OPINION:
Stay home, stay away from strangers, shut down the schools and for God’s sake, whatever happens, do not touch plastic or stainless steel. That was COVID-19, April.
Now? A few hop, skip and jump days later? Oops. Oopsies. Oppose-daisies.
“Coronavirus ’does not spread easily’ by touching surfaces or objects, CDC now says,” one USA Today headline read.
How embarrassing.
Or, if you’re a small business owner or one of the 33 million, err, 35 million, err 36 million put out of work by government’s forced closures due to COVID-19 — how #$(&&*%! unbelievable.
It was just April, after all, when the news headlines rang loud and panicky about a study from The Lancet Microbe that showed the virus was a pesky little thing that clung stubbornly to all kinds of stuff people touched daily, particularly plastic.
“Researchers behind the new study tested the virus’ life span in a 71-degree-Fahrenheit room at 65% relative humidity,” Business Insider wrote in April. “After three hours, the virus had disappeared from printing and tissue paper. It took two days for it to leave wood and cloth fabric. After four days, it was no longer detectable on glass or paper money. It lasted the longest, seven days, on stainless steel and plastic.”
It’s quite a different tune, circa May.
As Fox News wrote, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now finds the coronavirus “does not spread easily” by “touching surfaces or objects.” Still, in the next breath, the CDC also says, the spread of the coronavirus by the touching of surfaces “may be possible.” Confused?
Mea culpa, CDC says.
Oh, and oh yeah, here’s another update-slash-course-correction-in-science: The coronavirus doesn’t spread from animals to people, either. Or from people to animals.
“COVOD-19 is a new disease and we are still learning about how it spreads,” the agency excused itself, in a website update.
The CDC recommends; the medical bureaucrats concur; the government clamps down; the American people panic and suffer. The damage to America’s economy goes on; the destruction to America’s Constitution continues..
“[T]wo cats in New York have tested positive for the coronavirus,” Market Watch reported May 14. “The cats are also believed to have contracted the virus from people in their households or neighborhoods, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the CDC told the Associated Press.
That was so May 14.
This is May 21.
Keep up, people. Keep up.
And just in case you missed it, here are some more updates: The CDC now says more than 80 percent of those dying from COVID-19 are more than 65 years old — meaning, children are largely unaffected.
Meaning: shutting schools was premature.
Meaning: keeping schools shut is stupid.
And of 1.58 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States — and that’s “confirmed” with a asterisk, given hospitals’ financial incentives to ramp up COVID-19 case counts — the death count stands at 93,806. And yes, that’s 93,806 with an asterisk, too.
As a percentage of the population, that seems high — mathematically, it’s 5.9%.
But are we to trust these numbers?
A Colorado legislator has accused public health officials in the state of purposely, wrongfully, inaccurately, inflating COVID-19 death counts; various media people in Florida have alleged their state’s bureaucrats are underreporting deaths.
“The reality is that assigning a cause of death is not always straightforward, even pre-pandemic,” Live Science wrote.
It depends on the physician. It depends on the hospital. It depends on medical policy. It depends on a range of factors — and with COVID-19, financial incentives to overreport are real. Governors have ordered hospitals and clinics to stop performing elective surgeries and procedures to make way for the COVID-19 case loads — which never came, in most instances. And Congress have bent over backwards to pass stimulus bills that give millions upon millions of dollars to hospitals that need the money to serve COVID-19 patients — who never came in the expected droves, in most instances.
So what’s a poor financially faltering hospital to do, but use every COVID-19 potential to best monetary opportunity?
The more America learns about COVID-19, the more it becomes clear: the panic was unwarranted. The government’s response was over-the-top. The death to American business was egregious.
The more Americans learn about the science and medical expertise behind the shut-down, the more it becomes evident: the scientists and medical experts hardly deserve the platform they’ve been given. They’re “experts,” with an asterisk.
• 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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