Horowitz: Politicians plan to control our lives with masks and restrictions … for the flu

If the World Health Organization had been correct about a 3.4% infection fatality rate for COVID-19, there would have been one small, ancillary benefit: At the very least, a once-in-a-millennium virus with a kill rate 34 times greater than the flu would be unmistakable and could never be compared to other viruses. As such, it would be hard to convince the public to go along with draconian measures for common viruses such as influenza that have been with us for decades. Sadly, now that it turns out the true infection fatality rate is pretty similar to a bad flu season, politicians can now seamlessly bring their social conditioning mandates into flu season. In other words, forever.

When lockdown opponents compared the virus to a bad flu, they were suggesting that our societal disruption in response to SARS-CoV-2 should not be that much different from our efforts during a pandemic flu season. Insidious control freaks in elected and unelected high office, however, are now using this comparison they once rejected as the pretext for treating the flu the way they wrongly treated this virus.

Here is a sampling of politicians now comparing COVID-19 to the flu or conflating it with the flu, warning that the flu is indeed enough excuse to mandate these draconian measures. They are suddenly discovering the fact that hospitals do indeed get busy every year, but we go about our lives normally. They want that to change.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer boldly asserted and predicted that "when we all get our flu vaccine, we can help keep thousands of flu patients out of the hospitals and prevent overcrowding."

But wait a minute: If the threat level from this virus is so much greater than the flu and the risk of hospitalization and death is unparalleled in human history, how can this be conflated with and compared to the flu in any way? It would be akin, at least according to their original assessment of the threat from coronavirus, to telling a cancer patient not to scrape their shin, so they don't create the perfect "twin" medical crisis.

In reality, when they desire to continue the social control, then the truth about the similarity of the virus' severity to that of a pandemic flu comes to the forefront. In order to suck us into the indefinite vortex of social control, they had to advertise this virus as exponentially more dangerous than the flu. Now that hospitalizations are way down, they need to lower the threshold required to trigger such control.

Even Republican governors are now trying to suggest that the flu is reason enough to continue the suspension of democracy and that these voodoo measures could somehow limit the spread of colds and flus. Already last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has become indistinguishable from his Democratic counterparts in his approach to this virus and constitutional rights, spoke of a need to "develop proactive strategies that will reduce the spread of the flu in the midst of the #COVID19 pandemic."

What might those measures be?

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) warned last week that "flu can be deadly on its own" and that he is "concerned that Ohioans who get both the flu and #COVID19 at the same time could become severely, if not fatally, ill."

Hence, the politicians are finally discovering what the media never cared about until now — that hospitals are indeed very busy during the height of flu seasons and are often forced into emergency surge capacity during particularly busy flu seasons. Yet we never destroyed our society, economy, and mental health over it. We never shut schools or abused children with masks and plexiglass boxes, even though they typically get sicker from the flu than from coronavirus and are more prolific vectors of the spread of flu.

For example, on Jan. 11, 2018, the Houston Chronicle reported about "strains" on local hospitals — with 13% of ER visits at 40 Houston-area hospitals being flu patients. Children 4 and under accounted for 42% of them! Can you imagine what sort of panic that would induce today? Contrast that to COVID-19 when, last week, just 1.8% of all ER visits were of patients with "covid19-like-illness," according to the CDC. The highest level it hit nationwide was 6.8%, although some places were higher. Yet in 2018, most Americans didn't even know the flu pandemic existed. Now, life as we know it no longer exists, for such a low threshold of risk.

Take Pamunkey Regional Jail in Tennessee, for example. Roughly 70% of the 178 inmates tested positive. Yet according to the Tennessee Star, "There have been no hospitalizations or deaths and the 'vast majority' of positive staff and inmates were asymptomatic or were showing mild symptoms." This is a microcosm of what is going on throughout the country — with inordinate panic being directed toward discovery of cases that rarely lead to clinical illness. In most cases, this is actually more like a cold than a flu.

In other words, this is not only going to continue through 2021, as Dr. Fauci warns, but forever. As my friend Kyle Lamb of RationalGround.com notes, mathematically, the current risk level of COVID-19 is much lower than the severity of the flu. Thus, if this is the new trigger for children wearing masks and draconian restrictions on school or businesses functions and church services, we will continue this charade in perpetuity.

"The total current number of hospitalizations in the entire U.S. with a positive Covid-19 result (not necessarily from) is about ~9 per 100,000. At the peak of this 2019-20 flu season, a light one relatively, there would have been ~30-45 CONFIRMED people hospitalized per 100,000," wrote the data guru on Twitter.

So, in other words, we are 3-4 times below the level of flu hospitalizations at the peak of a mild flu season, not to mention the more severe 2018 season that most Americans never heard of. But as Lamb observes, the numbers for COVID are really much lower. Nearly every pregnant woman or car crash victim who comes to the hospital is tested for COVID. Anyone who then tests positive, regardless of the symptoms and regardless of why he initially came to the hospital, is counted as a COVID hospitalization. With the flu, typically you are only tested if you are complaining of severe flu symptoms. Imagine if we counted the flu the way we count COVID-19.

Thus, every single year, hospitals are full of people who came for the purpose of flu treatment at an exponentially higher level than current levels for COVID-19. So if this is reason enough to mummify all our faces in public with cheap Chinese masks and treat our children like lepers in school, when and what is the exit strategy?

But alas, there is no exit strategy for the politicians. The social control is not a means to the end of controlling an epidemic. It is the end itself.