The first pandemic of the 21st Century took place in 2009.  It was commonly referred to as the “Swine Flu” or H1N1.  It was notable for its rapid global spread which was facilitated by an unusually high degree of viral contagiousness and was most lethal in individuals affected by chronic disease or other underlying conditions.  

The Centers for Disease Control has estimated that in the United States there were 60.8 million cases, 274,300 hospitalizations and up to 18,300 deaths due to the virus. Additionally, CDC estimated that 360,000 people worldwide died of the virus infection.

The previous global pandemic took place in 1968-69.  It was a flu virus (H3N2) often referred to as Hong Kong Flu although it originated in China.  Like Chinese Coronavirus it too took an unusual toll on the elderly with underlying health Issues.  The CDC estimates that over 1 million people throughout the world and over 100,000 in the United States died from the virus.

During the entirety of these two pandemics there was no overwrought national panic, no massive government spending and bailouts or state-wide shutdowns.  Nor was the mainstream media fanning the flames of panic by breathlessly reporting any and all worse case theoretical scenarios as well as maliciously fabricating headlines.   In both pandemics the opposition party, the Democrats (the Hong Kong Flu) and the Republicans (the Swine Flu), did not aid and abet the media or gratuitously criticize the efforts of the Nixon or Obama Administrations.

Among the studies hyped by the mainstream media and the Democrats is one done by the Imperial College in London that claims that their model projects over 4.4 million Americans will die if no action is taken; but if the nation takes certain mitigation measures, then the death toll will only be 2.2 million by the end of the year.  It is the promotion of this and similar studies by the media and the Democrat Party hierarchy that is animating the extreme responses and fear mongering in this country.  But it should be noted that this same institution, the Imperial College (a bastion of Leftism), has also erroneously predicted innumerable catastrophic global warming scenarios over the years.

To achieve the most optimistic scenario predicted in this study, 7,746 Americans would have to die of the Coronavirus every day until the end of the year.  As of now less than 14,500 have died globally after four months of the virus being spread-- the United States 414.

There are, on the other hand, numerous articles and studies, including one by the Hoover Institution, that reflect the actual results on the ground and predicts that the death toll will be much lower than the normal seasonal flu. John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Stanford University, concerned that the nation is making dramatic decisions without reliable data, wrote the following:  

The current Coronavirus disease, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic.  But it may also be a once-in-a-century fiasco.

Yet, those experts are dismissed as the country dives headfirst into a potential depression as millions lose their jobs and countless businesses are forced to close.

As 2020 is an election year, has the unprecedented hyperventilation about the Coronavirus been orchestrated by those infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome which has metastasized among the nation’s left leaning professional and governing class?

*   *   *

I recently had lunch with the son of a long-ago client.  He is a very successful lawyer in his mid-forties.  Despite my best effort to avoid it, the conversation inevitably turned to politics and the Chinese Coronavirus epidemic.  While my lunch guest expressed great concern about Joe Biden’s mental acumen as well as his ability to manage a Coronavirus type crisis, he declared that he would vote for him if that meant defeating Donald Trump.  When I asked why would he risk placing the future of the country in the hands of a candidate in whom he has so little confidence, he replied “Because Trump is man of no character who is a racist, a narcissist and an authoritarian.  He must be removed from office.”

This was followed by a litany of anti-Trump talking points regarding his supposed lack of moral fiber and debunked fabrications about Russian collusion and Ukraine meddling.  But most troubling was his regurgitation of vague and specious accusations that Trump was responsible for the Coronavirus outbreak in the United States and that hopefully, if enough people died or the economy collapsed, this national health crisis would end in his defeat in November.

My first inclination was to chalk his rantings up to yet another case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  But it occurred to me that TDS is a serious symptom of an underlying and perhaps incurable malady.  I could not engage him, and others I have met over the years in a meaningful conversation without their inevitable reversion to threadbare “progressive” talking points and name calling. 

After fifty years of dealing with them, I have concluded that a significant majority of today’s professional class, which includes the mainstream media, is ill-educated, credulous, incapable of generating an original thought beyond their self-absorption, and devoid of leadership qualities.  To see Donald Trump, the antithesis of these traits, in the most powerful office on the planet brings out the worst in them including a willingness to maneuver the nation into a depression.

It is not a matter of formal education as those supposedly well-educated are not only convinced of their superiority but manifest on a near daily basis their lack of ethics and propriety.   They graduate from institutions of higher learning not as men and women who are knowledgeable in wide variety of fields and who are also grounded in ethics and philosophy but as self-centered technocrats.  One need only watch or listen to many in the media, entertainment or politics and observe their lack of knowledge, egocentricity and inability to utilize what was once known as “common sense”. 

It is this same rabble that is now driving the nation to the verge of a depression and societal breakdown as they seize upon an illness to achieve their ultimate objective.  It is this same rabble that espouses socialism as that ideology promotes a dominant ruling class.  It is this same rabble that unabashedly describes untold millions of Americans as racists, deplorables, xenophobes and illiterates.

This nation is sailing into treacherous waters if it does not take a deep breath, stop the ever-growing spate of shutdowns and concentrate on those groups most at risk rather than plunge the nation into a depression that could ruin the lives of 330 million Americans in order to satisfy the irrational lust of the ruling class to defeat Donald Trump.

Graphic credit: Pixabay