The numbers don't lie: lockdowns did nothing by Tom Woods points out:
By Neenah Payne
Donald Luskin, in a Wall Street Journal article called "The Failed Experiment of COVID Lockdowns" (also adapted for the New York Post), tells us this:
TrendMacro, my analytics firm, tallied the cumulative number of reported COVID-19 cases in each state and the District of Columbia as a percentage of population, based on data from state and local health departments aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project. We then compared that with the timing and intensity of the lockdown in each jurisdiction…
Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown, which range from April 5 to April 18, it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns — DC, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts — had the heaviest caseloads...
The Lancet, the prestigious medical journal, found similar results when comparing across countries: "A longer time prior to implementation of any lockdown was associated with a lower number of detected cases."
The Washington Post is running this headline: "Trump's Disastrous Virus Response Is Veering Toward Another Terrible Turn." Why? Because Stanford's Dr. Scott Atlas dares to speak about "herd immunity" -- the strategy we all know has to be followed at some point, with the wreckage of the lockdowns piling up around us. The Post says: "This was the pandemic approach in Sweden, and it did not turn out well."
But of course it did turn out well. Of the 5800 deaths in Sweden, about 4000 were in long-term care facilities of some kind -- which are evidently atrociously run, and which the Swedes have admitted amounted to a major failure. The issue, though, is how did the Swedish approach affect the general run of society? What happened in isolated long-term care facilities with no contact with the rest of society is obviously no commentary on the strategy as a whole. Just 18 deaths per 100,000 looks pretty good to me. Meanwhile, there continue to be shouting matches about schools in the U.S., and even the ones that have opened are often forcing dystopian measures on the hapless kids.
Data expert Donald Luskin explains how the COVID lockdowns have failed
Posted: September 3, 2020
SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – Economic lockdowns were the government’s answer to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were told it would be short period of time to get through it.
Chief Investment Officer of the analytics firm “TrendMacro,” Donald Luskin, wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Failed Experiment of COVID Lockdowns” to detail why he believes they did not work.
Luskin started the piece writing, “the results are in. Counterintuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections.”
Luskin explained that the period of time with the strictest lockdowns didn’t result in a reduction of spread whatsoever. Luskin wrote, “Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown—which range from April 5 to April 18—it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger Covid outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns—the District of Columbia, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts—had the heaviest caseloads.”
Luskin joined KUSI’s Paul Rudy on Good Morning San Diego to discuss his article in depth.
“The Failed Experiment of COVID Lockdowns” can be read here.
Donald L. Luskin: COVID-19 lockdowns are a failed experiment — didn’t contain spread of disease
Imposing shutdowns appears to have been a large policy error
Donald L. Luskin, The Wall Street Journal
Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has now carried out two large-scale experiments in public health — first, in March and April, the lockdown of the economy to arrest the spread of the virus, and second, since mid-April, the reopening of the economy.
The results are in. Counterintuitive though it may be, statistical analysis shows that locking down the economy didn’t contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections. Considering that lockdowns are economically costly and create well-documented long-term public-health consequences beyond COVID, imposing them appears to have been a large policy error. At the beginning, when little was known, officials acted in ways they thought prudent. But now evidence proves that lockdowns were an expensive treatment with serious side effects and no benefit to society.
The lack of evidence lockdowns actually worked is a world scandal:
There is still not a shred of real proof that the planet's reckless stay-at-home experiment made any difference. We have detonated the global economy to pursue a lockdown experiment that may not have worked, according to the latest evidence. This diabolical revelation should be a world scandal. It should also be a sobering moment of enlightenment for Britain, as we seek to salvage our economy while learning lessons on how to better protect the vulnerable.
The 90% economy: Life after lockdowns The Economist shows how much the lockdown has devastated the economy. It points out: “It will be hard in ways that are difficult to imagine today”.
Were the COVID-19 Lockdowns a Mistake?
So have the lockdowns actually saved lives? There's a debate over how to analyze the data. "Lockdowns just don't actually alter behavior all that much," says Lyman Stone, an economist and demographer who's an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. He argues that there's no correlation between the timing of statewide or regional shelter-in-place orders and a decline in the COVID-19 death rate…. "We can basically build a theory and assert that the world obeys our theory and just go looking for any scrap of evidence that supports it," says Stone, "or we can start by looking at what are the trends we actually observe."
Instead of shelter-in-place orders, he says the rest of the world should learn from the approach taken by Hong Kong, which never issued a stay-at-home order and has just four documented COVID-19 deaths.
Coronavirus Lockdown Put NYC In Crisis
Stuart Varney fears businesses will fail when workers don't return to the cities. FOX Business' Stuart Varney worries the combination of coronavirus lockdowns and violent protests may spell the end of New York City's economy. When coronavirus gripped the nation, lockdowns shut down stores and offices. One city especially hit hard is New York City.
Adding to that the violent unrest during the protests after George Floyd's death, New York City has been "clobbered by the virus, the lockdown and urban unrest," according to FOX Business’ Stuart Varney, in his latest "My Take." "New York City is in crisis," Varney said. "It's very hard to see how New York, and other cities, can come out of this in even halfway decent shape.
How pandemic modelling failed policy-makers, and how to do better by Harvey Schipper
OTTAWA, ON (July 9, 2020): The existing models for epidemics, which were used to trigger lockdowns around the globe in response to COVID-19, seem to have missed the mark in terms of predicting the spread of the virus and informing good public policy. But why did this happen, and how can policy-makers avoid making the same mistakes?
A new MLI commentary by Dr. Harvey Schipper titled “How pandemic modelling failed policy-makers, and how to do better,” makes the case that modelling has been focused too narrowly on medical knowledge alone. Schipper, a health policy expert, writes that “the time has come to rethink the concept we call a ‘pandemic.’”
All models, Schipper notes, represent “the necessary oversimplification of reality that enables us to act.” In the case of an epidemic, our model asks two questions: First, what do we know about the vulnerable host? Second, what do we know about the infecting agent? Current modelling works well when an epidemic is local, and the cause is well understood. However, given these limitations, Schipper argues that COVID-19 created a situation where the model was bound to break.
Moving forward, Schipper calls for epidemic modelling to change in a variety of ways, including:
As Schipper warns, “thinking about pandemics as principally biological phenomena outside their broader context may have made it all worse.”
THE COVID19 EXIT STRATEGY is a 2-hour show by Del Bigtree of The Highwire in which Del interviews Toby Rogers PhD, an economist who is the author of the March article Will "Deaths of Despair" Outpace Deaths From Coronavirus?
Rogers explains that we have 10-12% increases in unemployment already -- Great Depression levels.
He explains that the data show that five years after unemployment goes up by 1%, 36,000 people die as a result of unemployment -- 50% from heart attacks and others from "Deaths of Despairs" which include alcoholism, suicide, overdose, mental hospital patients, etc. He says 51% of small business will fail if the lockdown lasts for 90 days.
The COVID-19 Shutdown Will Cost Americans Millions of Years of Life is a May 25 article by Dr. Scott Atlas, the new Coronavirus Health Advisor, and three other authors.
In the June 18 interview COVID-19 Interview with Scott Atlas, Dr. Atlas said the lockdown was based on the goal of “stopping COVID-19 at all costs” without considering the many major consequences. That was a gross failure of government policy which will go down in history as an error of epoch proportions. The shutting down of medical care has already killed more people than COVID-19, but will kill more and is setting up a massive public health crisis. The models were grossly wrong with a lot of obvious errors. Computer scientists were in charge of healthcare policy. That alone should have raised a red flag. Decisions were made based on worst-case scenarios. Dr. Atlas said the world poverty crisis that will result was almost all unnecessary.
Dr. Atlas explains why schools should be re-opened normally in the fall – without masks or social distancing. He discusses the multiple and enormous harms the lockdown has done to children.
The Doctor Is In: Scott Atlas and the Efficacy of Lockdowns, Social Distancing, and Closings is a video interview with Dr. Atlas.
Over 50 million Americans have filed for unemployment to date. The additional costs include loss of revenue, depression, alcoholism, spousal abuse, child abuse, suicide, etc. These society-destroying costs will mount unless the lockdown is ended NOW! They point out that these things “are significantly more detrimental to society than a virus that has proven similar in nature to the seasonal flu we have every year”. In other words – the “cure” is much worse than the disease! The policy has been a dangerous over-reaction.
These frontline MDs explain that the policies we have been told to adopt are putting us all more at risk because they lower our immune system and make us more vulnerable when the lockdown ends! These policies include the lockdown itself which is unprecedented and unnecessary for healthy people. They include the wearing of masks, social distancing, excessive washing of hands, and use of disinfectants. These policies make us more vulnerable to opportunistic infections what can result in a “second wave” which will be used to justify another destructive lockdown!
Dr. Erickson read their joint statement which points out:
We also need to put measures in place so economic shutdown like this does not happen again. We want to make sure that we understand that quarantining the sick is what we do -- not quarantining the healthy. We need to make sure if you are going to dance on someone’s constitutional rights, you better have a good reason. You better have a really good scientific reason and not just theory.
Dr. Erickson and Dr. Massihi point out that Emergency Room physicians across the country are coming to the same conclusions they have. Their recommendations are in line with those of a growing number of prominent doctors. It makes sense for our health policy to be based now on solid data from the field rather than on speculative models that are destroying our economy and undermining our freedoms.
America’s Frontline Doctors held their first press conference outside the Supreme Court of the United States on July 27. Their main message was that Americans no longer need fear COVID-19 because the FDA-approved drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has proven to be an effective treatment. Read the transcript of their press conference.
America’s Frontline Doctors site said before it was blocked:
American life has fallen casualty to a massive disinformation campaign. We can speculate on how this has happened, and why it has continued, but the purpose of the inaugural White Coat Summit is to empower Americans to stop living in fear. If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease.
The press conference was aired by Breitbart and seen by 17 million people before it was blocked by the Tech Titans (YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook). America’s Frontline Doctors held the first day of the two-day summit on July 27 and it. The second day of the summit was scheduled for 8:30AM-1PM on July 28 but was not broadcast.
Dr. Simone Gold said:
We are finally coming forward, at great personal and professional costs to ourselves. We’re tired of seeing patients die in front of us, and we’re even more upset to see the spider web of fear that is enveloping the American public. When there’s a treatment, there’s a cure. People have been afraid to say that. But what else do you call it if you give somebody the medication early, and it aborts the disease process?
The event, hosted by the organization America’s Frontline Doctors, a group founded by Dr. Simone Gold, a board-certified physician and attorney, and made up of medical doctors, came together to address what the group calls a “massive disinformation campaign” about the coronavirus. The event was organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots.
America’s Frontline Doctors support the re-opening of schools now without masks or social distancing because there is no documented case anywhere in the world of a child spreading the virus. Dr. Simone Gold was later fired from her hospital for participating in the event. She is also a lawyer and is filing a wrongful termination suit against the hospital.
America’s Frontline Doctors put up a new site at: https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/ where you can see the press conference. You can sign up and donate to America’s Frontline Doctors at: https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/.
In a press conference on August 31, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida said schools in Florida are re-opening now. The state left it up to parents to choose and 60% chose to send their kids to schools. Both the governor and Dr. Scott Atlas, the administration’s Coronavirus Health Advisor, spoke without masks. Dr. Atlas explained elsewhere that masks and social distancing are not necessary in schools because of the low infection and transmission rates in those age groups. Dr. Atlas responded to a question about an article in The Washington Post critical of his support for ending the lockdown now.
What is herd immunity, and why are Trump officials pursuing an idea WHO calls ‘dangerous’? is an August 31 Washington Post article by William Wan.
New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial ‘herd immunity’ strategy, worrying public health officials is an August 31 Washington Post article by Yasmeen Abutaleb. She was interviewed on Democracy Now show Meet the New Yes Man on Trump's COVID Task Force: Dr. Scott Atlas Wants U.S. to Adopt Herd Immunity.
The NYT 9/2/20 article A New Coronavirus Adviser Roils the White House With Unorthodox Ideas is critical of Dr. Atlas’ support for re-opening America without masks. It says
I think Trump clearly does not like the advice he was receiving from the people who are the experts — Fauci, Birx, etc. — so he has slowly shifted from their advice to somebody who tells him what he wants to hear,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University who is close to Dr. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator…
The core of his appeal in the West Wing rests in his libertarian-style approach to disease management in which the government focuses on small populations of at-risk individuals — the elderly, the sick and the immune-compromised — and minimizes restrictions for the rest of the population, akin to an approach used to disastrous effect in Sweden.
However, in April, Dr. Michael Ryan of The World Health Organization recognized Sweden’s “herd immunity” as the right model in dealing with COVID-19 rather than China’s “lockdown” model. Health Officials Admit Virus Not As Deadly As Previously Thought: So Why Are We Still On Lockdown? shows the strange disconnect between reality and COVID-19 policies.
The May 12 Foreign Affairs article Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s says: “Herd Immunity Is the Only Realistic Option—the Question Is How to Get There Safely”. Why Sweden’s COVID-19 Strategy Is Quietly Becoming the World’s Strategy is a May 14 article that shows that much of the world is shifting from lockdown to herd immunity as the best model for dealing with COVID-19.
Anders Tegnell is the state epidemiologist who steered Sweden’s strategy for tackling this crisis.
We have knowledge of the negative effects of closing schools so that was definitely in our thinking,’ he said. ‘Also to keep society open, keep unemployment down, make it possible for people to meet each other. We know that social contacts are a little bit dangerous in these times but they are very important for your wider health. It is necessary to keep a balance between stopping the epidemic and keeping people healthy.’ The Swedish approach relies on trust rather than enforcement, going to the heart of how Swedes see their society.
President Donald Trump has taken on a new coronavirus adviser who shares his belief that schools and college football should resume in the fall — as he continues to be at odds with top experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. At the White House's coronavirus briefing on Monday, Trump announced the hiring of Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University.
Since the beginning of the US coronavirus outbreak, Atlas has spoken out against imposing lockdown measures, saying it impedes herd immunity and is costing the lives of people too afraid to seek emergency medical treatment for other issues. "In the absence of immunization, society needs circulation of the virus, assuming high-risk people can be isolated," he wrote in an op-ed for The Hill in April. "It is very possible that whole-population isolation prevented natural herd immunity from developing."
Since May, Atlas has also appeared on Fox News regularly to speak on the US coronavirus crisis, and shared opinions often at odds with many public-health experts' warnings. For one, Atlas has said that he thinks schools should reopen and that the college football season should be able to start without any issues. These ideas seem to line up with the president's own ideas about the pandemic.
Dr. Scott Atlas’ Plan to Re-Open America Now! shows that both Trump and Dr. Atlas may be putting their lives on the line now to rescue America from Fauci’s disastrous COVID “health” policies which Dr. Atlas has described as a “national suicide”. They are having to battle the interests of Big Pharma which want to keep the world in lockdown until their rushed COVID-19 virus is available – which Fauci now says may not be until mid-2021.
We were told in March to lock down for 15 days to “flatten the curve”. Bill Gates (who is not a doctor and was not elected or appointed by any government) later said that the world cannot go fully back to normal until most people get his rushed RNA vaccine. The New York Post article Americans will wear masks for ‘several years’ due to coronavirus: expert predicted says: “Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top official handling the US COVID-19 response, said recently he was cautiously optimistic that there could be a vaccine for the virus by 2021.” So, the goal post kept becoming more elusive.
However, in the August 24 show Tucker: When do we get America back?, Tucker Carlson of Fox News reported that the World Health Organization now says things will NEVER go back to normal! The WHO says that finding a vaccine is no longer the goal. Now, the goal is to re-order society! The leader of the WHO now says, “We will not, we cannot go back to the way things were.”
WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus says COVID-19 is not really a health crisis or a virus. It is about global warming! He says, “The Covid-19 pandemic has given new impetus to the need to accelerate efforts to respond to climate change.” Bill Gates agrees that we will have to sacrifice even more to save the Earth from warming. So, according to the WHO, Gates, and Fauci now, there can never be an end to the lockdown – now because we have to fight global warming! However, in his September 3 article What Happened to Summer?, Dr. Mark Sircus explains why global warming / climate change is a hoax!
Is there a better option for America now that Dr. Scott Atlas is the Coronavirus Health Advisor? See Can Dr. Scott Atlas Save America Now? and Dr. Scott Atlas' Plan to Re-Open America Now!
Amazon Description:
After the 2020 coronavirus nightmare that seemed to never end, the last thing Americans need now is 50 Governors’ extending the goal line. Yet that is what our officials, mostly Democrats are doing. Perhaps Congress should give up their paychecks for the duration.
I am a Democrat. As a Democrat, I know that Democrat leadership does not care about the people. They would have by unanimous consent reauthorized the $2.5 billion requested by the SBA if they cared. My family members benefited from that but the program’s funding ran out because it was helping small businesses as expected. Democrats refused to increase the SBA funding. I rest my case. Democrats, one by one in leadership positions such as governors, do not want America reopened or the economy restarted.
Why? They think it would help Trump get reelected. That’s why the Congress has run out of Washington and are hiding. They no longer represent the people and the Dems are actually for the socialists and not the normal Americans. So what to do? In this book we tell you about how to ignore the negative pleadings of the Democrat leaders and instead work to release the yoke upon America and its economy. Let’s open up and let’s make it good. Read this book to know how to get it done.
