The Covid Dystopia

If you need any more evidence that people in government are generally incompetent and cause immense harm due to their ignorance and stupidity, not to mention for the moment their obvious cupidity and greed, there’s no greater example of that incompetence than their handling of the Chinese virus, aka Covid-19, pandemic.

You are probably as sick of the relentless coverage of the pandemic as I am but please humor me for a bit. I beseech you to take a good listen to what Tom Woods had to say recently on the topic. I reiterate that I am aware that you have probably overdosed on the topic but for heaven’s sake, do this if you have any confidence in my judgement.

Let me say this once again: I fully appreciate that you are probably quite sick of the whole business. But do give a listen to what Woods has to offer. It’s a different perspective but not gratuitously so. We’ve been bombarded with relentless propaganda about this Chinese disease. It’s not as if I am a tin-foil hat wearing retard, which if I were you probably would not be reading this.

On this site, my focus has been on India, although not exclusively so. The Indian government — which for all practical purposes currently operates under the dictates of Prime Minister Modi and who is the de facto dictator of India — has demonstrated its absolute incompetency. I would not ascribe this insanity to malice but only to total stupidity and ignorance for now. I don’t think the Indian bureaucracy is paid by the CCP. Not yet, I hope.

Here’s what I wrote a just little over six months ago — although it would appear ages ago.

The consequences of the shock to the Indian economy could be dramatically negative. That is because the people at the top have neither the knowledge to respond appropriately, nor do they stand to lose for their mistakes. Like China, India is a de facto dictatorship, a single party rule headed by a powerful clique. This clique has the power to impose rules without any due diligence or rational deliberations.

The result will be a power-grab under the excuse that it is necessary for the benefit of the people. This will lead to draconian command and control measures. Putting the entire country under lock down is just the first move. That move itself will damage the economy and lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Cronies of the government will of course make out like bandits. Crony socialism has always been part of the economic system in India but this time around, it will flourish like never before. That will hurt the poor and the middle classes. A lot of bad karma is going to be visited on Indians. It’s a democracy, after all, and the bad governance they suffer is of their own choosing.

The Chinese virus would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, no doubt. But the draconian measures that Modi’s government imposed on India would lead to tens of millions of deaths — that’s two orders of magnitude greater. This will not be common knowledge any time soon but in a few decades, it will be clear that the Indian government killed around 50 million Indians — more than any other agency — in the 2020s.

Like Gandhi, Modi too will eventually be known as one of the greatest butchers of Indians.

Aside: I wrote this in March, just six months ago.

Should India do a complete and total lock down? The pros of that move is that it will definitely slow down community transmission, and therefore save some lives. The cons of that move would be lives lost due to the loss of economic activity — the production and distribution of goods and services which translate into income that is necessary for survival. Lives lost to economic shutdown could easily dwarf the lives lost to the virus.

It appears that the Covid-19 case fatality rate is between 2 and 3. Of 100 infections, around 90 people recover without hospitalization; around 10 have serious symptoms but recover with hospitalization, and around 2 or 3 people die. Of those who die, most are the elderly or otherwise frail.

If by locking down the economy, around 10 people die of malnutrition and starvation, that would be a case of a cure worse than the disease.

As noted above, the appropriate response depends on the specifics. A rich country like the US can survive a total lock down. Wealthy countries, like wealthy individuals, have the spare capacity to ride out economic downturns; poor countries and people cannot.

India does not have the option to do an economic lock down. It has to just do the best it can to do social distancing, hard though it is for people who don’t have the capacity to keep away from each other. India has to accept what it cannot avoid — that the annual death rate of 0.7 percent will go up, and even double for a couple of years. The herd will be thinned a bit and some of the herd will get immunity.

What cannot be avoided has to be endured, and what can be avoided must be eliminated. Vaccines for Covid-19 is a couple of years away. Until then, the best course for India is to continue to function as usual but with all affordable measure to limit transmission.

Do the movers and shakers of the Indian government understand that? Perhaps they do but I suspect that they don’t. They lack competency and the motivation for doing the right thing.

That post was “The Silver Lining to the Chinese Virus.”