“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” —Thomas Sowell

A curious thing happened on October 2. In fact, it was so curious, America’s mainstream media completely ignored it. That’s the day Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, stated that an estimated 750 million, or 10% of the world’s population, had contracted coronavirus. Furthermore, according to the WHO’s website, approximately one million people have died. Thus, according the WHO’s own data, the mortality rate for coronavirus is 0.13%.

If that rate seems familiar, maybe it’s because it’s the exact same mortally rate as the seasonal flu, according to data from the CDC — and for decades, America and the rest of world have approached the flu exactly as Thomas Sowell has described. Some people get flu shots, most stay home when they’re sick, and tens of thousands of the most vulnerable pay the ultimate price, even as the world soldiers on around them.

Coronavirus? Fear of the unknown, buttressed by lies from China abetted by a co-conspiring WHO, and wildly inaccurate death-rate predictions — every bit of which was amplified to the point of hysteria by media know-nothings — precipitated widespread shutdowns. Shutdowns that crushed our economy, engendered a wholesale reordering of our entire society, and revealed a Ruling Class more than willing to embrace double standards, stunning hypocrisy, and unprecedented levels of contempt for the Constitution whenever it served their agenda.

How controlling have they gotten? Two Saturdays ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office issued an advisory, telling restaurant-goers to keep their mask on — between bites. “Do your part to keep those around you healthy,” it added.

Keeping Americans healthy is an idea that has been mutilated beyond recognition. As anyone with a halfway decent memory can recall, the entire premise of keeping America locked down was to “flatten the curve” and prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Yet when the media-generated smoke cleared, field hospitals set up for the overflow that never happened were dismantled before treating a single patient, ships sat in harbors virtually unused, and thousands of healthcare workers were laid off — all while millions of unhealthy Americans had critical tests and procedures for such illnesses as cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and a host of others indefinitely postponed.

Unhealthy Americans made so fearful that even when some semblance of normalcy has returned, many still refuse to go to the hospital or even the emergency room.

What’s the mortality rate among those people? And what’s the mortality rate among millions of Americans who have become alcoholics, drug addicts, or have been subjected to spousal or parental abuse? How many have committed suicide or even murder, or simply died of stress associated with those same lockdowns?

If we’re genuinely interested in the big picture with regard to “keeping Americans healthy,” where are those statistics? And what’s the real tradeoff with which Americans must contend? Moreover, isn’t it time the phrase “flatten the curve” is revealed for what it really meant — as in simply postponing the inevitable to a later point in time?

Last week, 40,000 people, including more than 4,000 epidemiologists, doctors, and public health professionals from around the world signed the “Great Barrington Declaration” urging people to return to return to normal life, even as the battle against coronavirus remains ongoing.

That declaration was delivered by three experts. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, who is also a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist at Oxford University with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and epidemiologist at Stanford University, who is also a public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

These doctors boast an impressive array of credentials, not only as doctors per se, but expressly in the fields of medicine most germane to fighting infectious viruses. Yet in terms of a progressive political agenda, and the need to maximize the suffering of Americans to maximize progressive chances for success in the 2020 election, such a declaration amounts to pure heresy.

Then again, it’s only heresy if the public becomes aware of it. Other than The Washington Times, the major media is simply ignoring the Great Barrington Declaration.

In short, “follow the science!!” American leftists are far more invested in following the silence, lest they be forced to make a cogent and convincing counter-argument as to why the continued trampling of the Constitution — the same Constitution that doesn’t not contain a single phrase allowing for its abrogation in an emergency — remains vitally necessary.

Which brings us to the real big picture. Since coronavirus and the flu seem to have an equivalent mortality rate — but we have nonetheless “evolved” to a point where nationwide upheaval can be deemed “critically necessary” via a contemptible combination of unscrupulous politicians, their politically motivated “scientist” allies, and a corporate media that has become little more than a mouthpiece for the Ruling Class agenda — what other diseases will precipitate the same totalitarian response?

In other words, is any ailment that even looks like it could produce a mortality rate of 0.13% or greater the basis upon which our rights can be indefinitely suspended? When asked about re-instituting nationwide lockdowns, Joe Biden promised he would “shut it down” if scientists told him to do so. “I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving, until we control the virus,” he added. “That is the fundamental flaw of this administration’s thinking to begin with. In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus.”

That we cannot keep the country moving until we “control the virus” might come as a shock to millions of hard-working Americans who have kept the country moving, even as hack politicians — who haven’t missed a single paycheck since the epidemic began — view that effort as a “fundamental flaw” in the Trump administration’s thinking.

Moreover, no one has asked Biden a simple question: Which scientists, Joe? Certainly not the ones routinely censored by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for daring to violate phony “community standards” that are nothing more than an attempt to control the spread of “undesirable” information. Certainly not the ones who advocate for certain types of disease mitigation that must be totally dismissed because of a far more virulent epidemic known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.

For eight years, Joe Biden was part of an administration that warned Americans they would have to accept a “new normal” of economic impotency. Now Biden and his fellow Democrats aim to impose another “new normal” — of soft totalitarianism sold as virus mitigation.

That’s the ultimate “tradeoff” in play here. Make no mistake about it.