House arrest.

An elderly friend of mine is going absolutely out of his mind. 

He has a wife with an advanced autoimmune disease, and she has begged him through this Chinese Death Virus crisis not to leave the house. 

They're getting the groceries and prescriptions delivered. A guy leaves them on the porch and they hustle them in like smugglers. 

That's all they see. Friends, family have to stay away. No nurses, no barbers, no trips to the doctor. She's deathly afraid, and so neither of them has gone farther than that porch since March.

And my friend is going batty. 

Our medical boffins at the CDC are aware of this situation. They know that people are missing necessary medical exams and procedures because of their fear of the Chinese COVID. On October 20, the agency reported, "Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (66%) excess deaths attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino persons." 

So at that time 198,081 deaths were attributed to COVID-19, leaving 100,947 others that would not have statistically been expected to die but did. To what do they attribute these other deaths, a group larger than the population of Bend, Oregon, all by itself?

The study spends a lot more time breaking the data down by race (God, I am sick of race) and poverty and whatnot than giving us any conclusions, but they sort of blame "disruptions to health care," of which there were certainly plenty. The word "fear" doesn't appear in the study, but it should, as in "People who need health care to stay alive were paralyzed by FEAR by the endless media drumbeat and the horrible overestimates of deaths expected from this plague of indistinct origin, so they didn't go for help when they needed it and died." 

I certainly doubt that a statistically large segment of these excess deaths were caused by people driving like idiots because the traffic was so light last April. I know we've all been flying by the seat of our pants through this thing, CDC, but you have not covered yourselves in glory, though you act as if you have.

If my elderly friend and his wife or both die in that house of any cause other than the Wuhan Flu this winter, I'm blaming you, CDC.

One last note: I heard that His Fraudulency, the presumptive president-elect, was thinking of getting our governor, Sonny Corleone Cuomo, to be his Secretary of State. Well, that's nice. We'd be glad to be rid of him. And he'd fit right in. Cuomo already bent over for the Chinese at least once this year, trying to call the Chinese Death Virus the "European Virus," so he'll fit right in with the Biden administration's prostration toward the new Evil Empire. The only people Cuomo can be tough with are grandmas in nursing homes, to whom he sent infected people, like smallpox-coated blankets.