A Reader writes: What’s really going on?

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Image: ER check-in at lunchtime. Is this before the storm or is it all being over-hyped for some reason we don’t understand yet?

I just got back from a visit to our local hospital.  I’m not COVID sick, just a knee issue that I needed an ortho doc for.  He’s based in the hospital a few miles from here (in Virginia) and I was referred there by the emergency room doctor I saw last week.

I have some questions about what we’re being told.  It’s different than what I discovered.  Bear with  me as I tell you what I found…

This was last week:

The ER around lunchtime on Thursday was pretty much empty.  I’ve been to an ER before.  I know what they look like in a busy time.  What was weird is that there were no kids. Maybe that’s a side effect of cancelling all sports and school? There were two clerks checking in and I walked — well, was wheeled — up to one as soon as I got there.  The attendant from the ER was out to fetch me before we even finished the paperwork.  I saw the doctor, the nurse, the ultrasound tech and got an x-ray in under an hour.  No waiting.  I waited longer to get my annual physical than I did at any point in the ER visit.

I know we’re supposed to be in a health emergency.  I sure didn’t see it other than hand sanitizer everywhere in the ER.  If emergency rooms are overwhelmed with COVID patients, I sure don’t see it in this one.

 But today’s visit was even more enlightening:

Again, longer to fill out paperwork than I had to wait.  The doctor was knocking at the door before I was done telling the paperwork gods that I had never been pregnant.

Quick exam.  No major problems.  Then we got to chatting…

Turns out that there are two closed wards in this hospital.  The after effect from insurance companies demanding that everything less invasive than open heart surgery be done outpatient.  Now there are hospital beds sitting empty. The leg doc couldn’t believe that they weren’t being readied for the coming deluge of COVID patients, or that they hadn’t called in medical students to train them to work pulmonary equipment. In fact, he was surprised that there hadn’t been any training going on there at all.  What gives?

I don’t mind that, but I’m looking at the likes of Andrew Cuomo and Bill DeBlasio telling me the world is ending and we’ll all die if they don’t get more money — and if we don’t stay home.  We will overwhelm the hospitals.  Not enough beds.  Not enough equipment.  

Near as I can tell, it’s all nonsense.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but my observations have got to make me stop and think about it.  All the hysteria is based on models (just like “global warming”) and not actual facts.  Worldwide there are just over 17,000 deaths so far from COVID.  That’s fewer than the average number of deaths in the U.S. alone from regular old seasonal flu.  And there are around 600 deaths from COVID in the U.S.  How do they figure that tanking our economy, spending Trillions of dollars we’re borrowing or printing, and imposing martial-law like rules on us is going to save us.  This just doesn’t make sense to me.  

Yes, some people will get sick.  Some will die.  But I find it hard to believe that a massive explosion of government spending is the answer.  Especially if Nancy Pelosi and her ilk get their way and most of that explosion goes to nutty social programs.

Is there another agenda in Washington?  Is this just the most recent push by the Deep State and the Washington Establishment to vastly expand our government and keep us under their thumb?  

Just my two cents.  What do you think? ~ Mac