Hospital Capacity Crisis? Zero!

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There is no crisis in hospital capacity anywhere in the country, reports Heather Mac Donald in Spectator.US.

Where Are the Deaths?

• Nursing homes, meat-packing plants, and prisons remain the main sources of new infections.
• Half the states are seeing cases decline or hold steady.
• Case counts are affected by more testing; the positive infection rate captured by testing is declining.
• The current caseload is younger, which is a good thing. The more people who have been infected and who recover, the more herd immunity is created.
• Meanwhile, daily deaths from heart disease and cancer — about 3,400 a day combined — go ignored in the press.

Is Everyone at Equal Risk?

“Recent outbreaks in the US have occurred overwhelmingly in nursing homes, prisons, and meat packing plants,” continues Ms. Mac Donald in a related 25 May Spectator.US article. “And yet, virus coverage leaves the reader thinking that everyone is at equal risk.”

Steadily Dropping Death Rate Numbers

What virtually every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of 2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news.

Stay Safe an Insult to Human Striving

But the drumbeat to halt the still far too tentative re-openings gets louder by the day. It should be resisted. The lockdowns were a mistake the first time around; to re-impose them would be disastrous for any remaining hope of restoring our economy.

The damage that has been done to people’s livelihoods and future prosperity will continue to outweigh the damage done by the coronavirus. The only vaccine against poverty and resulting despair is a robust economy.