Kashkari Joins the Axis of Evil

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I am traveling and out of town, but several readers alerted me to the horrifying opinion piece in the Star Tribune by Dr. Osterholm and Neil Kashkari, who must be a complete whacko, and who is the head of the Federal Reserve bank in Minneapolis.  The editorial was originally written for, you guessed it, the New York Times.  My first and only reaction is:  Are you completely out of your f##$$**g minds!!  Sorry to be semi-obscene but this is outrageous.  Two very well-off, really rich, guys who have nothing to fear from a lockdown–their jobs and lives are secure–trying to screw low-income people and minorities again.   Seriously, we haven’t done enough damage to the health and economic well-being of Americans and Minnesotans.  Not one word, not one f**&&#@g word, in the whole editorial about the enormous damage from the first round of lockdowns, just some mealy-mouthed we know there might be issues, but it will be okay, and these moral morons propose an even more severe one.

This must be politically motivated, much as I hate to suggest that.  There is no possible other reason.  They were hoping the surge of cases in the South and Southwest would continue and it hasn’t; that surge is over and those states came out of it far better than the states in the Northeast.  These despicable, so-called experts, have no regard for truth or for people’s lives.  They want the economy ruined in hopes it will lead to the current administration out of office no matter what the cost.  They are desperate now, because if the epidemic goes quiescent, as it appears to be doing, how can they continue to sow panic and fear.

I could go through the lies line by line, but I retch at the thought.  What is omitted is more telling than what is there.  Vague claims that other countries have done much better than we have, but not only is that untrue in any reasonable comparison of per capita cases adjusted for testing or per capita deaths (except in those Northeastern states ruled by a certain political party), but not a mention of what is now being recognized as perhaps the wisest approach, Sweden’s, where there was no general lockdown and where the epidemic is over, with a few cases and a couple of deaths a day.  How could that have happened without the extreme lockdown these geniuses claim we need.  No discussion of the actual case trends in the US, the decline in hospitalization and death rates.  But most importantly, no recognition of the enormous health damage done by the lockdowns and terrorization of the population, harms which are now being reported in studies and articles on a daily basis.  But again, apparently only people who may have or get coronavirus count.  The rest, however horrible their fate from missed medical care or overdoses or child abuse, don’t count to these destestable ignoramuses.  I literally don’t know how they can rest easy at night and they must, they must be held to account at some point.