okay, let's have a stroll around the park (with or without mask).

1) <<Let us presume (just for a moment!) that the virus is real, and that while it is by far not as lethal as bubonic plague or typhoid fever, it IS easy to catch and the rate of outcomes are let's say just 5x worse than a typical flu infection. And I don't mean just death rates (which are 10x higher than typical flu), but crippling possibilities and chronic effects (like diminished lung capacity), which will weigh down on a person for the rest of his life.>>

I think it is real, so I don't have to presume too hard. Regarding death rates, though, I agreed with you when you advised focussing on all-cause mortality, which shows what it shows for Latvia and the UK. The reason for this - I presume - was because so many deaths put down as Covid might not really be Covid deaths in the way we normally think about say cancer deaths being due to cancer. If you tested positive in hospital in the UK, and you died of late-stage cancer within a 28-day period, you were marked down as a Covid stat. I don't believe this happens for flu. I mean people don't, I believe, get tested for having the flu, and then if they die within 28 days of late-stage cancer, get marked down as a flu death (I might be wrong about that). So I will have to do some quite hard presuming to go along with your description of its degree of fatality. But I can do it if you like.

<<So. If the government does nothing, what happens? >>

Firstly, I wouldn't advise doing nothing. I would recommend education about the risks, allocation of N95 respirators for risk groups (it's my understanding they actually help), state-sponsored encouragement for healthy outdoor living, maybe free Vitamin D3 and Zinc for risk groups, subsidies to compensate workers who are in a risk group for being unable to work, and so on. If possible, diversion of funds from less-important areas to the health sector, too.

Secondly, there is a lot of interesting data about states in the US that chose different strategies (North and South Dakota, Florida and California). We also have Sweden, who are doing worse than Norway and Finland (so far - it might all balance out in the end), but much better than countries with strict lockdowns in Europe.

I have no disagreement with the argument about the health system's capacity. If you don't want to argue/discuss who is to blame, I won't do it. I would just add this. The utter vandalism of the national economy will result in it being near impossible to build up a health system that will be able to deal with similar viruses in the future, which means ... well what?

Maybe one more point about the hospitals and the reporting of the situation. I have seen throughout all of this the media drawing out the most fear-inducing hysterical angles possible, which means I don't take what they report at face value anymore. If they had a kripatinja of on-the-one-hand x, on-the-other-hand y objectivity, I would be more considerate of what they report. By the way, SAGE in the UK advocated this fear-mongering to be part of actual government policy.

So, the Latvian Government. Pavluts is in charge, and in his vaccine team we have some of the brigade who introduced the Euro. If there is such a thing as a Soros-Globalist, Pavluts is it: just look at his bio.

If this is a suprantional-level scheme to have us tagged and bagged, denuded of financial independence, subject to intrusive annual vaccinations, floating downstream in a supranational central bank digital currency in a bankrupted nation-state, it wouldn't be hard to hide it. No official media would report it, only a few would even need to know about it, Latvia's inteligensia are too worried about displaying wrongthink to mutter dissent in public.

About evidence that this is just incompetence? Maybe it would involve letting us get back to as much normality as possible. Maybe it would involve some respectable Latvian politicians saying 'you know what, we can't continue like this'. Maybe seeing real journalists ask questions about the problems with PCR tests? I don't know. Who knows - maybe I am a lost cause.