When COVID-19 hit America, blue state governors went wild. They locked down everything and anything that might look like economic activity. It hasn’t gone well for their states, where unemployment is extremely high. Look at their unemployment rates:
- Massachusetts (17.4%)
- New Jersey (16.6%)
- New York (15.7%)
- Nevada (15%)
- California (14.9%)
- Michigan (14.8%)
- Illinois (14.6%)
- Hawaii (13.9%)
- Pennsylvania (13%)
- Delaware (12.5%)
These governors worked hard to protect the rich while stealing the economic future of many middle-class Americans. The crazed response by these governors has put success out of reach for many Americans for years to come.
At LewRockwell.com, Dr. Joseph Mercola analyzes some of the hysteria and wrong turns that were part of America’s response to COVID-19. And, he asks, “Did lockdowns cause more harm than good?” He writes:
Berenson expects similar contradictions to surface soon regarding lockdowns, which were long heralded by the press but may soon go the way of ventilators: “LOCKDOWNS ARE USELESS? Why were we not told? SOMEONE IS TO BLAME AND THAT SOMEONE IS DEFINITELY NOT US,” he Tweeted.
Berenson was being sarcastic, but Dr. Gilbert Berdine, an associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, used data on daily mortality rates for COVID-19 to track the course of the pandemic in Sweden, New York, Illinois and Texas, which each used different pandemic responses, and has suggested that lockdowns may turn out to be “the greatest policy error of this generation.”
Sweden, which did not implement widespread required lockdowns, hit a peak of 11.38 COVID-19 deaths per day per million population on April 8, 2020, and again on April 15, but deaths have declined since. Now, cases and deaths are very low, and it appears herd immunity has been achieved, leading to the end of the COVID-19 epidemic there “for all practical purposes.”
In Illinois, meanwhile, a strict lockdown was also implemented and daily mortality rates increased more slowly, reaching a peak of more than 15 deaths per day per million on May 17, 2020.
However, mortality rates have also been slower to decline and death rates have remained higher than in other areas. While the lockdowns appear to have succeeded in flattening the curve and slowing transmission among healthy populations, they may also have lengthened the time that young people could transmit the virus to the elderly.
“The lockdown appears to have made more deaths from COVID-19 in Illinois than would have occurred without it,” according to Berdine. “Almost certainly herd immunity has not been achieved and will not be achieved until the schools and economy are reopened.”
The billions wasted on unused ventilators, combined with the emerging evidence that the pandemic lockdowns may have backfired, echo the plague of curiosities and misinformation that have followed the pandemic from the start.
Media Continue to Fan the Flames
Toward that end, even as COVID-19 death rates for some groups have fallen to almost 0%, dire warnings from mainstream media about an ominous “second wave” continue to push doomsday predictions.
The fact is, more than a dozen scientists said the herd immunity threshold (HIT) for COVID-19, at which point its spread slows down or stops, is likely 50% or lower, with some experts saying it could be as low as 10% to 20%. This means COVID-19 could potentially fizzle out or even disappear, without any vaccine.
“If we can actually reach herd immunity after 40 percent or less of the population is infected, far fewer people will die than the early forecasts, even without lockdowns,” Berenson wrote. “And if the best-case estimates of 20 percent or less are correct, we may be closer to the end than the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic.”
The lockdown era has also seen a spike in suicides, violent crime, divorce, drug overdoses, domestic abuse, and rising levels of anxiety and depression. There is a human cost in each of those that should not be discounted.
Action plan: Don’t ever give up on yourself, or your family. Even though America is a sometimes scary place today, you can still achieve success.
