollution, are all vastly bigger dangers, and vastly bigger killers, than the latest virus. Even the common flu is 100 times more dangerous and more lethal. (650,000 annual death toll globally from the common flu, compared to just over 7,000 for the coronavirus, to date.)

End the madness. Question everything. And let’s start dealing with the real world, and the really big problems we face: such as poverty, obesity, unhealthy diets, pollution, war, climate change, and yes, the very clear and present danger, and drift toward, fascism.

How deep in denial are the majority? That denial, on many levels, and with regard to many serious, urgent problems and truly grave dangers, is the biggest threat of all.

Furthermore, if the US government was truly concerned about human health, it would immediately create a universal public health care system, like the rest of the civilized world already has. Over a trillion dollars a year is spent on war, and the military-industrial-security complex – the new police state. But there is no money for public health care? You are liars.

And in Canada, if the fuzzy-bear faux liberal government truly cared about human health, they would stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry at $20 billion a year, so they can destroy the planet faster, and instead fully fund health care – which is in nation-wide crisis due to chronic under-funding, and decades of funding cuts.

Again: they are both lairs – Trudeau and Trump. And they are both extremely dangerous – due to their staunch, planet-destroying allegiance to the fossil fuel industry, militarism, and the growing police state: far more dangerous than the coronavirus, or any other infectious disease.

What are the greatest dangers? They are, unquestionably, the lies, illusions, and the denial, which are the nearly universal norm.

The latest virus does not remotely compare to these.

JTR,

March 16, 2020