Posted on 06/08/2022 5:04:45 PM PDT by lightman
At the start of the pandemic, professor of Wellbeing Economics at the London School of Economics and co-author of the book “The Great COVID Panic” Dr. Paul Frijters, saw that governments’ response to COVID-19 did not match the level of lethality of the virus and decided to develop a method to quantify the harm government COVID policies would have on people’s well-being.
Frijters’s analytical models revealed that the harm from policies, including lockdowns, would be colossal compared to any benefits.
“I could calculate what kind of ballpark figure the mental health crisis would look like, and then I lay that out against the best estimates as to what these lockdowns were supposed to do,” Frijters said during a recent interview on the American Thought Leaders program. “And it was like comparing a mountain with a mole heap, and the mountain’s the cost and the mole heap was the benefits in the best state of the world.”
In order to understand this phenomenon, he decided to look into crowd psychology and saw signs of what people do when they are in a panic.
“That’s when I really thought, ‘okay something is amiss,’ and I went into a highly analytical mode of: ‘ok, I’m gonna research this. I’m gonna get to the bottom as to what is going on and what we should do next,'” in March 2020, said Frijters.
With 10 years under his belt as a professor of health economics in Brisbane, he knew how to interpret scientific models and where to find viral immunology studies. He saw that the virus was mainly affecting the elderly and began developing his system to quantify the impact of extreme pandemic policies on people’s well-being.
“And I could apply that to what was coming in terms of the disruption, so I could valuate how many lives are we going to lose in the future because of the enormous crash in the economy that is now being mandated by the various closures.”
Frijters spoke to colleagues who also saw the “madness” of the pandemic mitigation policies and then a broader alliance of like-minded scientists and academics formed; who tried to push back against the overreach of the government, the medical institutions, and show how the vulnerable, weak, and elderly were being disproportionally affected by COVID policies.
Well-being Impacted, Lives Lost
Frijters discovered that many areas of well-being were impacted by lockdowns, including the two key areas of education and mental health. The overall quality of life declined for 10 percent of the population on average, said Frijters.
“Roughly speaking, in the UK we found that mental health problems almost doubled, depression rates went from 15 to 30 percent. We find similar things in the U.S., and that is an enormous loss,” said Frijters.
Other areas that impacted well-being were employment and government spending, which lead to inflation.
He said there are two choices to deal with the government debt, one way is that society “can pay back the government debt or it can have hyperinflation, which is roughly what we’re going through now. By so much money printing, we’re basically impoverishing everybody via inflation and disrupting the whole economic system.”
People are in for a hard time entirely due to government policies of the last few years, Frijters said. Adding that food shortages will get worse in the time ahead, due to supply and agricultural disruptions also caused by government policies.
The fifth area of well-being that Frijters saw impacted was people’s overall health, which decreased or caused death due to lack of medical care because the hospital systems were prioritizing COVID.
Frijters and his like-minded academics believe many of these losses could have been avoided if a more balanced approach to the pandemic had been adopted. They supported the view of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called, for “a much more sensible approach to the pandemic” and advocated ending lockdowns to instead, look “after those most vulnerable, let the rest get on with their lives.”
The mainstream media reported little on the Great Barrington Declaration. In addition, there was little to no attention put on alternative treatments for COVID, and doctors who suggested early treatments or ending lockdowns—like the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration—were maligned by the medical establishment and media.
“Lots of doctors got fired for speaking out or for giving their patients sensible information about the risks and benefits of both early treatments and the vaccines. That was suddenly considered misinformation whereas, up until 2020, that was the legal duty of every doctor to do,” said Frijters.
He also noticed that the vast majority of the media outlets were repeating what governments were saying about the lethality of the virus and the reason for government policies but there were only a few “green shoots of reason” revealing the harm of these policies.
Because countries are connected via social media, the panic was able to spread, “and then mainstream media channels, first in China and East Asia, and then Europe and the U.S. and Latin America; all the politicians fell in line, because they thought … that they thought that if they didn’t they’d be pushed aside,” said Frijters.
Many elites, including politicians, took advantage of the fear to gain financially and to consolidate their power, “and so we’ve seen that kind of free for all, whereby there’s been lots and lots of opportunity grabbing by thousands of people all over the world.”
Lulled Into Submission
Countries have allowed their government institutions to expand and now it is time to “deal with the reality that we’re an opportunistic species, and we’ve got to set up our institutions such that that opportunism doesn’t destroy us all.
“I don’t see evil people, I see opportunistic people; and humans are all a little bit opportunistic, and they were in the fortunate or unfortunate position to be able to grab more power in particular ways and they went for it. And I hate to say it, most of us would have done the same,” said Frijters.
“So I tend to blame the system. And I tend to look for systemic solutions, rather than saying these are evil people, we need to get rid of them or replace them with others, because I always believe the others will be the same in the same circumstances.”
Frijters believes the American founders had the right idea, with the system of governance they created. “They were afraid that anyone among them would be the king and so they wanted the system in which no one needed to be trusted.”
“We should not confuse good governance with good people. Good governance has to do with good institutions,”
Frijters said the bureaucracy in the medical field has increased over the last 30 years, with power being consolidated at the top. “And a huge amount of regulation, that’s even worse in countries outside of the U.S., and so [doctors] had already been reduced to puppets to a certain degree.”
It’s also true that “bureaucracies, including in private companies, have just been growing more and more centralization. So this is not just true of government, it’s also true of large corporations.”
He said to ensure these types of destructive policies cannot be implemented again, power at these institutions and companies should be decentralized because right now too few people have much too much power.
People are becoming aware of this problem, at least in the United States, Frijters said.
“These American revolutionaries were merchants and some were slave owners and they knew full well the darkness of the human soul or at least what it’s capable of. So they didn’t expect anything different. They didn’t want their institutions to be based on good people who do good things,” said Frijters.
--DJT, Ides of March 2020
I assume this book will be this year’s winner of the “No Sh*t, Sherlock” Award for Literature..
“I don’t see evil people, I see opportunistic people; and humans are all a little bit opportunistic, and they were in the fortunate or unfortunate position to be able to grab more power in particular ways and they went for it. And I hate to say it, most of us would have done the same,” said Frijters.
“So I tend to blame the system. And I tend to look for systemic solutions, rather than saying these are evil people, we need to get rid of them or replace them with others, because I always believe the others will be the same in the same circumstances.”
__________
Not sure I agree with the see no evil perspective but he may just be being practical. Who out there is guaranteed to behave properly when everyone around them is misbehaving? The system may have been set up to produce this very result.
“Here lies a contrivance engineered by know-it-alls and busybodies who broke eggs with abandon but never, ever created an omelet.”
I read about 6 pages for free and then ordered the book from Amazon Kindle.
Then, I promised my wife that I wouldn’t really start reading it until tomorrow.
A very good analysis, except that the opportunistic power grabbers were and are stupid evil people. Most were and still are. Their Covid policies were stupid, economy destroying lockdowns and dangerous pharma vaxxxes and boosters.
“Other areas that impacted well-being were employment and government spending, which lead to inflation.
He said there are two choices to deal with the government debt, one way is that society “can pay back the government debt or it can have hyperinflation, which is roughly what we’re going through now. By so much money printing, we’re basically impoverishing everybody via inflation and disrupting the whole economic system.”
Well-being Impacted, Lives Lost
Frijters discovered that many areas of well-being were impacted by lockdowns, including the two key areas of education and mental health. The overall quality of life declined for 10 percent of the population on average, said Frijters.
“Roughly speaking, in the UK we found that mental health problems almost doubled, depression rates went from 15 to 30 percent. We find similar things in the U.S., and that is an enormous loss,” said Frijters.
Other areas that impacted well-being were employment and government spending, which lead to inflation.
DO NOT FORGET what they’ve done to you.
Do not let their sudden realization they are in bad shape politically excuse the last two-plus years of abuses.
They shut down your job.
Called many of you “non-essential.”
Closed your kids’ schools.
Expected you to live off $1200 for months while they got richer and richer.
Denied you the ability to be with your dying loved ones.
Then denied you the ability to give those loved ones a proper funeral.
While they let George Floyd have three.
While they went on vacation.
Visited family.
The hair salon.
They arrested you for paddle boarding by yourself.
They shut down the parks and the playgrounds.
They called you a grandma killer if you questioned them.
Suspended you from social media if you didn’t obey the narrative.
They called you domestic terrorists when you demanded your kids get the education your tax dollars paid for.
They mocked you when you demanded a return to normalcy for children.
They sneer at your concern over empty shelves and exploding grocery and utility bills.
They messed with supply chains and emptied store shelves, while the elites partied on yachts and Martha’s Vineyard.
They queered women’s sports and the military, and made the citizenry pay for it.
They sexualized schoolchildren, and persecuted parents at school board meetings.
They denied you the chance to try alternative treatments for COVID.
Then they fired you for not getting the vaccine.
When you stand up for your freedom, they call you Nazis and bigots.
Do not forget what they have done.
Do not forgive them.
They are hoping that, by November, you have forgotten the nightmareof the last 2+ years.
YOU struggle to make ends meet and the best the Biden administration can do is free crack pipes for “racial equity.”
This is on top of the woke, cancel culture bull they shove down our throats, the 2020 riots, being accused of racism and bigotry because we oppose their agenda.
As the election draws closer, they’ll pretend they didn’t do any of this.
They’ll gaslight us.
Project.
Blame the GOP (like they tried to when defunding the police went south).
DO NOT give them power.
They haven’t learned a damn thing from this.
You re-elect them, and you can expect masks and lockdowns and nonsense in perpetuity.
Not just for COVID, but for whatever else they deem a
“public health emergency” (guns, climate change).
(Remember, they are the very same people who ignore a pubic health emergency aka AIDS.)
They will trample your rights.
VOTE THEM OUT.
NEVER FORGET.
REMEMBER...in NOVEMBER!
The Dems gave away TRILLIONS of dollars to people to sit on their lazy asses doing nothing. Now we have endless inflation wiping out life savings. Look for retirees committing suicide when their money runs out ten or twenty years before they had planned. This totally needless Dem-caused inflation has ruined 40 years of financial planning for many people that counted on a stable economic climate. It’s hard enough to save for retirement in stable times; it is impossible if inflation hits 8% to 20% when you retire.
Ping
Nothing on your long list is an accident.
The elites, who control our world have targeted middle America since the Covid Scam began.
We saw one car during that mess with with a Bumper Sticker which said, “I am essential.” on an older car.
When we passed him, I honked and we did the thumbs up. He honked his horn, smiled and gave us the thumbs up.
My wife is usually a controlled lifelong RN in situations like this. She had a tear in her eye and said how horrible a working American in an older car has to proclaim that he was essential.
Thanks for recommending this book. I got the free sample on my Kindle. After reading a few pages on my Chromebook, I ordered the full book.
My wife watched me reading the full book and asked me not to read it after dinner. I stopped reading it about an hour before dinner. She will be reading it, this afternoon on a Kindle we share.
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