By Samuel Strait – April 24, 2020 – When I returned from a much needed decompress on March 1st, then transiting through LAX, I was greeted by an hysterical US media on nearly every channel, hyping the end of the world as we know it, two point two million deaths by April in the US alone, hospital and medicals systems collapsing, the indisputable need to lockdown the entire country immediately or the death toll would absolutely be much worse. It seemed like every medical expert in the country was on speed dial reinforcing that message on TV and in print media. In the nearly seven weeks since I have been home the message really hasn't changed much, but the numbers have. It took an additional two plus weeks for the lockdown by various governors to go into effect. In the ensuing weeks, the 2.2 million deaths did not occur. The media gleefully began to trumpet the news that the lockdown was having an effect, all the while forgetting that the lockdown was already factored into the 2.2 million deaths. Ooops… Way too many people in this country continue to trust that message and seem to be paralyzed by the fear that they are the next ones to succumb to that dreaded virus. But wait just a minute, this is the same media that has been caught out in so many ways over the last several decades that continues to trade in false information, misinformation and false narratives dominated by so called "experts" such that a majority of the people in this country just two months ago found the media to be less trust worthy than the US Government. In plain and simple terms the US media ranked last in terms of trustworthiness by nearly eighty percent of the country's citizens, so why has that changed. The media certainly hasn't. Before we talk about the numbers as they have evolved over the last couple of months, the stage should be set with various conversations I have had over the last couple of days with medical professionals. Each in his or her own right was either a medical doctor or health care provider, and each professing to believe completely in the current lockdown. When asked to comment on the general theme that is being discussed by medical experts reporting on Covid-19 "Why is it that the numbers are so far off", that is, if even the numbers being reported are remotely correct? No one really had an answer, some tried to justify the numbers, but the bottom line was none had an explanation for the wildly inflated numbers initially being reported. All reported that so little is known about Covid-19 that to be cautious was the only way to justify the over hyped reporting and subsequent reaction by our government leaders. While this might seem to be a reasonable explanation, this has not historically been a typical response to this sort of crisis. To continue, in the past couple of weeks as the projected numbers have fallen rather precipitously, it should have become important to ask the following question, "While I realize that the Covid-19 virus is a new strain with unknown implications to those infected by it and different from our much better known experience with the common flu, why does the Covid-19's transition through our population now appear to be mimicking so many of the viruses we have experienced over the last century?" The common answer again was we just don't know. We talk a lot about anecdotal experiences and the perils of relying on it. We talk about isolated pieces of information that could lead us astray without the science to support it. There is a lot of talk about if we don't continue to imprison ourselves we will succumb to even greater loss of life yet to come. All our politicians, mostly in the form of the various state's governors, continue to occupy themselves with more authoritarian policies to inflict on their populations. Yet the numbers of deaths, hospitalizations and overall infection rates seem to be improving towards those magical numbers that we no longer fear when talking about new viruses. Not so in the press. Examples include a recent study in New York that appears to indicate that Covid-19 is much more wide spread than previously thought, bringing the possible death rate to one half of one percent or lower. Another study seems to indicate that the virus will only impact from eight to ten percent or less of the entire population. Other indicators appear to point to a greater natural immunity to the Covid-19 in the first place. At the present time only two percent of the infected below the age of forty die, mostly men. Those that should be truly fearful are those over sixty with underlying health issues where nearly eighty percent of the deaths occur. When you couple that with the very real possibility that Covid deaths being reported are not the primary cause of death, and disturbing reports that some deaths reported as Covid deaths were not even tested. Those are serious questions that needed answers before a mandatory lock down was implemented . As we have traveled the path towards where we are at now, was there ever enough hard facts to justify the actions that have been taken? When we hear the information being broadcast endlessly by our media and its "experts", the sound bites dribble away to "We don't really Know." So I've heard all of the moral posturing, the virtue signaling, and comments from from people saying you just want more people to die because you are greedy, but that does not negate the numbers. We experience hundreds of thousands of deaths from health related issues every year which is a true tragedy. Many of these deaths occur when people unknowingly transmit viruses to others. Does that warrant shutting the country down? The traditional mechanism for defeating plagues, epidemics, or even pandemics was isolation of the vulnerable if possible. Viruses respect neither boundaries nor government action. It was always an individual choice to quarantine rather than the masses being stampeded into detention. One other more common tactic was to relocate out of densely populated areas to less populated parts of the country. It was never locking down an entire country but rather people making conscious choices to avoid contact or not. Keeping in mind that it was only with fear and panic that moral pandering reared its ugly face causing countless avoidable and non health related deaths. Science and medical experts do not have an answer yet. Maybe soon, but hiding at home is not an answer for very many.