Editor’s Note: This is the best National Emergency since I have been sequestered at Refuge Farm. I am following common sense plague avoidance, avoiding crowds and masking in situations that would discomfit my fellow citizens. There was something else I was doing, but have forgotten what it is. This has been a bountiful week. Below is a piece by the renewed Arrias on ‘fun with numbers.’ Also in the production run this week is an essay from Marlow on the nature of the National Emergency, and another from Point Loma on the nature of change in the institutions we served. I will also have a Swamp Postcard on the remarkable events of the week, so stand by. As you know, I am trying my best to observe the perfect storm around us, with the events in our central cities and now suburbs a riotous string of public humor. Like I said, stand by. There is much more humor to come!
– Vic

Robert Strange McNamara and the Wuhan Virus

In 1964, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara offered his opinion that “400 megatons” worth nuclear weapons was enough to provide “Mutual Assured Destruction.” Everything over that was overkill.

Of course, McNamara was a guy whose numbers always looked a lot better on the blackboard than they did in the real world; you may recall that McNamara’s Operations Analysis was going to let us win in Vietnam and do it with a cost-efficient process.

As it turns out, there were all sorts of studies done on nuclear weapons effects and substantially more weapons than that were needed to make deterrence work. And substantially more weapons would have been needed to accomplish most tasks in a major nuclear engagement – the world being significantly more resilient than popular perceptions would have it. And, one study by the Hudson Institute, during the late 1960s – using data from actual nuclear weapons tests – suggested that even in a full-blown exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, more than half of the US population would still be around one year later.

Yet, that number remains – with no real basis in fact – just as much of McNamara’s thinking and processes continue to negatively impact our strategic thinking more than 5 decades after he left the stage.

Then as now, scientists wanted to be media stars, politicians wanted to be media stars, and, for that matter, media stars wanted (and loved being) media stars, and few cared little for the facts. Far better to talk about the end of the world and all life coming to an end if just a few weapons were detonated. Certainly makes for gripping headlines, and allowed them to pontificate without having to do deal with facts or do any hard thinking.

Not that exchanging nuclear weapons is a good idea. But facts are facts. And particularly in the case of nuclear weapons, insisting that the effects are far greater than in fact they are makes it more likely that our stated threshold of use would be higher than it should be, which would, in fact, given the scary, topsy-turvy world of deterrence, make it more likely that weapons would be used against us, not less. Just the thing we were and are trying to avoid.

What does that have to do with the Wuhan Virus?

As you may have heard, according to various polls, millions have died from the virus. Joe Biden said that 30 million had died from the virus so far – in the US alone. The average American believes 9 million have died. These numbers are, in fact, off by just a “tiny bit.” But you wouldn’t know it from the level of caterwauling, and wailing and gnashing of teeth – and the endless washing, rubbing our hands raw like Lady Macbeth.

We even get politicians connecting the horror of the plague to racism and poverty and weather run amok, as if the nation were being punished by God – if we’re allowed to believe in Him anymore. I read one politician’s recent rant that suggested that people “of color” suffer more from severe weather (and the virus) than do the rest of Americans.

Perhaps, if he stopped looking at the color of people’s skin and just considered all those people as Americans, and then wondered what we can do to help them, then maybe there might be reasonable answers. Maybe the answer is that they need jobs, and better paying jobs, and that we need to get the economy going again.

Maybe, if we simply noted that the lower your income, the more risk you face in the event of severe weather. Or any other crisis. And as for the Wuhan virus, consider the real numbers:

US Population – approximately 330 million

– Number of people who have contracted the Wuhan Virus: about 5 million – 1.5% or one person in 66
– Number of people who have died from the Wuhan Virus: 162,000 – 00.05% or roughly 1 in 2,000
– Number of people under 45 who have died from the Wuhan Virus: 4,000 out of a 192 million – 00.002% or 1 in 48,000

And if you want to know where to focus your efforts:

– Number of people 75 and over who have died from Wuhan virus: 83,000 out of 21 million – 00.4% or 1 in 253, but 52% of all deaths.

If these numbers are still too abstract, consider this:

Chicago has roughly the same make-up by age as the rest of the country, so, out of a population of 2.7 million, about 1,574,000 are under the age of 45. The Chicago Sun Times reports that, as of today, there have been 448 murders in Chicago this year. Of those, as best I can see, 30 victims were 45 or older. Or, 418 were 44 or younger. So far this year 243 Chicagoans under the age of 49 (the age groups are tracked differently, but…) have died from the Wuhan virus. Stated otherwise, you are almost twice as likely to be murdered in Chicago as you are to die from the virus. And of those 243 deaths, 221 are people older than 20. On the other hand, a large number of those murdered in Chicago are young, that is, under 20, and 75% of them are colored.

Meanwhile, for those under 20 there is virtually no risk from the virus unless they already have some grave health issues. For those under 50 the risk is only marginally higher. With 52% of all US deaths occurring in those over 75 years of age it is fairly clear where the focus should be placed. It is equally clear where we need to ease off on the reins and let the nation open up again.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to remind his fellow Senators that while “we are all allowed to have our own opinion, we are not allowed to have our own facts.” And the facts suggest the “cure” that has been implemented by the various governors and mayors across the country is now far worse than the disease, and if the politicians and propagandists in the major media centers and the wags of academia really want to help the average American, particularly the folks in the bottom half of the income bracket, the answer is to get out of their way and let them go back to work, let the children go back to school, and let the nation begin to return to normal.

Copyright 2020 Arrias
http://www.vicsocotra.com