Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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Lockdown lunacy is the order of the day in too many states because it suits the power-hungry personality of our ruling class but it’s making things worse.

I have doing updates here and via email, for a small group of acquaintances, on the subject of the Wuhan virus and the irrational response of our ruling class. I plan to keep doing it until my county of Wayne is open again, which should be on May 8 if there’s any justice in this world and our governor if telling the truth for once.

What is becoming painfully clear is that our “experts” and our leaders in places such as Pennsylvania have squandered the opportunity to have addressed the crisis in a logical manner. They have, ironically, forced 100% of us into a completely unhealthy economic crisis while completely failing the 134,500 or so Pennsylvanians, 1% of us, living in nursing and assisted living facilities.

When will it end? Not soon enough!

Think about that for a second; there are some 88,000 nursing home beds and another 46,500 assisted living beds. That’s a maximum of 134,500 folks out of an estimated population of 12,811,000 in the Keystone State; just slightly over 1% of us. And, assuming, for the moment, the Pennsylvania Department of Health data is correct, some 83% of the deaths reported yesterday for the Commonwealth were in this group.

Overall, its been 63% of the total statewide, some 1,089 in total, counting from the beginning of the WuiFlu, meaning only 37% of the deaths, some 627 in total, have occurred outside of nursing and assisted living facilities. That’s but 49 deaths per million people in a state that lost 10,592 people per million in 2017 (latest data available due the incompetence of our DOH). If we don’t count the deaths of those people above 75 years of age, there were still 4,430 or so deaths per million.

So, we’re in lockdown lunacy for 12.7 million people for the sake of a roughly 1.1% increase in the already minuscule death rate of those not living in nursing and assisted living facilities, a population with a death rate of less than one-half of one percent anyway. It’s gone from 4,430 to 4,479 deaths per million, from 0.436% 0.438%. We lost almost twice as many people (1,237 in 2017) to motor vehicle accidents as the WuFlu to date among the population outside nursing and assisted living facilities, yet we’re not shutting down any highways or taking away car keys.

Except, we take away car keys from people who cause accidents, don’t we? We target the problem. The WuFlu is a different matter it seems. Instead of focusing our energy on the problem, which is deaths among highly vulnerable nursing home and assisted living residents, we’re taking the keys away from everybody.

Lockdown lunacy is a case of us infecting ourselves with an economic disease that is going to turn into a health crisis of a different sort and it’s going to going kill far more people than the WuFlu in the end. Moreover, it’s beyond doubt at this point that we have inflated the WuFlu death stats by requiring doctors to call a any man shot through the heart a WuFlu death if someone heard him cough before he died.

There is a better way, of course, but you won’t find it being applied in places such as Pennsylvania, New York or other states where governors see their primary duty being to control the people. Florida is targeting nursing homes, for example, even using the National Guard to help. Florida has 22 million people, 72% more than Pennsylvania, and only has 1,171 WuFlu deaths compared to 1,716 in the Keystone State, which also happens to have a two year advantage on median age.

Florida has also engaged in some lockdown lunacy but far from what Pennsylvania has done and it’s coning back more quickly it appears. Is just the heat? Could be, I suppose, but it sure looks like targeting the affected population and protecting the vulnerable is where it’s at. Pennsylvania is, instead, treating us all pretty much the same and is only relenting from the lockdown lunacy under pressure from Republican legislators. Meanwhile, across the river in New York, Governor Cuomo has forced WuFlu into nursing homes, which is par for the course in the land of everlasting lunacy that is the Empire State.

Fortunately, there is still hope for a return to normalcy in Pennsylvania (New York’s politics haven’t been normal for a very long time) because we have a Republican legislature that still pushes back. But, it takes people pushing back as well. Get to it! I’m tired of doing these WuFlu updates!