I will never forget the first week of this War Against the Invisible Enemy. On March 10, during a nationally televised basketball game, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver ordered the end of all NBA games, effective at the final buzzer. Two days later, before Trump declared a National Emergency, toilet paper disappeared from grocery stores and hoarding turned shopping into a Third World dystopian ordeal. At that point, there was no governmental order -- just panic. "If there is no more sports, something really BIG must be going on!"

From then to now, a hodge podge of orders, reversals and resumptions of various policies have materialized from a bewildering parade of politicians, bureaucrats and designated experts who appear on TV almost every day to reveal the latest numbers, curves, surges, spikes, waves, explosions and wildfires that show that whatever we have done so far to stop the virus has not worked.

There was never any debate at all, and the strategy for fighting the virus was just announced without any discussion of other alternatives. This was yet another example of binary framing -- either you are with us or you are with the terrorists, either you support Russiagate or you are a MAGA head, either you support every detail of the restrictions or you are a Trump supporting moron and a terrorist bent on the slaughter of innocents.

Although there were no options offered or considered, the unquestionable truth changes from time to time. First masks were unnecessary, but today they are the most important tool for saving lives. The original rationale that I heard from Governor Gavin Newsome was to prevent "hospital overload." This was a rational point, as the actual number of people likely to die from this or any other virus has never been suggested to be civilization threatening. The highest percentage of the population ever to perish from a virus in American history came from the 1918-20 Spanish Flu with deaths over three years adding up to -- less than one percent of the population. Much of this carnage took place during World War I, and medical science of the era was close to helpless against a virus.

So, with the Worst Case Scenario looking to be horrific for those who die or get seriously sick from it, but not threatening of civilization itself, the rationale was not presented to the public as an effort to prevent infection. It was to "flatten the curve," one of many idiotic reified metaphors employed in the PR campaign in support of the lockdown. The explicit purpose was to prevent hospital overload -- a gruesome image of parking dead bodies in the alley and turning away heart attack and cancer victims.

That particular rationale disappeared for a while as the focus in the early days was on New York City, Seattle and a few other cities with big numbers of people showing up in the hospitals with the virus. It came back into the headlines in June into July as surges and spikes led to significant hospitalization increases in several locations that had previously not seen so many infections. I just googled up "hospital overload covid." Here are the first results:

US coronavirus: 56 Florida hospital ICUs have hit capacity ... (July 7)

Coronavirus spike overwhelms California hospital workers ... (July 13)

Coronavirus wave threatens to swamp Florida, Texas ... (June 26)

“All the Hospitals Are Full”: In Houston, Overwhelmed ICUs ... (July 10) Propublica.com

'All the hospitals are full': In Houston, overwhelmed ICUs leave ... (July 10) NBC

Doctors Fear Arizona Virus Overload as Hospital Cases Top ... (June 17)

Coronavirus surge stressing Texas hospitals in major cities ... (July 5)

Internal messages reveal crisis at Houston hospitals as ... (July 1)

'When we're full, we're full': COVID-19 pushes San Antonio ... (July 6)

Banner Health warns COVID-19 trend could overload Arizona ... (June 5)

I checked Google News with the same search, and not one story about Hospital Overload in the month of August. I believe I recall perhaps a half a dozen hospital specific stories about overload over the last few months, but every single one of the above listed news accounts is about a prediction of overload rather than a past tense report of massive numbers overwhelming the health care system.

One way of looking at that is that we have succeeded in preventing hospital overload. Trump should be taking a victory lap, right?

Of course not. We are getting waxed by the virus. Here is a link to an Atlantic Magazine article that explains "How The Pandemic Defeated America."

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How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.

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How indeed?

There never was a mission statement, just directives and shifting rationales. The plain meaning of the strategy was never articulated -- rather than treat people who get sick and try to keep them from spreading their infection, we are trying to prevent the virus from moving from person to person by preventing almost all personal interaction.

In hindsight, I am amazed at the hubris of the strategy -- demanding that everybody give up their personal liberty and that a quarter of the population give up their jobs, their homes and their futures. The People were compliant for the most part and we got to see the surreal spectacle of extended street demonstrations and rioting by people wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus.

How could anybody imagine that a society as utterly corrupt and divided as the USA could accomplish anything that required universal cooperation? Didn't anybody notice the last four years of American political history as both major parties accuse each other of fundamental illegitimacy, up to and including treason. Well, the people, whether smart or dumb, have obeyed the directives for the most part, but our elected, appointed and corporate "leadership" has totally fucked everything up.

There was no public effort to quantify the cost of preventing almost all personal interaction, but the Congress gave us a clue as to what the business community believed the cost to them would be -- several trillion dollars. And, while they were at it, they postponed the final accounting for the tens of millions of people who lost their jobs by handing out a much smaller chunk of money that is running out as we speak. Now either landlords or tenants will have to bear the brunt of massive economic dislocation. Anybody want to bet on who wins that little zero sum game?

Just for shits and giggles and what might have been, I wonder what we could have done with 10 trillion dollars in terms of treatment and quarantine of people who got sick. I saw a time lapse film of China building field hospitals from the ground up over the course of a week or so. Who knows what might have worked better?

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My favorite example of what passes for public discourse is the Case of Sweden. Some voices early on touted Sweden for taking a more realistic approach. Then other voices, including some guy in the Swedish government said -- Lookie There! More people dying from this shit in Sweden than in the USA! Uh, it is too early to make a meaningful comparison about strategies, because OUR DEATH COUNT AIN'T OVER YET.

(On edit.) As a matter of fact, the reported virus fatalities in Sweden have diminished dramatically since peaking in early April. The number of deaths recorded in that country for the entire month of August through yesterday is 18! Only one fatality in the last week. The current total is still slightly higher as a percentage of the population than in the USA -- by approximately one one hundredth of one percent. Since tracing the "curve" is the approved way of evaluating this crisis, as of today, the USA is headed for a far worse experience than Sweden.

Of course, these curves can turn up or down without asking permission, and Sweden could face the Mother of All Spikes starting tomorrow -- but as of today, their scheme looks to be a lot better than our clusterfuck.

Where are all those hectoring geniuses who were condemning Sweden for believing in the fairy tale of Herd Immunity? I never heard the phrase before in my life and I still don't know what it means, but Internet Experts were chortling over anyone so idiotic to think there was such a thing or that Sweden did anything but slaughter its own citizens. (End edit.)

After all this plays out, a few months or a few years or a few decades from now, then we can know whether the idea of allowing the virus to play itself out was smarter or dumber than the idea of trying to keep the virus from spreading by shutting down almost all human interaction.

I have no earthly idea how that grizzly accounting will come out and it is entirely possible that the shut down idea will prolong the lives of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people.

Or maybe not.

One of the most plausible criticisms of my point of view is that we did not really follow a coherent lockdown regimen which explains the higher percentages of infection and death within the US than every other country on earth. I am sure that a better planned and better enforced campaign would have worked better than what we did.

If all those assholes in Congress were really afraid of the virus, they would have dropped their silly-assed perpetual game of The Dozens and pulled together to save our society. Instead, you see what they just did -- went home to campaign for reelection. During the ban on public events.

We live in a totally dysfunctional society. All that Can-Do Spirit that went into coining aphorisms like, "Wearing a mask is not an exercise in giving up your freedom. It is an IQ test!" is a perfect example of the insanity of our response to the virus. Organized shaming of those who doubt the honesty of our government is not a good way to encourage compliance. It is a good way to encourage civil war.

So, what is the Metric that tells us that the Virus has Gone Away? Will we ever see it? Or is somebody playing a different game altogether? A game that is separate from keeping people from getting sick?