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It’s now looking like the lockdowns may have been a huge mistake
nypost.com/ ^ | 9/6/2020 | MIchael Barone

Posted on 09/09/2020 9:27:03 AM PDT by bitt

Were lockdowns a mistake? To that nagging question, the answer increasingly seems to be yes.

Certainly, they were a novelty. As novelist Lionel Shriver writes, “We’ve never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries.” As I’ve noted, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 70,000 and 116,000 Americans, between 0.04 percent and 0.07 percent of the nation’s population. The 1968-70 Hong Kong flu killed about 100,000, 0.05 percent of the population.

The US coronavirus death toll of 186,000 is 0.055 percent of the current population. It will go higher, but it’s about the same magnitude as those two flus, and it has been less deadly to those under 65 than the flus were. Yet there were no statewide lockdowns; no massive school closings; no closings of office buildings and factories, restaurants and museums. No one considered shutting down Woodstock.

Why are attitudes so different today? Perhaps we have greater confidence in government’s effectiveness. If public policy can affect climate change, it can stamp out a virus.

Plus, we’re much more risk-averse. Children aren’t allowed to walk to school; jungle gyms have vanished from playgrounds; college students are shielded from microaggressions. We have a “safetyism mindset,” as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” under which “many aspects of students’ lives needed to be carefully regulated by adults.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: coronavirus; economy; lockdowns; michaelbarone
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1 posted on 09/09/2020 9:27:03 AM PDT by bitt
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To: bitt

No kidding.


2 posted on 09/09/2020 9:27:35 AM PDT by freedomjusticeruleoflaw (Strange that a man with his wealth would have to resort to prostitution.)
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To: Whenifhow; null and void; aragorn; EnigmaticAnomaly; kalee; Kale; azishot; AZ .44 MAG; Baynative; ..

p


3 posted on 09/09/2020 9:27:46 AM PDT by bitt (Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it)
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To: bitt

Thank Dr. Faustus.


4 posted on 09/09/2020 9:27:56 AM PDT by Fido969 (In!)
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To: freedomjusticeruleoflaw

As we in the FR Flubro Community tried so urgently to point out to all yinz.


5 posted on 09/09/2020 9:30:46 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.)
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To: bitt

Lockdowns are only for political purposes after 4/30 and nothing else. Really believe when this virus occurred no one knew what China released. By 4/15 they knew and the RATS started........... plain and simple.


6 posted on 09/09/2020 9:30:56 AM PDT by LoveMyFreedom
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To: Fido969

Betting that the Federal Government got something wrong/screwed something up is more often than not a winning bet in my experience.


7 posted on 09/09/2020 9:31:36 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.)
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To: bitt

Not a mistake to Democrats. Shut down the economy? Hell yes. It’s what they’ve been pining for.


8 posted on 09/09/2020 9:31:50 AM PDT by Telepathic Intruder
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To: bitt

Depends on the goal. It the goal was to tank the economy so that pollsters could gas light a lot of people into believing that Biden had a 15 point lead over Trump ... then, I guess it was a temporary success. If the goal had anything to do with public health, then it was a failure. If the goal was to see how easily the people would accept tyranny, then it was a smashing success.


9 posted on 09/09/2020 9:32:11 AM PDT by cdcdawg (Biden has dementia.)
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To: Fido969

That is what I call Fauci too. He sold his soul.


10 posted on 09/09/2020 9:32:35 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions: $1, Today's Special, Half Baked: 50c)
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To: LoveMyFreedom
Lockdowns are only for political purposes after 4/30 and nothing else. Really believe when this virus occurred no one knew what China released. By 4/15 they knew

Which is when Mike Pence SHOULD HAVE TAKEN CONTROL OF THE FREAKING MESSSAGE. He did not. We suffered as a result. EPIC FAIL!


11 posted on 09/09/2020 9:32:47 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.)
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To: bitt

12 posted on 09/09/2020 9:33:09 AM PDT by Obadiah
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...

13 posted on 09/09/2020 9:33:55 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: bitt

Plus flus had vaccines ....


14 posted on 09/09/2020 9:34:19 AM PDT by wardaddy (I applaud Jim Robinson for his comments on the Southern Monuments decision ...thank you run the tra)
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To: Obadiah

Come on, fearbros. Come to papa. We’ll kiss your f**** dalmatians.


15 posted on 09/09/2020 9:36:03 AM PDT by Rastus
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To: bitt

They locked us down because they were scared and didn’t really know what the Chinese had created or it was planned.


16 posted on 09/09/2020 9:36:58 AM PDT by Irenic (The pencil sharpener and Elmer's glue is put away-- we've lost the red wheelbarrow)
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To: bitt

Now looking? I have been a COVID skeptic since before day 1. I have never been afraid of COVID. All of the people who have been going on and on about how dangerous it is will not come back and apologize for feeding the frenzy. We have many in our very midst. Most of them will come back and claim that they too were skeptical just so they don’t look like the idiots that they are.


17 posted on 09/09/2020 9:37:08 AM PDT by webheart (Coronavirus, I give up. Come get me.)
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To: bitt

I said in mid April that if the lockdown went into May, we’d see rioting by May. I was almost wrong. The first of it started the very last weekend in May.

But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with that conclusion. Urban people lose their jobs, get massive unemployment, and all their hangouts are shut down. What are they gonna do for fun? George Floyd, et al are just the excuse de jure.


18 posted on 09/09/2020 9:37:25 AM PDT by cuban leaf (The political war playing out in every country now: Globalists vs Nationalists)
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To: bitt

“jungle gyms have vanished from playgrounds”

They and other playground equipment are mass produced expensive pieces of metal and plastic with soft material put under them.

Wherever you go it’s the same stuff.

In my elementary school the jungle gym was made of galvanized pipe and the slides were really tall and you could fall of of them onto ordinary dirt.


19 posted on 09/09/2020 9:37:25 AM PDT by cymbeline
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To: Fido969
From the aptly named LP "Bend Sinister"

Dr Faustus

20 posted on 09/09/2020 9:37:42 AM PDT by mylife (Opinions: $1, Today's Special, Half Baked: 50c)
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