Can we agree that there are two types of Covid-19?
The first type, is Covid-19 ,”The Virus”, which is a fairly mild infection that most people don’t even realize they’ve contracted. They remain either asymptomatic or have slight flu-like symptoms that go away after a week or so. A tiny sliver of the population– that are mainly-older, vulnerable people with underlying health conditions– can develop complications, become seriously ill and die. But, according to most analysis, the chances of dying from Covid are roughly between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000 people. (CDC-IFR- 0.26%) In other words, Covid is not the Spanish Flu, not the Black Plague and the Genocidal Planetary Killer Virus it was cracked up to be. It kills more people than the annual influenza, but not significantly more.
The second type of Covid-19, is Covid “The Political Contrivance” or, rather,CODENAME: Operation Virus Identification 20 19. This iteration of the Covid phenom relates to the manner in which a modestly-lethal respiratory pathogen has been inflated into a perennial public health crisis in order to implement economic and societal changes that would otherwise be impossible. This is the political side of Covid, which is much more difficult to define since it relates to the ambiguous agenda of powerful elites who are using the infection to conceal their real intentions. Many critics believe that Covid is a vehicle the Davos Crowd is using to launch their authoritarian New World Order. Others think it has more to do with Climate Change, that is, rather than build consensus among the world leaders for mandatory carbon reductions, global mandarins have simply imposed lockdowns that sharply reduce economic activity across-the-board. This, in fact, has lowered emissions significantly, but at great cost to most of humanity. Covid restrictions have triggered a sharp uptick in suicides, clinical depression, child abuse, domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse. The list goes on and on. Also, it has left economies everywhere in a shambles, increasing unemployment and homelessness exponentially, while setting the stage for massive famines in undeveloped countries around the world. Even so, key players in the Covid crisis– like mastermind Bill Gates– continue to marvel at impact these onerous restrictions have had on emissions. Take a look at this excerpt from a recent post at the Microsoft founder’s blog:
“You may have seen projections that, because economic activity has slowed down so much, the world will emit fewer greenhouse gases this year than last year. Although these projections are certainly true, their importance for the fight against climate change has been overstated.
Analysts disagree about how much emissions will go down this year, but the International Energy Agency puts the reduction around 8 percent. In real terms, that means we will release the equivalent of around 47 billion tons of carbon, instead of 51 billion.
That’s a meaningful reduction, and we would be in great shape if we could continue that rate of decrease every year. Unfortunately, we can’t.
Consider what it’s taking to achieve this 8 percent reduction. More than 600,000 people have died, and tens of millions are out of work. This April, car traffic was half what it was in April 2019. For months, air traffic virtually came to a halt.
To put it mildly, this is not a situation that anyone would want to continue. And yet we are still on track to emit 92 percent as much carbon as we did last year. What’s remarkable is not how much emissions will go down because of the pandemic, but how little.
In addition, these reductions are being achieved at, literally, the greatest possible cost.
To see why, let’s look at what it costs to avert a single ton of greenhouse gases. This figure—the cost per ton of carbon averted—is a tool that economists use to compare the expense of different carbon-reduction strategies. For example, if you have a technology that costs $1 million, and using it lets you avert the release of 10,000 tons of gas, you’re paying $100 per ton of carbon averted. In reality, $100 per ton would still be pretty expensive. But many economists think this price reflects the true cost of greenhouse gases to society, and it also happens to be a memorable round number that makes a good benchmark for discussions.
Now let’s treat the shutdown caused by COVID-19 as if it were a carbon-reduction strategy. Has closing off major parts of the economy avoided emissions at anything close to $100 per ton?
No. In the United States, according to data from the Rhodium Group, it comes to between $3,200 and $5,400 per ton. In the European Union, it’s roughly the same amount. In other words, the shutdown is reducing emissions at a cost between 32 and 54 times the $100 per ton that economists consider a reasonable price.
If you want to understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and spread the pain out over a much longer period of time. The loss of life and economic misery caused by this pandemic are on par with what will happen regularly if we do not eliminate the world’s carbon emissions.” (“COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse“, Gates Notes)