Saturday, April 4, 2020

Is Coronavirus A Rich-Person's Disease?

Not all of my best thoughts start as rational exercises. Sometimes, I just get a "feeling" or a sudden realization which eventually turns out to be a pretty insightful discovery. I suspect these are really my brain processing information subconsciously and throwing it out to me when it has enough information to reach a conclusion. Sadly, not all of these thoughts turn out to be right, but enough do that I have learned to pay attention to them. Well, I just had one: coronavirus is a rich-person's disease.

Stick with me here.

There are some odd things about coronavirus and the response to it that have bothered me. First, the response is WAY overkill compared to prior similar viruses. SARS was fun to discuss on the news, but nobody worried about it. Swine flu killed 10,000 in the US alone and infected 50 million Americans without anyone blinking an eye. This thing had the elites shutting down the world before the first American was even killed. Why would that be?

Well, the elites have a history of selfishness. By elites, of course, I mean the media, the politicians, Big Business and celebrities. That unholy polygon of selfishness can be counted on to (1) panic over things that affect them and (2) downplay risks that affect others.

Take AIDS for example. AIDS was the end of the world. The elites demanded that we invest more than we invest to beat cancer to stop it and we needed law after law to make sure that no one who had it felt the slightest bit of inconvenience. Why would they want us to spend billions to stop a virus that affected only a few thousand people and was entirely avoidable, when we won't spend the same to stop something that kills millions of normal people every year and we had never at the time passed a single law protecting anyone who had a disease? Because it was an elite disease. It traveled in their circles, not ours, and killed their friends. AIDS spread through Hollywood, the gay community, New York society and the political class. Cancer only strikes main street.

So they demanded we change the world to save them, but didn't care about us.

It's true in other areas too. Take the bailout. They didn't give a rat's rump about the millions of jobs that would be lost if business and dealerships closed or if risk-averse little old ladies lost their bonds but OMG save the big banks and their investors. Islamic terrorists blowing people up? Couldn't care less. They kill one journalist and Daniel Pearl becomes the nightly news for months. Shoot up a Walmart and it barely makes the news. Shootup a gay club and it's tears aplenty followed by task forces and legislation. The truth has always been that the elite freak out about things that affect them and they remake the world to protect themselves. But if it doesn't affect them, they don't care. What's the worst natural disaster in living memory? Forget the hurricanes that flattened Florida or Texas. Forget the floods and tornadoes no one has ever heard about. Hurricane Sandy still gets mentioned because it destroyed a lot of property belonging to the elites. Worst financial crime Bernie Madoff because he robbed celebrities.

I think the reaction suggest that they see this as affecting them and that is why they are changing the world and demanding that everyone else go along with it.

There's more...

Who is spreading the disease? In New York City, we can actually trace it to an important lawyer, who started it in upper-crust Jewish circles... the same circles many celebrities, New York politicians and journalists travel in. This spread it to expensive bedroom communities and the New York social elite, as you'll see in a minute.

In Miami, it was wealthy gays who were identified as the first deaths. Suddenly, the media screamed that Miami was the new "Hot Spot" even though they had nowhere near as many deaths as other more boring cities.

Further, I don't know anyone personally who has had coronavirus. You probably don't either. Sure, I've heard of people who know someone or whose cousin may have had it, but the odds of you actually knowing someone seem kind of low, maybe one in your family and friend group. YET... look at the news.

Somehow a huge number of the celebrities seem to have it. Tom Hanks and wife, Idris Ilba, Andy Cohen, Pink and dozens more actors and singers (LINK) have it, not to mention an army of minor celebrities. Don't forget the journalists either, like Chris Cuomo, Brooke Baldwin, Doris Burke, 5 people at CBS News New York, one at CBS News Italy, one at ABC News LA and ABC News Seattle, three employees of the Today show in New York. That's a lot for such a small industry, and these people weren't in the field going to hospitals either. These are studio people. Don't forget the politicians either, like the wife of the Canadian Prime Minster, Britain's PM, Prince Charles, several people connected with the White House, some Senators and Congressmen, Brazil's president, and so forth.

That's a lot of famous people. Coincidence? Statistically not likely. More likely, it's traveling in circles they all visit... and they know it.

Then there's a ski group in Idaho who caught it and passed it around skiers -- skiers are a wealthier, often elite group. And in some cases they are absolutely connected to celebrities. Take Aspen, Colorado for example where any celebrity who is anybody has a second home. Wanna guess the infection rate there? As of this morning, Aspen with a total population of 6,600 has 38 cases (0.58%). Colorado Springs, a town of 420,000 has only 388 cases (0.009%). Notice the difference?

I really think what's going on here is that this thing is spreading through elite circles: rich people, actors, journalists, politicians and that is why they've brought the world to a halt. They need this thing stopped just like they needed AIDS stopped. If it was just the rest of us, they wouldn't care, but it's not the rest of us... it's them.

Thoughts?

19 comments:

AndrewPrice said...

This also might explain why the left dropped the "poor people are hit the hardest" angle even though that seemed to make a ton of sense for them as a sales pitch.

You don't want to argue that and open yourself up to people seeing the truth.

AndrewPrice said...

Now that I think about, there is one more thing to add. This addition of "gig workers" to the unemployment rolls. (That's how I make my money, by the way, as a 'gig worker'.) Gig work is how rich people buy their services these days. So it's not really all that coincidental that this would be added to the unemployment definition in a bailout that largely goes to help rich businesses.

Interesting.

ArgentGale said...

That makes a lot of sense, Andrew, and none of that sounds like coincidence. While there have been some cases in the area all emergency leave from work that I know of has been for either people with high risk factors (as opposed to actually being sick) or for child care due to school closings so for us commoners it really has been a major upheaval for a largely phantasmal bug. This also explains why they've been so cavalier about burning down the economy since they're all completely insulated from the nightmares that the poor can fall into from this level of destruction. It takes a special kind of tone deaf to pull crap like that, and that sums up our self-appointed elites perfectly. And it's going to make a return to some semblance of nurmalcy a colossal pain in the ass, though we do have someone not afraid to give them both middle fingers in Trump. How do you see this playing out?

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, Not to sound paranoid or class-warfare-ish, but yeah.

I think this explains a lot.

ArgentGale said...

It really does, Andrew, right down to one of the burning questions I've actually gotten some of my co-workers to think about, namely why the homeless, who live in much worse conditions than most of us (especially in Pelosi's San Francisco), have been largely unaffected by it. I wouldn't have thought to look into how many of the rich have been affected, though, so kudos for that. Looking at Georgia's cases they're all pretty much confined to Atlanta aside from Dougherty County/Albany in the southwest, which is a lower to lower-middle class area. Now I'm wondering what these celebrities, politicians, and others have been up to in order to get exposed to this thing.

As for the class warfare part this is certainly the thing that would get people riled up against the elites if they make the connections themselves. Still, people are really starting to chafe under all of this and if you're right that the elites are going crazy to cover their own useless butts things are going to get ugly and interestingly enough Trump might be the right person in the right position to settle the matter given how much of what he does gives these elites heartburn. Ironic that a certain purportedly Chinese saying would be so applicable to a mess caused by a virus from China, huh?

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, To be clear, there's nothing nefarious about how they got it. Nor do I think poor people are immune. I just suspect that this somehow entered the elite world and has been passed around at all of their international get-togethers, and their bi-coastal and transcontinental parties and festivals. And now that they and their friends all seem to be getting it, they respond as they always have when something is harming them -- they demand that the US take whatever steps are necessary to protect them regardless of how damaging.

What I'm saying is that I'm doubting we would see the same response or anything like it if this thing had started at a rancher's convention and was spreading across the midwest to middle class workers. More likely than not, the government would be passing laws isolating the sick and demanding temperature checks for all employees. But since the elite see this as a danger to themselves, they hit the nuclear button, like they did with AIDS or the 2008 bailout.


As an aside, this raises another interesting point. Elite festivals like SXSW and Coachella were cancelled right away at the beginning of March (March 6 and March 10). My calendar doesn't mark things shutting down until March 12 (NBA March 11 night, MLB/NHL/NCAA March 12 (Ivy's actually March 10)). So these festivals were very fast to shut down, which makes me think the pressure was already on in that group before it was on in the rest of the nation. It was the Ivy's too who first through out the students and sent them home, which again suggest that that community was more focused on this.

ArgentGale said...

No conspiracies meant, Andrew, though I do suspect at least a bit of debauchery as far as how they contracted it. We're in agreement as far as why they're reacting the way they are, and the cancellations of those festivals early is another telling sign for sure. I guess all we can do is survive until the fallout cleanup now, huh?

tryanmax said...

No debauchery requires, at least not of the venereal kind. It’s very woke to show your affinity for the poors by rubbing elbows with them in a controlled setting with your guard detail out of frame. They made fun of Trump for tossing paper towels in Puerto Rico because it’s the same sort of thing they would’ve done.

Speaking of debauchery, the leftist hordes came out screeching against the idea of having things open by Jesus Day. Don’t count on any such concerns about “responsibility” over opening thing up by Pride Week, even though the CWS is already cancelled in the same timeframe.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I don't see any debauchery behind it either, just some business traveler.

The left is ridiculous. One of my wife's aunts is simultaneously praising Democratic governors for "doing things" and damning Trump for "making us all stay home." Talk about a moron.

Yet, the internet is full of these people. The left is back and b*tching about everything.

AndrewPrice said...

Here's another interesting piece.

There is an article floating around the news which says that this disease "feeds" on the poor. The suggestion is that poor people are getting hit hardest. The proof is that the cell phones of poor people show that they move around more, presumably to go to jobs, whereas the rich can stay home.

Of course, that says nothing about who actually has the disease. Indeed, it's entirely an illogical conclusion and it utterly lacks any proof as to who actually has the virus -- something that could be checked by looking at which hospitals are full and which aren't... but which the media is not checking.

This could just be an attempt at class warfare which no one seems to be buying, but this strikes me more as a distraction -- something big business and celebrity PR is famous for: if someone accuses you of something, put out an ad telling the world that you are the opposite.

ArgentGale said...

Yeah, the odds of it being an accident from business travel and/or photo op virtue signaling hit me a little while later and does make more sense. That's some pretty serious cognitive dissonance on your wife's aunt's part, too, Andrew. And not much else to add except how exhausted I am of all of this.

AndrewPrice said...

Daniel, This one doesn't spread like AIDS. That was about debaucery. This is like the flu and could have been gotten on an airplane, from a doorman at a hotel or a waiter.

Isn't that some serious cognitive dissonance?! These people are idiots who believe what they want to believe no matter how obviously wrong.

Anthony said...

You think Corona virus is a rich person's disease? I'll take that bet. It's a tautology that celeb infections and deaths will get more coverage than those of normal people but given that it spreads easily through proximity and the test is hard to come by for ordinary people especially those not deemed high risk I'm willing to bet the ratio of known cases to actual cases is low and most of the unknowns are middle to lower class non-celebs.

As I've said before in this and other contexts, the government providing clear guidance would be helpful. I get that there is stuff that isn't known and the virus can mutate but Friday's declaration from the CDC that people should cover their mouths and noses in public even if it's just with a bandanna ran counter to most prior advice.

As for the extraordinary measures taken how excessive they are depends on how widely the virus spreads and how many it kills. Google indicates the US death toll is a over 9 thousand and both Trump and the Surgeon General agree it's going to get worse before it gets better.

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/in-chicago-70-of-covid19-deaths-are-black/dd3f295f-445e-4e38-b37f-a1503782b507


As of Saturday, 107 of Cook County’s 183 deaths from COVID-19 were black. In Chicago, 61 of the 86 recorded deaths – or 70% – were black residents. Blacks make up 29% of Chicago’s population.

The majority of the black COVID-19 patients who died had underlying health conditions including respiratory problems and diabetes. Eighty-one percent of them had hypertension, or high blood pressure, diabetes or both.

AndrewPrice said...

Wow, Anthony, way to completely fail to understand my point... as always.

Nice use of irrelevant "counter" evidence though... as always.

Did you know that four out of five dentists agree that they like gum? Four, Anthony, four! So, you're wrong.

AndrewPrice said...

Add J.K. Rowlings, several more actors and a member of Duran Duran to the list.

I find this interesting, especially when you consider that there probably aren't more than 100-200 celebrities that get tracked in the news and yet a good number of them have it. That really makes me think it's getting passed around that community.

And speaking of cognitive dissonance Pink is upset that the government didn't warn her that anyone can get it -- "young, old, rich, poor." Uh, that's what the government has been saying all along dumbass.

Critch said...

I'm still lost. I live in a county of 42,000 people. I'm 66 years old and I know a lot of people, and I still don't personally know anyone who has this virus, nor to I know anyone who knows anyone who has it..There are now 4 cases in our county, 2 were brought in from another county to the hospital, the other two were in New Orleans for Mardi Gras...you can catch a whole lot of things in NO at Mardi Gras....

Your point about celebrities getting it is interesting...we don't have no celebrities down here in the Bootheel, 'ceptin Narvel Felts..he's still kickin'...

AndrewPrice said...

Critch, Same here. If I know say 200 people either directly as friends, family and coworkers or a friends of those people, I now know 1 person who has it 1/200.

At the same time, how many celebrities do we know? Let's assume that's 200 but I'll bet the number are a lot lower. And we could probably name 50 of those people who have it. 50/200

Then compare Aspen to Colorado Springs and you get a 644% increase in celebrity Aspen compared to blue collar Colorado Springs. Other celebrity spots like Manhattan and Miami and LA are considered hot spots. St. Louis is not.

I'm not saying only certain people get it -- at this point it is in the general population -- but it strikes me that it is traveling much more heavily in celebrity circles, which I think accounts for the obsessive response the media, the celebrity world, and government have given it.

tryanmax said...

- "young, old, rich, poor."

Does pink really think a virus responds to wealth? I’m able to believe she believes that, but still, wow!

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I think the more interesting question is why exactly she thought she was immune... wealth?

I see throwing in "poor" as a way to diffuse her actual thought which is: I'm rich, this isn't supposed to happen to me.

BTW, she actually got two tests for the disease when most people get zero.

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