The Monsters Among Us: @JimCramer, Birx, Fauci -- And You
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2020-04-01 13:34 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 1188 references Ignore this thread
The Monsters Among Us: @JimCramer, Birx, Fauci -- And You *
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Cramer just admitted on-air the fact I've pointed out for more than a month -- in NYC fewer than 20% are making it off ventilators.

Oh, and just because you make it off doesn't mean you live.  How many survive to discharge?  Well, it's less than or equal to that, right?  Yep, since if you're dead we already know the outcome.

Remember, we're not out of ventilators.  Everyone who needs one gets one at the present time.

The problem isn't that they aren't available -- it's that in nearly every case they don't save the patient.

This was my point since this alleged "debate" all started.  The premise that if you exceed hospital capacity we have 2 million deaths and if we don't then 100,000 people (or however many is the fantasy-land trot-out of the day) die was always intellectually bankrupt and a bald-faced lie.  It has been relentlessly promoted on a literal minute-by-minute basis to justify buying tens if not hundreds of thousands of $30,000 machines never mind that each one requires skilled people to operate it, which we do not have.

It has been repeated daily by people like Cuomo, Fauci, Birx and others and President Trump laps it up and regurgitates it without first asking for the survival rate on the vents.

Wuhan managed to save five percent of those who went on vents.

FIVE PERCENT.

I said at the time we can and likely will do better.  But not a lot better.  Nor should we have expected to do better; a study done in 2015 said that the base rate for ventilator survival was 50% to discharge and just 30% over the following year.

Folks, we're not talking about those who are ambulatory and survive without invasive procedures dying if the hospitals overload.  They won't die anyway.  They'll be ok.  Whether it's nasty in their house or in the hospital doesn't matter as they'll be ok.

The people who wind up in ICU on a vent, in nearly all cases, die.  Whether you die with a tube down your throat or you die because there is no tube available to shove down your throat doesn't matter; you're still dead.

It is only those who we put on mechanical ventilation and survive that we can change outcomes for.  They're the only ones for whom a bed in the hospital makes the difference.

For everyone else the outcome does not change.

This means that if we "intervene" and destroy the economy and we have 100,000 people die, all of whom will require intensive care, obviously, and the failure rate with said vents is 80%, then if we did nothing we don't lose 2 million people, we lose 120,000.

Now granted, 20,000 excess deaths is 20,000 I'd rather not have happen.

But that's the difference between the two scenarios and both Birx and Fauci know it -- not 100,000 .vs. 2,200,000.

Is it worth destroying the economy, 30% of all small business restaurants and bars, millions of jobs and millions of lives -- literal millions folks, not 10,000 or 20,000 -- in this attempt?  Is it worth the risk of a critical supply chain disruption that leads to mass civil unrest, riots and potential destruction of one or more American cities?  Is it worth real martial law -- not a "lockdown"?  Is it worth the destruction of our civil society, our willingness to be social with other people, the permanent impact on our economy and the inevitable depression, suicides and overdoses?

And finally, for those of you who think this is all about protecting Granny, listen up:

There are 2.8 million people in the last year of their life in the United States right now.  Some of those people know it's their last year and some do not.  By definition every single person who dies in the next 12 months is in the last year of their life right here, right now.

These constraints are, right here, right now, today, preventing those people from socializing and spending time with the people they love and would otherwise like to spend that time with.

In Trump's 15 days to "slow the spread" over 115,000 Americans died while having had robbed from them the small, simple pleasures of being with the people they love and want to be around by government diktat.  If we continue this insanity until April 30th over 345,000 of those people in the last year of their life will have died and they will have been prohibited the social interactions they would otherwise choose.

Our government -- backed by the vast majority of our population and all the scolds on CNBC and elsewhere -- are consigning 345,000 people to die literally locked in a prison.

All of this because you're not content to take your own precautions and calibrate your own risk.  You're not content to tell people honestly up front that if the health system overloads we will triage and those who are older and are felled by this virus will have to face Brother Grim and then let them make the choice for themselves as adults.

I have, I hope, many years of life left and so does my daughter.  Neither of us needs to be working right now.  This is an inconvenience.  For those put out of work who will lose their jobs on a permanent basis, and then their homes, this isn't an inconvenience, it's a damned travesty predicated on half-truths and outright lies.  Nonetheless, we will survive this.

But for over 345,000 people between the start of this insanity and the end of April it is not an inconvenience or even a travesty; they will die in a literal prison imposed by you, bereft of the social benefit, comfort and simple daily pleasures of life they would have otherwise enjoyed.  How dare you imprison those who have committed no offense and will be dead before this is over.  That is a literal atrocity and a crime against humanity.

You are screwing over 7,000 people a day out of their small individual social pleasures in the puerile and false belief you can "stop the virus."  Even China, welding people in their houses literally, did not stop it. 

Not one of those people gets a "do over" when you're proved wrong; they're all dead.  You can't apologize later or make them whole.  Ever.  And every single day this bullshit goes on another 7,000 people die having been imprisoned in their last days by you.

This is not a few people here and there against whom you commit these crimes -- over 100,000 of those people are dead now and there's nothing you can do to address the harm you caused to them.  You literally throw over 7,000 more bodies on that pile each and every day.

My mother died of colon cancer about a year and a half ago.  The last months of her life were spent doing what she wanted to do in her own home.  She had two bad weeks at the end; up until that point she was still enjoying being who she was, and doing what she wanted to do, interacting with whoever she pleased.  About a month before her final decline my daughter and I drove to her home, picked her up and we all went to lunch in a restaurant.  That was the last time she was able to enjoy the simple pleasure of being served by someone in a dining establishment.  Today that simple pleasure and her choice to engage in it, were she alive, would be prohibited under force of law at your demand.

In the name of a possible 10,000 or 20,000 speculative deaths you have destroyed the enjoyment of over 300,000 American's lives in their last days.

Preventing all of the people in her situation, over 120,000 of them who have passed thus far and 337,000 if this goes to April 30th, from doing as they wish and spending their remaining days as they wish and with whom they wish makes every last one of you a monster.