Public health authorities have been running their propaganda mills overtime to convince Americans that the only way to stay safe from the coronavirus is to social distance from others as much as possible by staying home. “Stay Home, Stay Safe” is the name of the executive order issued by Michigan governor Whitmer. In Wisconsin, it’s “Safer at Home” from Governor Evers. These and other, similar directives around the country and the world have been taken to heart by millions of easily frightened citizens who have themselves responded by criticizing and snitching on those they view as not being in proper compliance state directives. All this, because the lockdowns are supposed to slow or stop the spread of the coronavirus.
There’s only one fly in the statist soup: Evidence indicates that lockdowns don’t work.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was among the early leaders issuing directives forcing citizens to stay home. But on May 6, he released new statistics from hospitalizations in his state that call into question the efficacy of the lockdowns.
Based on preliminary data on about 1,000 patients from 100 New York hospitals, Cuomo noted in his daily briefing that 66 percent of new admissions for COVID-19 were from people who had been staying home.
“If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” Cuomo said according to CNBC.
“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” the New York governor continued. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”
CNBC concluded that “the new survey results appear to clash with Cuomo’s prior assurances that isolation can reliably prevent transmission.”
The new statistics out of New York support the analyses made by experts such as Nobel prize-winning professor of structural biology Michael Levitt. The Stanford University scholar has maintained his opinion that the lockdowns are both unnecessary and counterproductive.
In an interview that is as of yet still available on YouTube, Levitt said:
I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy, I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers, and they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn’t practice too much lockdown. They got enough people sick to get some herd immunity. The standout losers are countries like Austria, Australia, Israel, that actually had very, very strict lockdown but didn’t have many cases. They have damaged their economies, caused massive social damages, damaged the educational year of their children, but not obtained any herd immunity. I think in many ways the European countries are fine. They didn’t need to have lockdown. They have all reached a high enough level of infection not to have to worry about further, future attacks of coronavirus. The United States seems to be heading that way, they are certainly that way in New York City, but they still have a long way to go.
In fact, he concluded that the lockdowns were a terrible policy mistake.
“I think that everybody panicked, they were fed incorrect numbers by epidemiologists, and this I think led to a situation, that there’s no doubt in my mind, when you come to look back on this the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.”
In fact, others have also started to notice that the lockdowns are not working as advertised. As pointed out by Julie Kelly, writing for American Greatness, former head of the FDA Dr. Scott Gotlieb noted on Face the Nation that the country is seeing plenty of cases despite the lockdowns. “While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” he observed. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we’re just not seeing that.”
Wilfred Reilly, assistant professor of political sciences in the School of Government, Policy and Justice Studies at Kentucky State University, ran some numbers to try to determine if locked down states were having more success in fighting the coronavirus than states without. He reported the results in an article for the U.K. publication Sp!ked.
“As a professional political scientist, I have analysed data from the Worldometers Coronavirus project, along with information about the population, population density, median income, median age and diversity of each US state, to determine whether states that have adopted lockdowns or ‘shelter in place’ orders experience fewer Covid-19 cases and deaths than those which pursue a social-distancing strategy without a formal lockdown,” Reilly wrote.
What did he find?
“In short, I do not find that lockdowns are a more effective way of handling coronavirus than well-done social-distancing measures.”
Moreover, he noted, results such as his should not be censored. “It should not be taboo to discuss these facts,” he pointed out.
And that is a very relevant point. People are quite good at pursuing their own self interest, and as Adam Smith pointed out, though they do this without regard to others, as a whole, when each person in society does this, what emerges is an order in which everyone benefits.
Give people honest analysis along with a full set of facts, allow for robust debate and unfettered research, and people will make decisions for themselves how best to structure their lives. As no one wants to become sick and die from the coronavirus or from any other cause, people armed with adequate information will make educated decisions about how best to manage their own risk. They will then pursue what is, for them, the safest course.
Taken as a whole across all of society, this will result in a society that is much more resilient in the face of an epidemic. It will result in a society that avoids the economic and social distortions and disruptions inherent in any heavy-handed government attempt to intervene, such as those we now face, including economic meltdown, skyrocketing unemployment, rolling shortages of foods and other goods, and tyrannical destruction of fundamental rights and liberties.
The coronavirus pandemic is a significant health problem. The response by government has been an unparalleled catastrophe. While we can beat the first of these, ultimate recovery from the destruction caused by the heavy hand of tyrannical government will prove a much greater challenge.
Photo: LucaLorenzelli / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Dennis Behreandt is a research professional and writer, frequently covering subjects in history, theology, and science and technology. He has worked as an editor and publisher and is a former managing editor of The New American.
