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, Weve never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries. As Ive noted, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 70,000 and 116,000 Americans, between 0.04 percent and 0.07 percent of the nations 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 its 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 governments effectiveness. If public policy can affect climate change, it can stamp out a virus.
Plus, were much more risk-averse. Children arent 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 ...
It’s only for 2 weeks to flatten the curve.
It was. But it was what the people wanted. I was against it then and I am against it now. They should and they will keep it in effect until the Economy of the United States of America is totally and completely destroyed. They will also be starving. But they will be happy.
“If public policy can affect climate change, it can stamp out a virus.”
2 wrongs don’t make a right.
Continuing the lockdowns is a worse mistake.
And the libtards in Kongress, both the demonRATs and the Repugnants, are the worst.
I honestly think it’s because we are more of a nation of scaredy cats now. When a nation is not religious, and this life is all there is, well, “give me liberty, or give me death” falls on deaf ears.
The lockdowns were wildly successful. The democrats got to kill the economy and stop Trump’s rallies. Those were the only two objects and both were met.
And how many deaths would the Asian flu have tallied if they had counted deaths as they do now, including co-morbidities.
What the vast majority of people do not understand is that flu deaths have never been counted this way before.
If they had included co-morbidities back then you could probably add in at least a third more deaths to that tally.
Communist Democrats and their ABCCBSNBCNPR propaganda arm use the term "mistake" because no one is liable when it's a mistake but those who perpetrated this fraud need to be charged for EVERY death, injury, and bit of damage done.
Start with mass murderer Nursing Home Killer (NHK) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who sent thousands to their death.
I agree. It was his duty to be the "bad guy" and rain on the billionaires' vaccine parade. Instead, he seemed to disappear into the wallpaper - in a very typical GOPe fashion.
I’m glad they’re covering this, or else a lot of liberals might not believe it.
Most who did not participate in the FluBro treehouse rituals and wear the patch nevertheless saw it the same way. Are you guys even aware of that? That you are not an elite geniuses club - but are more characterized by believing that you are rather than being alone in seeing things for what they are?
For example, I drink milk, and yet I am not part of the Pansy Milk Drinkers of Free Republic.
In middle school, we had little groups like this with names.
Pence appeared to lose himself in the minutia of micromanaging PPE supply chains. Meanwhile Fauci and a hostile media were allowed to run wild with the fear porn.
It all merits Pence’s dismissal from the ticket IMO.
Posted this on a similar thread yesterday:
As Sherlock Holmes so famously said, How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
The pandemic reaction kept law-abiding Americans locked down in fear, which allowed rioters conveniently masked to hide their identities free-reign on city streets, and in addition offered the obviously-impaired Joe Biden a ready excuse to stay in his basement rather than be out on the campaign trail.
Bonus! It tanked an incredibly robust economy heading into the Presidential election.
Just astonishingly convenient how all that worked out for the Democrats.
Holmes would simply be shaking his head at the gullibility of humanity.
But no worries.
No one in government will be held accountable, all their paychecks kept rolling in, and when it’s over they will pat themselves on the back and pretend that the sun came up the next day because they made it so.
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