Honestly, I’m tired of writing the same things over and over on Facebook. I’ve decided to write a series of posts about different subjects related to COVID-19 with what I’ve learned in the reading I’m doing.  So, here they are in a nutshell:

1. The government was right to have a four-week shutdown, but areas like South Dakota that didn’t shutdown were also right.
2. The shutdown has now gone far past four weeks and it’s time/past time to start ending it.
3. Yes, I’m actually okay with schools being closed for the year but I don’t know that it was necessary, although probably for the best with colleges.
4. I firmly believe the virus was an accidental lab-release of a virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
   1. No, I don’t believe it was a bioweapon.
   2. I do believe it was being used in Gain of Function research, which does have some things in common with bioengineering but is really a very different thing. It is neither nefarious nor a secret – they regularly publish their findings on this for other scientists to review. It’s an international thing.
5. China covered it up, and for longer than most people realize.
   1. The initial cover-up was at the local level.
   2. The cover-up was an inevitable side-effect of their totalitarian government.
6. There is a very real chance that what we are seeing in the spring of 2020 IS the second wave, not the first.
7. The overall death rate is definitely higher than the “regular” flu but not by nearly as much as was initially feared. Also, the fatalities for COVID-19 are more concentrated in one age group and a few highly-at-risk groups than with the “regular” flu, where fatalities are more spread out.
8. We have “flattened the curve” and given first responders time to prepared. That’s what we were asked to do. There was never a chance of entirely eliminating this, so there is no point in staying shut down until that mythical time arrives.
9. Hastily-rushed government vaccines and accidentally lab-released viruses are the top two causes of zombie plagues. I’m not in a rush to have some brand-new vaccine that hasn’t been used on humans on top of a brand-new virus that has never been seen in humans before.
10. More seriously, we really, truly, do not know the long-term consequences of this virus. It may lay dormant and flare up again. It may cause neurological, cardiac, kidney, and respiratory problems. It definitely leads to strokes and heart attacks – in some people. How do they fare after a year? It is literally impossible to tell since the virus just escaped the lab in November 2019.

I have done a lot of reading on this. Some sketchy, some scientific. The sources are all over the place. I will include links as I write more on each topic, but a lot of what I have concluded is because something of a mosaic has formed. The pattern I see around one point of view includes specific facts, locations, names, etc. and the pattern around the opposing point of view includes generalities like “the probability of this happening is very low”. Folks, the probability of a single nation shutting down because of a virus is low, and the whole world (except Sweden, as we all know) has shut down over this. Saying it’s “low probability” without anything to back that up isn’t going to convince me at this point.