Coronavirus - The Hidden Cases - Why We Must Shut Everything Down And Do It Now

By Moon Of Alabama

March 12, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -   The powers that be in our 'western' societies have decided to do nothing significant against the onslaught the novel coronavirus SARS-Cov-2 is now causing.

There will not even be an attempt to do like China or South Korea which have thrown all resources at stopping the spread of the virus while it was still possible. The 'west' now seem to be beyond that point.

The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson floated the idea to "take it on the chin" -  i.e. to do nothing to soften the blow the epidemic will cause. Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany told her parliamentary group that 60-70% of all Germans will catch the virus. Most of them will fall ill with the Covid-19 disease the virus causes. At a 1% death rate this means that more than 500.000 Germans will die from it. Merkel did not say how she would try to prevent that. So far little was done by her administration to stop a further public spreading of the disease.

The Donald Trump administration has done its best to prevent an early detection of the outbreak in Washington State and likely also elsewhere:

As luck would have it, Dr. Chu had a way to monitor the region. For months, as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget Sound region.

To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea, interviews and emails show, even as weeks crawled by and outbreaks emerged in countries outside of China, where the infection began.

By Feb. 25, Dr. Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval.

What came back confirmed their worst fear. They quickly had a positive test from a local teenager with no recent travel history. The coronavirus had already established itself on American soil without anybody realizing it.

The CDC and the FDA would not have that:

The message from the federal government was blunt. “What they said on that phone call very clearly was cease and desist to Helen Chu,” Dr. Lindquist [the state epidemiologist in Washington] remembered. “Stop testing.”

Our dear leaders are following the four stage strategy (vid):

In stage one we say "Nothing is going to happen".
Stage two we say something may be going to happen but we should do nothing about it.
Stage three: We say maybe we should do something about it but there is nothing we can do.
Stage four: We say maybe there was something that could have been done but it is too late now.

Yascha Mounk follows my argument and gives a reasonable advice on what we can do to make this as pandemic as survivable as possible. Shut everything down that can be shut down. Increase social distance as much as possible. Avoid all live social contacts wherever possible. Do it NOW!