As COVID-19 “Breaking News” continues to dominate the attention of the world, leading to the virtual shut down of the entire global economy, it is becoming more and more apparent that the lockdown cures initiated will cause far more pain and suffering than the actual disease.
Chief Economist of the World Food Program, Arif Husain, states, “Countries with high levels of food insecurity are generally more vulnerable and less prepared for an epidemic outbreak and would likely see higher mortality rates. In addition, malnutrition increases vulnerability to disease.”
Devastating effects from the economic shutdown are already showing up in the world’s richest nation: the United States. Food banks across the country are reporting an unprecedented need for food as tens of millions of Americans with no cash reserves are out of work.
For example, in Pennsylvania, a director of 18 food banks stated recently, “I’ve been in this business over 30 years and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now… Not even when the steel mills closed down did we see increased demand like this.”
And in Amherst, MA, the local food bank handed out 849 percent more food in March of this year compared to the previous year. The list goes on and on from coast to coast. A spokesperson for Feeding America, looking at the stats coming in said, “This is a perfect storm impacting food banking as we know it.”
With South Florida witnessing a 600 percent increase of people asking for food, on Monday, a drone captured shots of cars backed up for miles waiting to get food from food banks.
Additional Facts to Consider
According to the CDC, about 80 percent of the deaths from coronavirus in the U.S. have been adults over 65 years of age, and over 73 percent had at least one significant underlying health issue before contracting COVID-19.
What is now starting to be realized from reports by doctors and researchers is the pain, suffering, and medical risks caused by forced social isolation.
This is particularly true for older people experiencing loneliness and mental deterioration from being forced into quarantine, separating them from family and friends and afraid to even go out into the fresh air to get exercise.
NYU sociologist Eric Klineberg, who studies the adverse effects of social isolation among older Americans, notes, “We’ve entered a new period of social pain. There’s going to be a level of social suffering related to isolation and the cost of social distancing that very few people are discussing yet.”
Marcia Stefanick, Professor of Medicine at Stanford Prevention Research Center, states, “There are profound sex differences in immune systems, and this pandemic is revealing them once again.” Ms. Stefanick is referring to the fact that more men contracting the coronavirus are dying than women.
In Italy, about 70 percent of those who died were men. According to data from researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, men in every country are three times more likely to die in a hospital from COVID-19. One reason is the higher percentage of men who smoke. In Italy and China, both among the hardest hit by the coronavirus, substantially more men smoke than women.
One of the consequences of the fear and anxiety generated by the U.S. response to the coronavirus is gun sales.
The FBI conducted well over 2,000 background checks for gun sales in March, the most seen since the background check system was created in 1998. Before this current pandemic, the record month for gun sales was in December of 2012 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack, leading to President Obama’s call for tighter gun control.
TREND FORECAST: We will continue to remind Trends Journal subscribers, as we did when Corona Hysteria first struck in late January, that when the actual low numbers of global deaths are calculated and discussed, politicians will brag it was their decisions (read: draconian rules) that quashed the spread of the virus, the Presstitutes will praise them, and the people will applaud them.
TREND FORECAST: Just as politicians take us to war after war with no exit strategy, they have no exit strategy to end the COVID-19 War.
Considering their unblemished history of abject failures – as evidenced by their closing down the vast majority of business they decide to term “non-essential” – their actions will be economically and socially devastating.
Long before the COVID-19 Panic swept the airwaves, more than two-thirds of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck and some 40 percent did not have $400 in reserves in case of an emergency.
As these numbers worsen and greater segments of society fall into poverty, physical and mental health illnesses will escalate.
