Policy: Go ahead and get the virus.

 Do it for your fellow Americans.

     "We have eleven million people in this country who've already had COVID. We should tell them to celebrate. We should tell them to throw away their masks, go to restaurants, live again, because those people are now immune. Dr. Fauci doesn't want to admit to any of that.  Dr. Fauci is like 'Oh, woe is me.'"

      Senator Rand Paul

There is a school of thought that we just ought to get this COVID thing over with. Most of us will live. Some of us will die. 

That is now the American practice and de-facto policy. The genie is out of the bottle.

I had expected to reduce the frequency of this blog sometime about now, when news slowed down and got normal.  It isn't happening, so here I am. A couple hundred thousand people may die between now and Christmas--people who would not have died. People like me are the target population. 

That should get the attention of readers, especially those over age 65. It gets mine, but there are all these distractions:

News #1: Million MAGA march. Trump tweets about "ANTIFA SCUM" and "Human Radical Left garbage" and "Silent Media is Enemy of the People." Fox headlined Trump's comments and showed photos and video clips. CNN referred to them as "scattered confrontations" and COVID was their top story.

MAGA rally in DC

News #2: GOP legislatures won't ignore the vote and appoint electors. Probably. The idea being advanced by Republicans like Kevin Starr is that Republican legislatures in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia could simply ignore the votes in those states and declare that they will choose Trump-supporting electors themselves and submit those to Congress. Let there be a logjam there between the House and Senate, and let the Supreme Court decide whether the Trump electors are legitimate. Bingo. The Supreme Court comes to Trump's rescue, they expect. Could this work? Possibly, if the legislatures wanted to ignore the vote that was their prescribed method of selecting electors. News flash: This appears to go too far and they are refusing to do it.

News #3: Trump is not cooperating with the transition. This delays Biden's setting up a personnel office and lining up security clearances and bringing new appointees up to speed. Some GOP officeholders are grumbling, most are not. This is a litmus test for Trump: if you admit that Biden might actually become president you are legitimizing Biden's win, so don't do it, or else.

News #4: Trump just tweeted that Biden did win--but in a "RIGGED" election. Nothing is "normal" yet.

News #5: COVID is "going viral."  People are infecting other people faster than they are getting over it. This isn't an accident. This is the policy that America has chosen, because Trump favors it and the American public simply doesn't have the patience to do it Dr. Fauci's way. Americans want to gather, and are doing so. Without consistent leadership from the president and buy in by state and local officials, the actual practice of too many people is to mingle--at work, at school, at bars and restaurants, at family gatherings, with predicted results.

Young people catch it

The infection rate is skyrocketing and will be almost impossible to contain. We do not know if, in fact, people who get the virus are then immune. Senator Rand says so; Trump volunteered immunity may last a year. Possibly so. And yet people get colds--a corona virus--and then get them again a few months later and so we don't really know. And we don't know what long term damage COVID does, even if you don't die immediately. Soon most people will be exposed to the virus, and probably before an effective vaccine is ready. COVID is out there right now, past the tipping point.

Some of us will die, perhaps one percent of people from 60 to 70, three percent of people from 70 to 80, perhaps seven percent of people from 80 to 90, and perhaps twenty percent of people over 90. Everyone eventually dies, of something. Because of COVID, possibly over a million Americans will die earlier than they would have in the next few months. 

What would have stopped this? Possibly buy-in from the American public that we need to protect seniors. But we might not have gotten that buy-in even with strong leadership from the top in support of shutdowns, social distancing, masks. Trump set a tone of rebellion against the Fauci message. Trump understands the sentiments of a great many people, which is why he was successful notwithstanding self-inflicted political wounds.  People need to work. The economy needs to function.  People want to see and touch each other. People say they disapprove of how Trump has handled the virus, but by the behavior of a lot of people, including their vote November 3, they really don't. They are sick of Fauci-normal and want to get back to the old days.

So people are mingling and the virus is spreading. 

Old people die from it

Seniors should shelter. Protect yourselves. 

That is the American policy and that is the country Biden will inherit in January. No use whining about it. It's baked in.