OPINION:
Sickness due to the coronavirus is real. Death — at least some — due to the coronavirus is real. But how much is real versus how much is a best guess? Unfortunately, we don’t know.
Even more unfortunately, we can’t even ask without facing a barrage of criticism from a variety of camps.
History may very well show that the biggest casualty of the coronavirus outbreak may not be the body count, but rather the ability of a population to think critically, to analyze rationally, to arrive at conclusions based on fact and logic, not wildly fearful emotions.
We’ve got doctors behaving like gods, predicting this, forecasting that, warning ominously of the dire circumstances and deaths to come if citizens don’t stay inside, stay home, stay away from their jobs, their friends, their neighbors. And where do they get these dire predictions? In part, from their own minds; from their own experiences; from their own areas of expertise. But in part, too, from computer models. Computer models that are only as accurate as the inputted numbers. Computer models that are only as accurate as the computer modeling systems used by the climate alarmists. Red flag that, please.
Today’s coronavirus physicians are behaving like yesteryear’s Pharisees.
To question, to challenge, to push back on their theorizing is to — gasp! — oppose God. Yet the fate of our nation has been placed in their hands. The fate of our nation has been placed in the hands of doctors who are as human, i.e., error-prone as the rest of us.
Then come the politicians, swarming like locusts to use the coronavirus crisis to best partisan advantage. Then come the media with all the shock and awe of real-time death counts and real-time sicknesses — the media that has reported record-making history in terms of ratings, record-breaking history in terms of profits.
In a different day, there would be questions about coronavirus statistics in context of comparing them to other infectious diseases. There would be real-time figures of COVID-19 cases, alongside real-time figures of influenza deaths. There would be no nationally televised reports of a single child dying from the coronavirus — because there were no nationally televised reports of the dozens of children who at the same time died from pneumonia and the flu.
There would be pundits who frequently reminded that COVID-19 case counts could be rising due to increased testing and that a surge of people at hospitals doesn’t automatically mean the coronavirus is on the rise.
In a different day, America would be looking at the links, at the ties, at the curious conflicts of interest. There would be look-sees into the political backgrounds of those issuing the loudest warnings, with the most hyperbolic rhetoric. There would be outrage expressed at the soldiers in the streets, at the police arrest of pastors, at the idea of government ordering the closure of private business — and churches.
There would be protests against the obvious losses of civil rights, of individual rights, of rights that in this country are supposed to be inalienable.
There would be serious, in-depth analysis about the true dangers of the coronavirus and whether the tanking of a national economy is justified. There would be acknowledgements of changing stats, or impossible-to-predict stats. There would be follow-the-money investigations into those who would benefit from a global fright of such coronavirus pandemic proportions, followed by somber discussions about ends and means and truths and lies.
But this is not that day.
This is the day of the runaway train called the coronavirus, with all its panicked glory. Critical thinking was tossed long ago.
For the left, that’s hardly a loss. Leftists don’t think anyway.
But conservatives think. Conservatives, in fact, are supposed to be in the thinking business of standing strong against the non-thinking leftists who want nothing more than to tear down America and strip Americans of their civil, constitutionally protected, God-given individual rights.
So where are these thinking conservatives now? Where have they all gone? Because conservatives right now seem to be on the same runaway coronavirus train with the leftists, selling essentially the same civil rights’ crackdowns based on fear and panic as the leftists.
So here’s a question to conservatives who believe, without question, all the ghastly predictions of doom and gloom being poured from the mouths of medical experts and globalists and the like: If this were the Barack Obama administration, would your coronavirus views remain the same?
If Obama had ordered soldiers in the streets, or if Obama had put police on the states’ borders to check traveler’s papers for proper driving permissions, or if Obama had deemed it necessary to close churches for the good of the people, for the health and welfare and safety of the people — would you be OK with that?
If the answer isn’t yes — if the answer isn’t the same as for this current administration — that’s a problem. That’s a double standard, run by politics, run by emotion.
It’s in times of national crisis and chaos where cool, calm, critical thinking based on facts is most needed.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.
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