Hysterical headlines today – Sunday, March 21 – about the number of Americans supposedly identified as having been infected with Coronavirus. The modifier supposedly used because the tests being used to identify the virus are of dubious reliability. But, regardless – 25,493 as of today. A big number, banner-headlined across the Internet.

But there’s another number you have to look for, which isn’t being banner-headlined around the Internet.

307.

That’s how many Americans have supposedly died from WuFlu so far. The modifier added – and italicized – to emphasize the fact that it is not known whether it was the WuFlu that killed all these people or old age/underlying infirmity pushed over the edge by what would otherwise have just been a nasty cold.

But regardless, 307.

It is not a big number . . . relative to the other number. See the graph accompanying this article, which is not the product of a “conspiracy” web site but rather using data compiled by Johns Hopkins, widely accepted to be a reputable source for medical data.

Note that the “death curve” isn’t.

While the number of people infected – or supposedly identified as being infected – has indeed gone up, the number of people dying (see here for data regarding that) has not gone up proportionately. About 60 people more are reported dead over the past 24-48 hours as opposed to many thousands of people newly tallied as Corona-infected.

This is really important – and very good – news.

The overwhelming majority of people who get sick from this bug do not appear to be dying from this bug. Are Tom Hanks and his wife dead? Is Idris Elba on a ventilator? How about the Orange Man himself, who shook hands with (apparently) Corona Carriers at the CPAC conference about a week or so ago. Where are the people doubling over in the streets, coughing up blood? The stacks of bodies, “overwhelming” the system.

None such.

Which indicates strongly this is nonsense. But historically unprecedentedly, catastrophically dangerous nonsense. A pandemic of fear is being used in exactly the same way that fear of “terrrsts” was used by the loathsome Chimp and his accomplices to bum’s rush a terrified country – and a poltroonized Congress – into raping the civil liberties and due process firewalls that had previously protected Americans from legalized abuse by the government (and its corporate accomplices) via midnight passage of the conveniently ready “Patriot” Act.

But that was just the clearing of Uncle’s throat – so to speak.

A test run for the aria to come, which we’re now hearing. It croons that we must be terrified of death from something we can’t see and that might “get” us at any moment and the only way to stay alive is to surrender our lives (and our livelihoods) to the very same government that berated us about “enemies of freedom” and “weapons of mass destruction,” both of them reeking stacks of cow manure.

People – all too many people – fell for it, then.

The result was – the result is – a quiet police state that seems relatively innocuous but which monitors and records every keystroke we make on our computers, our web searches, our texts and calls. That has arrogated the legal authority to snatch people off the street without even a snicker in the direction of due process and literally torture them, as it likes.

“Fool me once, shame on you, “said The Chimp. “Fool me twice… can’t get fooled again.”

Indeed.

Will we allow ourselves to be fooled – again?

Will we permit them to shut down the economy – which will shut down our lives – and thereby give them control over our lives? Permit them to usher in a new age of terror predicated on mass unemployment and possibly mass starvation and then – as if on cure – the arising of a not so quiet and very not innocuous police state . . . on the basis of people getting a bug?

The good news – in addition to the very good news about Americans not dying – is that lots of Americans aren’t Corona Cringing. Even in – of all places – California. Where would-be (and might-as-well-be) Reichsminister Newsome has ordered – who does this SOB imagine himself to be? – people to “shelter in place” (i.e., practice self-imprisonment).

But the people are ignoring their “leaders.”

In my state, too.

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day and it felt and looked like and almost normal spring day – despite the threats of The Coonman – because the coffee shop where I go to write almost every day was still open and because there were people outside walking in the sunshine, not quaking in fear under their beds.

“Social distancing” wasn’t being practiced. No one seemed panicked. Perhaps because of the absence of half-dead people doubling over in the streets, coughing up blood – or actually dead people, anywhere.

It is of course possible the death plateau will curve upward as promised (that word used by the media with what can only be characterized as obvious relish) but the thing to hold onto with both hands and all our strength is that – so far – it has not. That – so far – it has done the opposite of what was promised.

Which ought to give every person who care about this country – and the livelihoods of 330 million Americans – cause to be very optimistic .

And very suspicious about what they’ve been  . . . promised.

. . .

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