Finally, some mainstream media reporters are catching on to what we’ve been reporting for more than a year: lockdowns do not work.
Yes, I know I’ve said this before, but clearly I’ve got to keep saying it until the slow kids on the government benches catch on. At least some of the mainstream media finally are.
We were warned, well before the pandemic and right up until the last minute before it broke out, that lockdowns were not a good idea. The evidence soon became clear, and has only gotten clearer, what a diabolically failed policy lockdowns are.
Yet politicians and bureaucrats refuse to change course.
Lockdowns are a bit like Hotel California: once you check in, the political calculus means governments can’t check out.
Well, not all politicians.
Republican governor Ron DeSantis apologised for the state’s brief lockdown early last year (blaming widespread panic), made Covid-19 restrictions illegal in May and banned vaccine passports. “To even contemplate doing any type of lockdown, honestly it’s insane,” he has said.
In Australia, the state governments have largely been running the Wuhan virus clown-show, with the federal government shamefully failing to pull them into line. But Australia’s paltry seven states are mostly ruled by left-wing parties. The US’s 50 states are far more varied.
The 50 US states have provided an ideal laboratory to study the effectiveness of COVID policies like lockdowns.
Last week Florida, a state of almost 22 million people, had 23,747 new cases, and more than 170 people die from or with Covid-19. More than half the state isn’t vaccinated, despite wide availability[…]
By contrast, California had been in various stages of lockdown for almost 15 months until mid-last month. After a two-week reprieve, Los Angeles has reimposed a mask mandate for indoors, for the vaccinated and unvaccinated. As cases rise again, Democrat governor Gavin Newsom hasn’t ruled out further lockdowns, and the state is launching an electronic vaccine verification system.
If lockdowns were truly as effective as their spruikers maintain, then, the difference between the two states ought to be stark.
It isn’t.
What’s remarkable is how little difference California’s draconian policies, which destroyed thousands of businesses and up-ended schooling for children for a year, seem to have made.
Florida’s hospitals were never overwhelmed. Yes, many Floridians have died from or with Covid-19: a little more than 38,150 on official figures. But per capita the toll isn’t particularly remarkable in the US, especially given the state, a retirement mecca, has among the oldest populations. Florida’s death toll, adjusted for population, was 25th and California’s 33rd among the 50 US states.
Even the pro-lockdown Washington Post conceded in March that Florida’s “excess deaths” looked little different from other US states. Outcomes in South Dakota and North Dakota, neighbouring states, offer similar lessons. South Dakota’s charismatic governor, Republican Kristi Noem, refused to lock down or mandate masks. Yet South Dakota’s Covid-19 death toll (10th in the US) ended up only 15 per cent more than North Dakota’s (17th). And both states did worse than Iowa, which did practically nothing the entire pandemic.
From the earliest months of the pandemic, some researchers were crunching the numbers on lockdown and non-lockdown states. Even then, the evidence was that lockdowns were a failure. The evidence has only got stronger since – especially that lockdowns not only do not hinder the spread of COVID, but their externalities in public health, and social and economic effects are diabolical.
Even if Florida and South Dakota did endure slightly higher death tolls, their millions of residents got to enjoy life for 15 months: weddings, travel, romance, study and the right to go outside. These may not show up in GDP but they are priceless. And California’s unemployment rate is almost 8 per cent, Florida’s 4.9 per cent.
Australian states are facing a surge in mental health issues related to lockdowns. Melbourne’s CBD is a virtual desert. Britain is also experiencing a youth mental health crisis, with children afraid even to go out and play.
So, why are governments and bureaucrats persisting with lockdowns? The illusion of control.
The US states that had the fewest deaths, such as Hawaii and Alaska, are a long way away, suggesting geography and climate may play an even larger role than bureaucracy in affecting the movement of viruses.
The Australian
The stark reality is that governments can do very little to control the spread of the virus. The best actions governments can do are to protect the most vulnerable — the very old and very sick — while allowing the rest of the population, who will barely be affected, to get on with their lives and learn to live with the virus.
This is, after all, what we used to do, not so long ago. In 2017, 1,255 people died in Australia of seasonal influenza – 40% more than have died of (or with) COVID. Was there months of media hysteria? Scare-mongering government ads? Did we lock down entire states? Does anyone even remember?
Have we really lost our minds so badly in just five years?
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