With public life abolished, to the extent we have politics now, it takes place here in cyberspace. There is an election coming up and weather extremities continue to portend a very bad future, but both of those prominent topics are vague abstractions compared to the daily reality of the plague that I call The Asteroid Virus. Everybody's life is changed, everybody's future now is utterly different from what was planned as of just six months ago. So it is not surprising that every "fact" under discussion is fiercely contested, starting with the number of people infected, the number of people who have died from the infection and every prediction of where the numbers are going next.

I call myself a skeptic in this discussion, because I am skeptical of every number I hear in connection with any economic or national security policy issue. From my point of view, the truth could be much worse than the authorities are letting on. Or it could be much less harmful than we are being told. Or, maybe our Government is Spot On with its analysis of the pandemic and its assessment of its future course. Those would be the Baby Bear numbers -- just right.

The debate on the internet is mainly between those who claim that the misery and death likely to result from The Asteroid Virus is much less onerous than the various establishment sources will allow. There are accusations of organized censorship and counter-accusations of nefarious political motivations against those protesting the censorship.

There was a great example of this internet struggle over the recently published co-morbidity numbers from the Center For Disease Control. As a skeptic uncommitted to any particular desired result, it seems obvious beyond debate that co-moribidity is a complicated topic, vulnerable to cheap "examples" on both sides of the question. If a 97 year old person with lung cancer contracts Covid-19 and then dies, which was THE cause of death? Or, let's say another 40 year old patient dies after a miserable bout of the virus, but the autopsy discloses previously undiagnosed pancreatic cancer. Is that a cancer death rather than a covid death?

Obviously, this shit about ONE cause of death is ridiculous and it is only being "debated" so furiously now because of the politics of The Asteroid Virus.

I have been accosted on this and one other board with noticeable hostility for not supporting the Fear Narrative. But in these two cases, and a growing number of other notes I am seeing, the person was not hectoring me from the point of view supporting the current restrictions. No, these folks say that the effects of the virus are Far Worse than the authorities are letting on. One person assured me that scientists and doctors know this, but are not talking about it.

Instead of saying that the current number of 180,000 fatalities is too low, this tendency says that the after effects of the disease are horrific with damage to heart, lungs and much more. Instead of Mama Bear's numbers which are far too low, or Baby Bear's "official" numbers alleged to be "just right," the real numbers are scarier than death itself. As my interlocutor stated, "The dead are the lucky ones."

I consider such points of view to be close cousins of my own -- which is skepticism of what the corporations and governments are saying. I do find assertions that substitute supposed "facts" for the obvious lies to be no more credible than the lies from the government. But that does not make their version of skepticism wrong. For all I know they are right.

If these Papa Bear pandemic warriors are right, there are some implications to their point of view that are very interesting. In the first place, the exception ridden regime of Shelter In Place is insane, if non-symptomatic infections "at first" lead to life time serious illness. Remember "Flatten The Curve"? I have no idea what the current story is as each state is doing its own thing and just about everywhere is at some sort of Semi-Lockdown condition.

Whether that phrase has become "inoperative" is an interesting question. And what the current public policy rationale for current policy might be is a mystery to me.

The Papa Bear analysis is utterly inconsistent with any version of "re-opening." The original lockdown did not even try to prevent all infections, and this was obvious from the very first days of the National Emergency. Everybody stay home -- unless you are essential. A Solomon like solution to the obvious implication of the Papa Bear take on the virus.

Between the built in necessity of allowing SOME normal social interaction and the inevitable SNAFUs of life in our utterly corrupt society, there was no way that the sorta lockdown could stop The Asteroid Virus -- the announced idea of "flattening the curve" was to allow the virus to work its way through the population without overloading the hospitals.

The Papa Bear folks have a no-brainer winning argument against the Baby Bears' "Just Right" approach of the last six months of social dissolution that has failed to stop the spread of the disease. Uh, it never could do that, which is what has us Mama Bears stirred into a frenzy, trying to figure out who would dream up such a suicidal public policy that could not and has not stopped the Asteroid Virus.

And so, to all who believe that the pandemic is Worse than we are being told -- we are allies against bullshit.

And, what I hope to see from somebody, anybody, is a way to fight the virus that works and does not also destroy our social order. Shutting down society altogether would indeed kill the virus, along with all of us as we starve to death without the "essential" product known as food.