Tensions are high right now and the fact is that this whole thing is a math problem to maximize health. I am a mathematician and everybody seems to have an opinion that is contrary to math itself– mostly due to the Fear Machine running 24/7 on every news network, almost always with misinterpreted data.
The fact is that I– personally– am a high risk individual, so I will be sheltering in place along with all my fellow granny squadron throughout Newport Beach for the foreseeable future. Yes, it is well-documented that only 2% of the population who contracts this virus even knows they contracted it. Yes, it is well documented that less than 1% of that 2% die. But as someone who is high risk, I just don’t have the need to take that gamble.
But here’s the rub: Right now, as everyone shelters in place, I have the exact same risk of getting this virus as a 25 year-old swimmer who is dying to go outside but is afraid that the government will haul him off if he tries to, who is afraid of the social shaming on websites like Nextdoor and Facebook, or has simply been given inaccurate information by the news media or one of the aforementioned sites by people who simply cannot do math. As a mathematician, this is exceptionally irritating because this is my territory. As somebody who is at high risk, this is enraging, because it directly affects my health. As a Constitutionalist, this is 1000% anti-constitutional.
Right now, myself and this theoretical 25 year old has the exact same risk of getting this virus, because we are doing the exact same thing.
If we allow the 25 year olds who are in good health to go out and begin to create herd immunity though, every single one of those allows myself and my fellow Grannie Squad to be at less risk.
Having everybody shelter-in-place is not only a constitutional violation, it is not only mathematically insane, it literally is harming the most vulnerable people in society– the ones that we are proclaiming that we are protecting by doing the exact thing that harms them the most.
I hope you see my side here, and I hope you see why this is absolutely insane on every level from public health to mathematics to the Constitution itself.
The current policy actually harms exactly the people who we tell each other that these bad policies are supposed to protect.
The only way past this thing is going through it. We have to ReOpenOC, not just because of the same old cries of “economics”, not because of my old boring droning on about “constitutional crisis”, but because continued universal quarantine is quite literally harming the very people we are trying to help.
Establishments will be opening up throughout OC on May 1. People will vote with their feet, and their sick beds.
If Establishment A opens up and nobody is using precautions, reasonable people will not go, meaning their clientele will be made up only of unreasonable people. And in 2 weeks, they will have no clients, because they will be busy in their beds building herd immunity for the rest of us. Liberty is the disinfectant.
Much fear lies in the fact that if we get it wrong, people will die.
But that’s not something that should be scary. Here’s why: People will die anyway. The same number. They will continue to die until we hit herd immunity.
We could throw a Pink Floyd concert with free admission inside Blackies and get it all over-with tomorrow morning, or we could draw the same thing out until wintertime. But the same numbers will be met, in the end.
We are now 6 weeks in to this 2 week quarantine, and according to Hoag Hospital itself, we have flattened the curve. It’s time to stop moving the goalposts. It’s time to Reopen OC. While other areas throughout the country may need to continue to quarantine to avoid more patients than they have beds, we have 5,000 beds available and we’ve never even hit 200 beds used by COVID patients– that’s less than 4% usage, and we are already over the curve.
I ask everyone who sees this to share it, and also to email citycouncil@newportbeachca.gov to demand that they re-open the closures that they have illegally implemented. It is imperative that the voices of reason be louder than the voices of fear, or we not only put our constitution and economy at risk, but we put at risk the health of the very same people that these draconian measures we put in place to supposedly protect.
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