Links - 26th May 2021 (1) (Covid-19)

Those with COVID-19 can break quarantine to vote in-person: CDC
"Science"

CDC denounces ‘unethical and illegal’ mandatory coronavirus testing in schools
"Science" strikes again!

Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance - "For months, public health experts have urged Americans to take every precaution to stop the spread of Covid-19—stay at home, steer clear of friends and extended family, and absolutely avoid large gatherings.Now some of those experts are broadcasting a new message: It’s time to get out of the house and join the mass protests against racism... It’s a message echoed by media outlets and some of the most prominent public health experts in America, like former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who loudly warned against efforts to rush reopening but is now supportive of mass protests. Their claim: If we don’t address racial inequality, it’ll be that much harder to fight Covid-19... The experts maintain that their messages are consistent—that they were always flexible on Americans going outside, that they want protesters to take precautions and that they're prioritizing public health by demanding an urgent fix to systemic racism.But their messages are also confounding to many who spent the spring strictly isolated on the advice of health officials, only to hear that the need might not be so absolute after all. It’s particularly nettlesome to conservative skeptics of the all-or-nothing approach to lockdown, who point out that many of those same public health experts—a group that tends to skew liberal—widely criticized activists who held largely outdoor protests against lockdowns in April and May, accusing demonstrators of posing a public health danger... Conservatives also have seized on a Twitter thread by Drew Holden, a commentary writer and former GOP Hill staffer, comparing how politicians and pundits criticized earlier protests but have been silent on the new ones or even championed them... Some members of the medical community acknowledged they’re grappling with the U-turn in public health advice, too. “It makes it clear that all along there were trade-offs between details of lockdowns and social distancing and other factors that the experts previously discounted and have now decided to reconsider and rebalance,” said Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. Flier pointed out that the protesters were also engaging in behaviors, like loud singing in close proximity, which CDC has repeatedly suggested could be linked to spreading the virus. “At least for me, the sudden change in views of the danger of mass gatherings has been disorienting, and I suspect it has been for many Americans,” he told me."... Some experts also are cautious of condemning states for rolling back restrictions after inconclusive evidence from states that already moved to do so. For instance, a widely shared Atlantic article in April framed the decision by Georgia’s GOP governor to relax social-distancing restrictions as an “experiment in human sacrifice.” A month later, Georgia’s daily coronavirus cases have stayed relatively level and it’s not clear whether the rollback led to significant new outbreaks."

Unbiased America - Posts | Facebook - "1,300 HEALTH PROFESSIONALS SIGN LETTER SAYING THEY SUPPORT ONGOING PROTESTS EVEN IF DEMONSTRATORS DON’T TAKE CORONAVIRUS PRECAUTIONS"
Of course, people who don't trust "science" are just ignorant

Adam Carolla on Twitter - "CNN last week, "How are we going to stop these sunbathers on California beaches?!!!" CNN this week, "Masses in the streets walking arm in arm. Good for them.""

If Covid-19 peaks again, don't blame those asking for basic human rights - "What concerns me is not the actions of these protesters, but that some are pushing a narrative that the people taking to the streets will somehow be responsible for a second wave of the virus. This, in my view, is a cynical attempt to not only discourage people from using their right to protest but an attempt to shift the blame away from this Government’s incompetence if there is a second wave.""
I love the gaslighting
It's brilliant - encourage people to gather so cases will go up, then use the rise in cases to push your political agenda

Investigating the likely association between genetic ancestry and COVID-19 manifestations - "We found significant positive correlation (r=0.58, P=0.03) between West European hunter gatherers (WHG) ancestral fractions and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio for data as of 5th April 2020. This association discernibly amplified (r=0.77, P=0.009) upon reanalyses based on data as of 30th June 2020, removing countries with small sample sizes and adding those that are a bridge between Europe and Asia. Using GWAS we further identified 404 immune response related SNPs by comparing publicly available 753 genomes from various European countries against 838 genomes from various Eastern Asian countries. Prominently, we identified that SNPs associated with immune-system related pathways such as interferon stimulated antiviral response, adaptive and innate immune system and IL-6 dependent immune responses show significant differences in allele frequencies [Chi square values (≥1500; P≈0)] between Europeans and East Asians."
What a woke virus - it hates white people

ᴅʀ ᴛᴀᴅ on Twitter - "One of the creepiest aspects of the Covid crisis is that there is no consistent correlation between political success & low death rates. No wonder most political leaders show so little interest in directly protecting the most vulnerable. What matters most is “acting decisively”."

Genève Campbell on Twitter - "Equating legitimate criticism of our pandemic response with “cOviD iS a HOaX anD biLL GaTeS iS TrYiNG tO iNJeCt A miCRoCHiP iNtO yOUr BrAiN!!!!” was a rhetorical deflection that stonewalled honest discussion of tradeoffs and acknowledgement of uncertainty."

Genève Campbell on Twitter - "It might be useful to think about this variant as a totally new virus starting out in London. Nations of the world, do you want this variant in your country? What is your strategy?"
"We are beginning a new paradigm of biopolitics (and nationalism) ushered in by a toxic loop of instantaneous worldwide media delivery and the existing capitalist clickbait-outrage cycle. The consent is now manufacturing itself." Thread by @bergerbell on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I want to say something about our pandemic response and groupthink, especially as it relates to the current scientific discourse in the United States... NEARLY ONE YEAR of attempting to reprogram human social nature. Of stay-at-home orders, policies encouraging prolonged separation of families, and (18+ months, maybe longer, when this is all said and done, of) continuous full closures of some business and most schools...  THIS is what is new and wholly experimental. Despite what many seem to think, 1918 flu restrictions were not at this scale. Not by many orders of magnitude, even. (And this for a virus with an average age of death of 28, versus 80 for our current pandemic.) We are in the middle of an unprecedented global social experiment.At some point mid-March, the longstanding scientific consensus switched from mitigation to attempting permanent suppression through shutdowns. Something specifically recommended against for this IFR. Really. We are permanently stuck in a doomloop from early Spring. Media sensationalism feeds public opinion, which is fed back into political (re)action by pseudo-responsive democratic elite and policymakers, which then stokes more media sensationalism which then... yeah. The collateral harms of what we are doing are enormous, and the benefit of abandoning previous knowledge remains wholly unseen... But the deeply troubling thing is that we did it, accepting and implementing it, uncritically and without open discussion of tradeoffs and second-order effects. We marched immediately and in lockstep... We are entering a new era of repressive biopolitics and nationalism — except this time championed by those who formerly supported globalism and freedom of expression.A Newton’s cradle of global hunger, poverty, death, and despair — cheered on as social justice."

While Britons are imprisoned, Austrians are encouraged to get out, stay fit, and soak up vitamin D - "Cases have plummeted 90% in Austria, and without the sort of draconian rules Britain has adopted"

Short term, high-dose vitamin D supplementation for COVID-19 disease: a randomised, placebo-controlled, study (SHADE study) - "Greater proportion of vitamin D-deficient individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection turned SARS-CoV-2 RNA negative with a significant decrease in fibrinogen on high-dose cholecalciferol supplementation."

COVID-19 mortality increases with northerly latitude after adjustment for age suggesting a link with ultraviolet and vitamin D - "We... urge that vitamin D supplementation at more moderate dose should be taken by all those at risk of deficiency, including people with darker skin or living in institutions"
It's the fault of white supremacy that minorities have darker skin. And clearly we need to lockdown even more to keep the elderly in care homes indoors safe

The autumn COVID-19 surge dates in Europe are linked to latitudes and not to temperature, nor to humidity, pointing vitamin D as a contributing factor

T-cells really are the superstars in fighting COVID-19 - but why are some of us so poor at making them? - "German researchers found that a staggering 81% of individuals had pre-existing T-cells that cross-react with SARS-CoV-2 epitopes [1]. This fits with modelling in May by Imperial College’s Professor Friston, a world authority in mathematical modelling of complex dynamic biological systems, indicating that around 80% and 50% of the German and UK populations, respectively, are resistant to COVID-19... early in April, it was reported that two patients with agammaglobulinemia overcame COVID-19 infections without requiring ventilation [3], prompting the Italian authors to write: “This observation suggests that T‐cell response is probably important for immune protection against the virus, while B‐cell response might be unessential”.All this should have shifted the focus of efforts towards T-cells at an early stage - the real question is why mainstream media and others continued to focus efforts and narrative on antibodies. Is it because vaccines are good at provoking antibody responses but not so great at generating T-cells? Some of the vaccines presently under trial do elicit some T-cells but it seems that neither the quantity nor variety are hugely impressive.  Does this matter? Apparently so: Research establishments including Yale found that in mild or asymptomatic cases, many T-cells are produced. These were highly varied, responding not just to parts of the Spike, S protein or Receptor Binding Domain but to many other parts of the virus [1, 4-6]. Notably, in these mild cases there were few or no detectable antibodies. Conversely, the severely ill produced few T-cells with less variety but had plenty of antibodies. What is also of interest is that men produced fewer T-cells than women, and unlike women, their T-cell response reduced with age [7].So why are some people unable to mount a good protective T-cell response? The key to this question might be a 10-year-old Danish study led by Carsten Geisler, head of the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen [8]. Geisler noted that "When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signalling device or 'antenna' known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D,", and if there is an inadequate vitamin D level, "they won't even begin to mobilize." In other words, adequate vitamin D is critically important for the activation of T-cells from their inactive naïve state. The question of whether T-cells might also need a continuing supply of vitamin D to prevent the T-cell exhaustion and apoptosis observed in some serious COVID-19 cases [9] deserves further research... Another intriguing clue is that Japan has the highest proportion of elderly on the planet but despite lack of lockdowns, little mask wearing and high population densities in cities, it escaped with few COVID deaths. Could this, at least in part, be because of extraordinarily high vitamin D levels of over 30 ng/ml in 95% of the active elderly [11]? By comparison, UK average levels are below 20ng/ml [10]. Vitamin D is made in the skin from the action of UV sunlight, food usually being a poor source, but the Japanese diet includes unusually high levels. Sunny countries near the equator (e.g. Nigeria, Singapore, Sri Lanka) also have very low COVID related deaths. The results of the first vitamin D intervention double blind RCT for COVID was published on 29 August by researchers in Córdoba, Spain. This very well conducted study produced spectacular outcomes for the vitamin D group (n=50), virtually eliminating the need for ICU (reducing it by 96%) and eliminating deaths (8% in the n=26 control group). Although this was a small trial, the ICU results are so dramatic that they are statistically highly significant"

2020 Hindsight – Bruce Pardy: Our year of bowing down to ‘The Science’ - "During this panic-demic, medical authority has become God-like. “Obey the science” has come to mean “Believe what we tell you and do as you are told.” Pronouncements from medical officials deserve skepticism, not because they are bad doctors or scientists, but because they have lost sight of the limits of their own expertise. They insist that because of COVID-19, you must not visit your family for Christmas and small businesses and restaurants must close. Yet these are not medical or scientific questions. Instead, they involve trade-offs: social, economic, psychological and political. Trade-offs reflect values, and values are not scientific. Scientific evidence may be relevant but never determinative... Scientific groupthink is now in vogue. Doctors who question the wisdom of pandemic lockdowns run the risk of being censored and cancelled... “mandatory government lockdowns amount to a medical recommendation of no proven benefit, of extraordinary potential harm, that do not take personal values and individual consent into account.” Science makes an excellent servant and an imperious master. It is a method of enquiry, not an approved set of conclusions. As a process for investigating facts and theories, its practical benefits are unmatched. Yet scientific truth is never settled, and the history of science is a history of error... Just wait a while and the scientific facts may change. The most dangerous scientists carry an unshakeable commitment to the validity of certain conclusions and a determination to enforce what they regard as the moral implications that follow... as Prof. Jordan Goldstein of Wilfrid Laurier University has observed, fear has become a virtue and courage a vice."

Gender in the time of COVID-19: Evaluating national leadership and COVID-19 fatalities - "In this paper we explore whether countries led by women have fared better during the COVID-19 pandemic than those led by men. Media and public health officials have lauded the perceived gender-related influence on policies and strategies for reducing the deleterious effects of the pandemic. We examine this proposition by analyzing COVID-19-related deaths globally across countries led by men and women. While we find some limited support for lower reported fatality rates in countries led by women, they are not statistically significant. Country cultural values offer more substantive explanation for COVID-19 outcomes. We offer several potential explanations for the pervasive perception that countries led by women have fared better during the pandemic, including data selection bias and Western media bias that amplified the successes of women leaders in OECD countries."

Did female leaders trump men in dealing with the pandemic? | The Spectator - "It isn’t hard to imagine what would happen if an academic produced a paper claiming that countries led by men were more entrepreneurial or are better at negotiating international deals. The sky would fall in on them before the ink was dry. Their paper wouldn’t find a mainstream journal to publish it, anyway, but the mere existence of the study would be enough to have them denounced by students and thrown out of their university... There is a very simple rule to this sort of gender-based study: it is permissible when it presents women in a positive light, and absolutely forbidden when it does not.  But leaving that aside, is there any value in this research? The academics have done little more than simply compare death rates of the 19 nations they say are led by women with the 174 they say are led by men. They have attempted to pair countries with similar populations, GDP, demography and population density, and compared them directly. That produces some odd twins which makes you wonder, straight away, of the worth of the exercise: New Zealand has been twinned with Ireland, Serbia with Israel and Germany with the UK. It rather ignores the vastly different geographical position and climate of the countries being paired: New Zealand sits in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 1000 miles from any neighbour and with few people passing through; Ireland sits on the edge of Europe, which as a whole has been greatly affected by the pandemic. Moreover, the infection arrived in Ireland in winter, and New Zealand in summer.The study also somewhat overlooks who is really in charge. The UK and Germany might seem a good socio-economic match at national level yet Germany has a federal structure. It hasn’t been Angela Merkel making most of the decisions on lockdown, but regional governments. If you wanted to prove the opposite point – that men have proved better leaders during the pandemic – I dare say you could do that by picking your pairings carefully, for example by putting female-led Belgium (859 deaths per million) together with male-led Netherlands (361 deaths per million). What you have is a bunch of hugely disparate countries with very different geographies and political systems – factors which you cannot even begin to screen out in order to draw conclusions on the gender of their leaders. Moreover, to try to equate Jacinda Ardern with, say, Aung San Suu Kyi and imply that they think alike, and make judgements in a pandemic which are fundamentally different to those of, say, Boris Johnson or Vladimir Putin, is absurd. This is no piece of rigorous science, just a dollop of feminist propaganda."

Professor Sunetra Gupta interview: There’s not enough diversity of opinion on Sage

WHO advisor: COVID-19 pandemic likely started via lab leak - "One year after the pandemic started, World Health Organization advisor Jamie Metzl wants China to come clean about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.The Kansas City-born, New York-based Metzl, who served as Deputy Staff Director of the Foreign Relations Committee under then Senator Joe Biden (2001-2003) and before that on the National Security Council (1997-99) and the State Department (1999-01) under President Bill Clinton), theorizes it was most likely an accidental lab leak in Wuhan"
There was a time when the media called this fake news

Biological weapons lab leaked coronavirus, claims US official | News | The Times - "There is now strong evidence that the coronavirus was leaked from a Chinese biological weapons research laboratory, rather than developing in a livestock “wet market”, a senior US official said.Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser, claimed in a Zoom call to politicians around the world that there was “a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus”... Late last year foreign journalists were barred from visiting an abandoned copper mine in the southwest of the country, where the closest known relative of Sars-Cov-2 was discovered in 2013 by Chinese virologists and taken back to the Wuhan laboratory. A bat research team had samples taken on a recent visit to the mine confiscated."

Toronto neighbourhood has had enough of anti-maskers - ""Hate has no home here," read a post on Friends of Kensington Market group on Facebook."Friends of Kensington Market does not condone the anti-lockdown marches that have recently been passing through the neighbourhood. We will not tolerate public endangerment, racism, or harassment at any time, let alone when our community is already suffering.""
Anything liberals hate is "hate"

Now woke politics is screwing up the vaccination programme - "We are now reaping the whirlwind of the politics of grievance. The tragic news that many black Britons are cagey about the Covid vaccine is proof, surely, of what happens when you tell a section of society over and over again that they live in an institutionally racist country that loathes them and wants to harm them. You give rise to distrust, to suspicion, to a situation where some members of that section of society come to fear all institutions, even medical ones. There is much handwringing over wariness of the vaccine among ethnic-minority groups in the UK. Various studies have found that black people in particular say they are probably not going to agree to vaccination. One survey found that a depressing 72 per cent of black Brits said they were ‘unlikely’ to be vaccinated... There is something very striking in the survey findings about ethnic-minority attitudes to vaccination. They seem to suggest that the better integrated a community is, the more likely it is to view vaccination positively. So an Understanding Society survey found that black communities and Pakistani- and Bangladeshi-heritage communities are significantly less likely to agree to vaccination than Indian-heritage communities."
Naturally, their reluctance is blamed on "racism". Then again, anti-racism IS racism

New variant in South Africa renders AstraZeneca vaccine ineffective in young people
Covid hystericists say covid is terrible and even if you don't die you'll be crippled for life, so... eternal lockdown!

South African variant: What it means in the fight against Covid-19 - "Separate studies have shown that the vaccines produced by Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax still offer protection against the South African variant – roughly 60 per cent in the case of the latter – but are not as effective as they were against the original form of the virus."

Restrictions on large gatherings likely to be in place 'for next few years' - "Experts have warned that restrictions on large gatherings could remain in place for "the next few years" as the world learns to live with the coronavirus"
How far we've come since "two weeks to flatten the curve"

COVID-19 Vaccines Might Never Get Us to Herd Immunity - The Atlantic - "One possible scenario is that the disease could follow the path of the four coronaviruses that cause common colds, which frequently reinfect people but rarely seriously"

Mutation of Kent Covid variant discovered in Manchester
Strange. I thought it was "racist" to call it the Wuhan/China virus. Yet we get to call the variants by their presumed geographic origin

Anti-Chinese sign outside Ontario bar sparks calls for action - "People in London, Ont., are calling for political action after seeing a sign at a downtown bar earlier this week that they say directly targets the Asian community.The marquee board at the Ale House, which is known for controversial messaging, had criticized Premier Doug Ford's measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. On Thursday morning, the board read, "Mr Ford, history will show lockdowns caused more damage 2 the public then [sic] the China virus!"... Alexandra Kane, lead activist with Black Lives Matter London, said the city's No. 1 priority should be to immediately take the message down... Racism against any group should not be tolerated, Kane said, and hateful speech against the Asian community should not be allowed by the City of London."
Even after so long, racist liberals still think that all ethnic Chinese people (or indeed, everyone who looks Asian) is from China

More Freedom Is the Whole Point of Vaccines - The Atlantic - "public-health experts elsewhere in the world are emphasizing hope... But in the United States, the prevailing message is that, because vaccines aren’t perfect, people who have received them shouldn’t let down their guard in any way—not even at gatherings with just a few other vaccinated people... Advising people that they must do nothing differently after vaccination—not even in the privacy of their homes—creates the misimpression that vaccines offer little benefit at all. Vaccines provide a true reduction of risk, not a false sense of security. And trying to eliminate even the lowest-risk changes in behavior both underestimates people’s need to be close to one another and discourages the very thing that will get everyone out of this mess: vaccine uptake... health is more than the absence of disease... exhortations about unwavering vigilance after vaccination may have unintended consequences—not just dissuading vaccine uptake but also sapping the public’s hope. “The truth is that if I thought I was going to be living the way I’m living now for another 10 months,” the New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg tweeted about the dour vaccine messaging, “I’d probably give up completely.”"
Also headlined: "Vaccinated People Are Going to Hug Each Other"

CDC: 'Just Because You Got The Vaccine Doesn't Mean You Should Go Outside Or Ever Experience Joy Again' | The Babylon Bee - "The newly revised guidelines indicate that people who have not yet been vaccinated should stay home, masked, in a bubble, forever. Those who have been vaccinated should do the exact same thing, except they are allowed to have a smug look on their faces for being vaccinated. Except you can't see the smug look. Because of the mask.What is the benefit of getting vaccinated, then? "Well, there are many benefits," the CDC spokesperson said. "But the best benefit of all, of course, is that you're on the right side of history. But still, stay in your home and be sad and depressed forever.""

Muslims and Hindus rejecting vaccine due to fake news that jab contains meat or alcohol, doctors warn - "Reena Pujara - a beauty therapist in Hampshire and a practicing Hindu - told the BBC she had been bombarded with false information."Some of the videos are quite disturbing especially when you actually see the person reporting is a medic and telling you that the vaccine is going to alter your DNA," she said."
Damn racism!

Exclusive: Doctors told to throw away leftover Covid vaccines rather than giving second doses - "Local NHS leaders are forcing GPs to throw away vaccines rather than give second doses, medics have revealed.Doctors who are organising clinics at short notice and find they have several injections left are being warned that they cannot use them on staff or any patients who have already received their first jab... "This is ridiculous, bordering on the criminal, to actually be wasting vaccines when you have the worst global healthcare crisis for a century.""

China Shrugs, Declares Its Half-Effective COVID Vaccine 'Good Enough' - "In late 2020, China declared it had a COVID vaccine ready to roll and as a “public good” would make it available internationally. China boasted that its vaccine is about 80% effective, basing this on its own testing... China’s COVID vaccine is just 50.4% effective, according to Brazil. That level just barely meets the threshold of regulatory approval in Brazil."

Sinovac CEO caught for bribing Chinese regulator remains unscathed and continues to oversee COVID-19 vaccine development

United Nations on Twitter - "The #COVID19 pandemic is demonstrating what we all know: millennia of patriarchy have resulted in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture which damages everyone – women, men, girls & boys. -- @antonioguterres"
No wonder the WHO failed with covid. Presumably questioning China was "racist" too

Martyn Iles - Posts | Facebook - "This whole lockdown thing has challenged me. I want to uphold respect for the law and the governing authorities... but I want to criticise that which is wrong-headed and unprincipled.It is getting harder to balance both, especially in the case of Victoria.There is something very dark going on in all this. I'm not sure what it is, but I can see rotten fruit everywhere.Some examples of the problem:
Daniel "people were having family BBQ's" Andrews, covering up for the blunders of him and his government by blaming families.
Daniel "I haven't seen the video" Andrews, pretending he couldn't answer questions about the global news story of the week.
Daniel "we have to wait for the inquiry" Andrews, knocking questions about the hotel quarantine program right off into the unknown future by making them the subject of an inquiry.
Daniel "12 month extension" Andrews who now has unprecedented emergency powers for at least twice the maximum time previously allowed under law, with no regular parliamentary (ie democratic) scrutiny.
Daniel "no community transmission" Andrews, who now proposes to lift lockdowns back to stage 2 only when community transmission is effectively at zero. Who knows when that will be.
But then there's the police, with Luke Cornelius in charge.
Luke "we cannot discriminate" Cornelius, who let BLM go ahead with some of his officers taking a knee on the day, whilst ruthlessly and pre-emptively dealing with freedom protest organisers.
Luke "we got the PR wrong" Cornelius, who only admits that handcuffing a pregnant mum who'd done next to nothing, in front of her kids, "looked" bad, but was not bad in substance.
Luke "BLM was different" Cornelius, who lies about Zoe Lee's event being in stage 4 lockdowns, when it was, like BLM in stage 3... or that Zoe was not encouraging social distancing and masks, when she explicitly was. Where there is deceit and lies on this scale, you have one of the quintessential proofs of real corruption - moral and institutional. For some reason, this kind of corruption always craves power and control. In Victoria, the single and only methodology being adopted is whichever one yields greater power for the government and submission by the people, in every case.Virus elimination or controlling the curve? Virus elimination. Monthly power extensions or a 12-month extension? 12-months. Crack down on racism protests, or protests which demand greater freedoms? The latter, obviously. Answer questions transparently, or play political games to avoid them? Again, you know the answer.All this, it is becoming clear, at any cost. Any cost at all. The safest pandemic in history (true statement) is to be the cause of social, societal, and economic carnage like nothing our lifetimes.This is not just silly or bad. It's wicked."
Covid hystericists love to celebrate Australia. Maybe it's a sign of affinity with authoritarianism, too

Melissa Chen - "Imagine sitting in Boston, or Brooklyn, or Newark, or Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles, or in a thousand other places, and reluctantly accepting the government's injunctions for three months to drastically modify your behavior—often at great personal espense—and then suddenly, overnight, a favorable new political cause emerges, and these very same government officials are now encouraging mass gatherings, many of which explicitly violate the emergency orders that are still currently in place. Violations of these orders had previously served as the basis to effectuate large-scale fines and arrests. What an incredible insult. You [the government] deserve to lose legitimacy after this. You have forfeited all claims to public trust. Good luck containing the pandemic from now on—idiots." "Why is trust in our public institutions - government leaders, media, etc. - so low?
Two possible outcomes from here:
1) Covid cases and death rates spike with a vengeance, causing more lockdowns and further stalling of the economy
2) Nothing really, and the public is going to feel completely and justifiably gaslighted by leaders and journalists
Either outcome inches us closer to a revolution where people will demand tearing down the status quo"

Meme - "Notice how quickly the 'Stay home and save lives' crowd, went to 'You must support the Protests' and then back to 'Stay home and save lives' and now 'Wear a mask or kill someone'. Basically whatever the Media tells them to do. This has been the greatest experiment in Civil Obedience in History."

Daily Caller on Twitter - Bernie Sanders: "Congratulations to all who are out on the streets today peacefully protesting.Together, we will end police brutality.Together, we will defeat Trump.Together, we will fight for a government based on justice and compassion, not greed and lies." Bernie Sanders: "Trump wants 15,000 delegates cheering him at his GOP convention in Florida. No social distancing. His rejection of medical advice endangers not only those there but those they come in contact with. Trump's a threat to the health and well-being of the country. He must be defeated." "Five days apart. Spot the difference."

Democrats' Hypocrisy on Riots Reveals Political Nature of Coronavirus Lockdowns - "New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, for instance, condescendingly quipped that anti-lockdown protesters who want to earn a living should simply "take a job as an essential worker." Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, also a Democrat, was especially caustic, calling the protesters who showed up at the Michigan state capitol "racist" and fretting that they were spreading the virus by assembling in public."This is not appropriate in a global pandemic," Whitmer complained. "But it's certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech."... when rioters used the recent George Floyd protests as cover for violence, Whitmer issued a statement that completely ignored their actions. She then blatantly ignored her own pleas for "social distancing" while joining the marchers for a photo-op just a few days later... De Blasio, whose own daughter was arrested for blocking traffic during a demonstration, made an exception for protesters but maintained lockdowns and curfews for New Yorkers who were not protesting, looting or rioting. Saint Paul, Minnesota Mayor Melvin Carter, said that while he encourages protesters to abstain from destroying their own communities, he "want[s] to be very clear we're not asking you for patience. And we're not asking you for pacifism."Mayor Carter certainly should have been asking for pacifism, though—it would have been better than merely "hoping" the rioters stopped laying waste to the city. The liberal mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Jacob Frey, is one of the most culpable local leaders, as he not only fanned the flames of the recent looting and rioting in his beautiful city, but he also effectively forced the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) to stand down and allow the city—including one of MPD's own precincts—to burn.Other prominent Democrats, including more than a dozen staffers working for former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign, have even contributed to groups that are bailing out looters and rioters who were arrested for their crimes. Democrats, as a whole, seem to have forgotten all about their dire warnings about the public health consequences of anti-lockdown protests—none of which devolved into looting, rioting or disorderly behavior. Now that the protesters are pushing an extreme liberal agenda, such as defunding the police, Democratic officials appear to have magically lost their "grave concerns" about mass gatherings. The contrasting and hypocritical response from so many Democrats to the two recent protest movements makes it absolutely clear that their supposed concern about the spread of COVID-19 has little, if anything, to do with public health—and everything to do with politics."

Protests May Have Spread Coronavirus, Some Cities Say - "Officials in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Miami-Dade County, Fla., have acknowledged that anti-police protests and riots may have led to increased spread of the coronavirus... All three cities have experienced an uptick in coronavirus cases after weeks of protesting sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Many Democrats and public-health professionals alike had voiced support of the demonstrations, including Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti.Two days after maintaining that there wasn’t “any conclusive evidence” showing a connection between protests and a surge in cases of the virus, Garcetti did an about-face, saying the county’s public-health director “does think some of the spread did come from our protests.”... Still, Garcetti didn’t admonish protestors."

Who deserves a funeral? - "No one would argue that Rep. John Lewis doesn’t deserve a proper memorial. He was a civil rights icon and a long-serving member of Congress who was beloved by his colleagues. In the middle of a pandemic, however, how do we decide who gets the pomp and circumstance of a traditional burial and who has to watch their loved one go six feet under via Zoom call?... Georgia is unique in that it allows anyone to have a funeral. However, the governor’s executive order prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people if social distancing cannot be maintained. Photos of Lewis’s funeral in Atlanta showed that many more than 50 people attended and that social distancing was not maintained in parts of the church, nor during the burial outside... At the same time, a significant number of attendees traveled from out of state to attend the funeral. 50 members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attended. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone who travels to Washington, DC from a coronavirus ‘hotspot’. Georgia was one of the states designated as a ‘hotspot’ on a list released by the DC government on Monday. Nevertheless, Pelosi (an essential worker) flitted around the Capitol all day Friday, almost gloating about her freedom from the rules. If politicians are above the restrictions that apply to the rest of us, perhaps they could at least successfully negotiate a COVID relief package? How could any person who has lost a loved one during the pandemic see this blatant hypocrisy and not be incensed?... the same politicians who lectured you about making sacrifices to stop the spread traveled with impunity, attended large funerals without proper social distancing and avoided quarantines upon their return.The funerals for Rep. Lewis in Atlanta and George Floyd in Houston — which was attended by Jamie Foxx, Channing Tatum, Revd Al Sharpton, Ne-Yo, and others — are a reminder of how the elite prioritize their own lives and needs ahead of the rest of us. They don’t just think they are better than you; they act like it, too."
The same people who raged at Dominic Cummings are silent about this
More of the woke forcefield that defeats covid-19!

Rep. John Lewis Remembered At Multiple Funeral Ceremonies
Some animals are more equal than others

Claire Lehmann on Twitter - "Virus scientist estimates that 200 - 1100 people will die for each day of protests in the USA"

Over 1,000 health professionals sign a letter saying, Don't shut down protests using coronavirus concerns as an excuse - "However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators' ability to gather and demand change. This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders"
What a woke virus!

Heather on Twitter - "So, if you’re white you’re a racist, unless you are a liberal. If you’re black, you’re black unless you support Trump. If you’re looting & rioting, you’re a patriot & immune from Covid19. If you attend a Trump rally, you are a white supremacist, who wants to spread disease. "

Spike in Cleveland coronavirus cases rooted in days immediately after May 30 protest and rise in social activity - "Cleveland’s spike in COVID-19 coronavirus cases that has set daily records twice since Thursday has its roots in the days immediately after the Black Lives Matter protest on May 30 in downtown, Public Health Director Merle Gordon said Monday."

HHS, Miami leaders blame COVID-19 surge on irresponsible behavior - "In Florida, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez apportioned blame to "younger people basically disregarding the rules" for an upsurge of cases... "It's not coincidental that two weeks after demonstrations happen here in Miami-Dade County, a lot by young people, that we've had this spike"

The hypocrisy of the BLM lockdown-breakers - "So that’s how the lockdown ends. Not with a bang. And not with a whimper, either. But with a brazen display of double standards and hypocrisy by Labour politicians and the media elites.The lockdown in Britain is over. Make no mistake about that. The crowds of people who gathered to shout ‘Black Lives Matter!’ in Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Whitehall and elsewhere have seen to that.Crowding together, high-fiving, breathing in each other’s face, and in the faces of police officers too… these teeming political assemblies have defied social-distancing rules and the effective ban on political activity enforced by the outrageously authoritarian corona laws. And in doing so, they have sent a message to the country: if you really want to do something, don’t let the lockdown stand in your way.In a sense, we should thank them for this. At least, those of us who are lockdown sceptics, who think 10 weeks of shutdown has been disastrous for the economy, liberty and working people’s lives, should thank them. They have done what others failed to: signalled to the country that social distancing no longer applies and you can go about your freedom and your business as usual. But – and this is a big but – we cannot let this moment pass without commenting on the eye-swivelling hypocrisy of it all... Politicians like Dawn Butler and Barry Gardiner fumed against anyone who suggested an easing of the lockdown. Butler nuttily accused Boris Johnson of sending people out to catch the virus when he said more people should start returning to work. Gardiner, like everyone else in the chattering classes, condemned Cummings for taking his family to Durham when they were ill. Yet now both of these politicians praise and even attend mass, non-socially-distanced gatherings.Gardiner boasted about breaking the lockdown to attend the BLM demo outside parliament. Butler says these protesters are beyond criticism. ‘Don’t even go there!’, she said to a Tory MP who suggested the protesters could give rise to a second spike of Covid. The media, meanwhile, have obsessed ridiculously over lockdown-breakers in recent weeks. Not just Cummings but also everyday people having a beer on Brighton beach or strolling in parks. Yet their reports on the BLM gatherings have said virtually nothing about social distancing. Just like that, social distancing disappears, the lockdown ends, it’s all over. People are saying it’s okay to break the lockdown for a BLM gathering because this is an important issue. Fine. Many people will understand that. But celebrating VE Day is important too. Seeing loved ones is important. Attending funerals is important. Having the right to protest against lockdown is important. Sending one’s kids to school is important. Work is important. Yet we were told not to do any of that stuff, on pain of punishment, and many of the same Labour and media types now relishing the lockdown-busting BLM demo were at the forefront of dencouncing as reckless and immoral anyone who did do those things.The same people who sneered at ‘rednecks’ in the US and lockdown sceptics in the UK for attending protests – accusing them of killing old people and generally being scum – now attend their own protests and expect no criticism whatsoever... The liberal elites are essentially saying to us that their political views and their personal lives are more important than ours. So we can’t break lockdown, but they can. That is elitism, plain and simple, and we should challenge it. How about a protest?"

Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What - The New York Times - "Some public health scientists publicly waved off the conflicted feelings of their colleagues, saying the country now confronts a stark moral choice. The letter signed by more than 1,300 epidemiologists and health workers urged Americans to adopt a “consciously anti-racist” stance and framed the difference between the anti-lockdown demonstrators and the protesters in moral, ideological and racial terms. Those who protested stay-at-home orders were “rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives,” the letter stated. By contrast, it said, those protesting systemic racism “must be supported.”“As public health advocates,” they stated, “we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for Covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health.”... The 10 epidemiologists interviewed for this article said near-daily marches and rallies are nearly certain to result in some transmission... Nicholas A. Christakis, professor of social and natural science at Yale, noted that public health is guided by twin imperatives: to comfort the afflicted and to speak truth about risks to public health, no matter how unpleasant."
Some people claim that pointing to hypocrisy to be skeptical of "the science" is anti-scientific. Given that it is scientists who are the hypocrites it' clear that if your question their hypocrisy you're a "science denier" and "conspiracy theorist"
Apparently at some time public health turned into lying to people to "comfort" them

Ashe Schow on Twitter - "Media outlets are seriously doing the “Trump is holding rallies despite coronavirus” AS they promote the protests, riots, and violence."
"Only Republicans and churchgoers can get COVID-19 that's why they don't get 14th Amendment rights like George Floyd protesters."

BREAKING: Trudeau defends decision to attend protest with thousands, breaking his own social distancing rules - "Trudeau was quickly asked why he attended the protests on Friday when hundreds of thousands of Canadians have been told to stay at home.Trudeau said that "thousands" of Canadians made their way out to "highlight deep concerns."... When asked why he could go out in public in groups while restaurant owners could not sell pizza on their patio, Trudeau said that there were a lot of questions that needed to be answered"
If the government protests itself who are they targeting?
Is holding mass events alright for other causes to highlight deep concerns?

PA Gov. Wolf Marches with Protesters After Slamming Business Owners as Cowardly, Selfish for Reopening - "Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) joined a large gathering of protesters in Harrisburg on Wednesday, just weeks after slamming local leaders and business owners as “cowardly” for moving to reopen their counties and businesses outside of his far-reaching lockdown orders... Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine, the nation’s first openly transgender public health secretary, defended Wolf’s seeming violation of his own orders and warnings... Wolf made waves last month after accusing business owners and leaders, clamoring to reopen amid his restrictions, of engaging in a “cowardly act.” He also said that lawmakers “urging businesses to risk their lives and risk the lives of their customers or their employees by opening prematurely” were “engaging in behavior that is both selfish and unsafe.”"
Clearly, the coronavirus cannot infect protests against racism

Ryan Fournier on Twitter - "In one month... We went from arresting small business owners for trying to put food on the table, To not arresting looters and rioters burning down small businesses. Let that sink in"
""When the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Um, then don't loot?"

Met feared 'serious disorder' if lockdown rules were enforced at racism protest
So to have an unmolested protest, just threaten to cause trouble

Gad Saad - Posts" - "Does anyone remember why we’ve been on a 3-month lockdown due to a civilizational threat? Yeah, me neither. That was so last week. Now we face another existential threat: Trump’s martial law and the “genocide” taking place in America. Collective Munchausen is a nasty disorder.The Armenian genocide was a genocide.The Holocaust was a genocide.Rwanda had a genocide.The Yazidi faced a genocide.Fight for justice but don’t murder the truth in your pursuit of this laudable goal."

Ace Speedway declares race a 'protest' to skirt coronavirus rules, draws 2,000 - "A North Carolina speedway drew a crowd of more than 2,000 spectators in defiance of the state’s coronavirus restrictions after declaring the race a “protest.”The governor’s office had warned Ace Speedway in Elon earlier this week that a crowd of more than 25 would violate the state’s Phase 2 coronavirus restrictions."

GRAHAM: Leftist Protests More Sacred Than Church Services - "The New York Times recently proclaimed in a headline, “Churches Emerge as Major Source of Coronavirus Cases.” A three-reporter team announced the newspaper constructed a database to count church-spawned infections as the “virus rages” and blamed 650 infections across America on church activities. How is this a “major source” of cases?... the Black Lives Matter protests over the death of George Floyd that clogged the streets. Suddenly, mass gatherings were not only allowed; they were praised and glorified on a global scale. The coronavirus counters dropped off cable-news screens.There won’t be a headline in The New York Times that reads, “Protests Emerge as Major Source of Coronavirus Cases.” The Times created no database to warn of any dangerously disobedient and unscientific citizens among the “progressives.”Instead, the newspapers proclaimed there was little evidence to suggest massive street protests were spreading the virus. “Public health experts” exempted protests from their danger zone, and some even marched themselves.It’s a blatant double standard that strongly suggests that in today’s America, protests are the most sacred activity, far more sacred than Americans gathering to worship God. But not all protests, obviously. Protesting the lockdowns in May was pitched as a dangerously nutty exercise of the First Amendment. CNN’s warning headline on screen was “Protesters, Some Armed, Descend on Michigan Capitol.” Leftist protesters never “descend on” places. In May, CNN cued up Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to describe how the people protesting her restrictions were a band of scary, gun-lugging extremists, maybe even Nazis and Confederates. In a similar Democrat-enabling interview last week, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer brought on New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to explain how he has banned large gatherings in his city but exempted the police-bashing protests."
In other words, for liberals politics is a secular religion

Research Determines Protests Did Not Cause Spike In Coronavirus Cases
This is interesting because it's a tacit admission that many people view the protests as violent
On the other side, I see a lot of people refuse to believe this and just mock it without engaging the argument
For those people interested in understanding how this works, consider 2 scenarios:
1) Tom, Dick, Harry, George and Jane go to the mall because there is no protest. They get covid-19 from Bob who is at the mall.
Total number of new covid-19 cases: 5
2) Tom, Dick, Harry, George and Jane do not go to the mall because there is a protest.
Bob and Jane go to a protest. Bob infects Jane.
Total number of new covid-19 cases: 1

Social Distancing Causally Impacts the Spread of SARS-CoV-2: A U.S. Nationwide Event Study - "Our study documents a significant increase in COVID-19 case counts in counties that experienced a protest, and we conclude that social distancing practices causally impact the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The observed effect cannot be explained by changes in social distancing restrictions and social mobility, and placebo tests rule out the possibility that this finding is attributable to chance"
This suggests that the BLM riots DID increase covid cases. So liberals (who tend to be covid hystericists) don't get to have their cake and eat it. Amusingly, this is peer reviewed, but the research that finds that the riots didn't lead to a rise in cases is only a working paper. And anyway that NBER working paper doesn't exactly make the BLM riots look good either, since it suggests that people stayed home more because they feared violence. So it suggests that most people didn't believe the BLM riots were peaceful, as well as not contradicting the claim that the riots themselves increased covid cases, since it was only second order effects that meant cases overall didn't rise

How A 51-Year-Old Grandmother And Thousands Of Teens Used TikTok To Derail A Trump Rally & Maybe Save Lives
Of course, only "white supremacists" would do the same for a Black Lives Matter protest

De Blasio Tells Covid Contract Tracers Not to Ask Positive Cases If They’ve Attended BLM Protests - "New York City officials have taken a soft stance over fears that mass protests could lead to a spike in coronavirus cases. “Let’s be clear about something: if there is a spike in coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, don’t blame the protesters. Blame racism,” Mark Levine, head of the city council’s health committee, tweeted... The mayor, whose daughter was arrested during a Manhattan protest over the death of George Floyd, is facing a lawsuit from Catholics and Jews for violating the constitutional rights of religious New Yorkers by placing restrictions on religious services. But De Blasio has pushed back on claims that he has been hypocritical in allowing protests to proceed while keeping religious services shuttered.“When you see . . . an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seated in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services”"
You can't blame the protests for covid-19 cases if you don't have the data. Brilliant.

People with psychopathic traits more likely ignore social distancing

The Yaboiposting - Posts" - "LIVE: Aerial footage shows massive crowds rallying to celebrate #Pride in Chicago"
"Another event that's magically protected from coronavirus. I guess lack of "pride" is a health crisis like racism"
"I guess as long as you suck dick, no one will accuse you or trying to kill grandma"

NBC News on Twitter - "Rally for Black trans lives draws packed crowd to Brooklyn Museum plaza."
NBC News on Twitter - "President Trump plans to rally his supporters next Saturday for the first time since most of the country was shuttered by the coronavirus. But health experts are questioning that decision."

Virginia Democrats Plan to Hijack COVID-19 Crisis to 'Defelonize' Assaults on Police Officers

Mayor of London statement on Black Lives Matter protest - "To the thousands of Londoners who protested peacefully today: I stand with you and I share your anger and your pain. George Floyd’s brutal killing must be a catalyst for change worldwide. No country, city, police service or institution can absolve itself of the responsibility to do better. We must stand together and root out racism wherever it is found. Black Lives Matter"
Mayor of London (gov.uk/coronavirus) on Twitter - "This is not acceptable. I urge all protestors to leave now. Large gatherings are banned for a reason - you are putting the safety of our city at risk."

‘Distancers’ and ‘non‐distancers’? The potential social psychological impact of moralizing COVID‐19 mitigating practices on sustained behaviour change - " Adherence to COVID‐19 mitigating practices is presently high among the general public, and stringent lockdown measures supported by legal and policy intervention have facilitated this. In the coming months, however, as rules are being relaxed and individuals become less strict, and thus, the ambiguity in policy increases, the maintenance of recommended social distancing norms will rely on more informal social interactional processes. We argue that the moralization of these practices, twinned with relaxations of policy, may likely cause interactional tension between those individuals who do vs. those who do not uphold social distancing in the coming months: that is, derogation of those who adhere strictly to COVID‐19 mitigating practices and group polarization between ‘distancers’ and ‘non‐distancers’."
From June 2020. Especially given the later University of Otago study on covid moralisation, this paper is wrong in its predictions - it is those who do not buy in to covid hysteria who are more derogated
Covid hysteria means that disagreeing with a covid hystericist on the science means you want people to die

No Utilitarians in a Pandemic? Shifts in Moral Reasoning during the COVID-19 Global Health Crisis - "We hypothesized that during this pandemic, individuals would give fewer utilitarian responses to hypothetical dilemmas, accompanied by higher levels of confidence and emotion elicitation... participants during the 2020 wave gave fewer utilitarian responses to dilemmas involving personal rights; that is, they were less willing to violate the personal rights of others to produce the best overall outcomes.
This suggests that in times of crises (or "crises"), human rights become less salient. So the liberal obsession with rights, inventing new right that are supposedly violated like the right to be , is truly a condition of late capitalism

Australian city Melbourne begins 3rd lockdown due to cluster
What covid "success" looks like - lockdown after lockdown. Clearly if they'd been even more strict they wouldn't have needed so many lockdowns!

Masks, social restrictions return to Australia’s Melbourne after fresh outbreak
So much for covid hystericists' claims that lockdowns work if they're done properly

Australia recession: COVID sparks economic plunge - "Australia’s finances have been hit with the biggest quarterly fall on record and the steepest annual plunge since the end of World War II.

New Zealand On Alert As A Family Tests Positive For The Coronavirus - "After three members of a family in New Zealand's largest city tested positive for the coronavirus, the city of Auckland has gone into lockdown — and the entire country is on high alert."

Europe is in revolt against lockdown - "These riots helped expose two things: the public’s growing impatience with lockdown rules on the one hand and the arrogance of the ruling elite on the other.Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra dismissed the mounting anger. ‘It’s scum doing this’, he said. Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb attacked what he called ‘shameless thieves’, asking, ‘Does it make you feel good that you’ve helped ruin your city? To wake up with a bag full of stolen stuff beside you?’... Discontent is brewing in France, too. Emmanuel Macron appears to have decided against a new national lockdown – for now. But his hand has arguably been forced by the French public, who have been out on the streets in large numbers, protesting against both an authoritarian security bill and any imposition of further Covid restrictions.Macron’s decision against a new lockdown may have been a reaction to a warning given by ex-interior minister Christophe Castaner. Castaner said recently that a new lockdown could result in significant ‘civil disobedience’. Meanwhile, 24 restaurants in Paris were raided by police last weekend after opening illegally.Polls suggest that less than 50 per cent of French people support ‘strict confinement measures’, while tens of thousands joined the recent marches against both pandemic rules and the security bill. Popular resistance to restrictions on freedom has become a threat the French government can no longer ignore. In Brussels, police arrested over 200 people at an anti-lockdown protest at the weekend. ‘We remind you that there is no authorisation to come and demonstrate this Sunday’, tweeted the city police. In the age of Covid, public protest is only permitted with the approval of the state... A protest organiser, Aron Ecsenyi, said, ‘Every tool that we have used until now has been depleted so, beginning now, every business should open in the spirit of civil disobedience’... the EU’s dismal vaccination programme has dented public confidence in their governments.But will any of this prompt a rethink in policy? It’s unclear. Protesters in France appear to have made the government pause before imposing a third lockdown. But life is far from normal and civil liberties are still curtailed. Elsewhere, there has been even less progress toward normality.Is it really any surprise, then, that people are taking to the streets? Across Europe, large numbers of people have reached breaking point. Covid measures have destroyed economies, wrecking livelihoods and thrusting people into poverty. Ordinary people have been ordered to make huge sacrifices, some of which are simply too great to bear.And to make matters worse, governments are trying to silence public anger. They are arresting people for daring to protest against the most severe restrictions on our freedom in living memory.Countries that do not tolerate protest cannot fairly call themselves democracies – whether there is a pandemic to deal with or not."

Is the cost of another lockdown too high? | The Spectator - "It’s easy to measure money, but it’s far harder to measure the indirect results of a richer or poorer economy. It’s also hard to work out how much money you should spend to save a life. Ban cars, and you’ll end road deaths. But you’d also hit the economy. So a balance has to be struck somewhere.This balance has been researched extensively at the University of Bristol, where we have developed the ‘J-value’ (‘J’ stands for ‘judgement’). It’s intended as an objective answer to the safety questions that arise from nuclear plants, railways and the infrastructure that improves our material lives — including in the NHS. How much should a nuclear power plant spend on protecting its workers? Is it cost-effective to install a new safety system for railway signalling? Should the government be spending more to prevent road deaths? In short, the J-value balances the amount of life expectancy that a safety measure restores against its cost. And, it takes the ethical stance that each day of life has the same value for everyone — whether an individual is rich or poor, young or old.The J-value is especially useful when looking at our response to coronavirus — and particularly whether the cost of locking down is too high. It does this by calculating the ‘years’ lost from a prolonged recession caused by locking down, which we can then compare to the number of years we would lose to the disease itself... If 250,000 people die — who have a mean age of 79 and who have two or more existing serious medical conditions — then this would be equivalent to 45,000 average lives being lost. There is no doubt that this would be a very bad outcome. However, it is less than 10 per cent of the loss of life the nation will incur by subjecting itself to a prolonged lockdown of the sort currently envisaged by the government. There is, besides, no guarantee that a second lockdown for England will work. Of course we should strive very hard to preserve the seven and a half years of life that the average Covid-19 victim loses — or at least reduce the number of people who are fatally affected by this deeply unpleasant disease. But we should not be tempted to apply remedies that make the situation worse. Imagine if, for a treatment such as chemotherapy to work, it had to be applied to the population as a whole. Perhaps it would prolong the lives of many suffering from a deadly disease. But chemotherapy would be an awful thing to administer to patients who did not need it and bring life limiting effects to the otherwise healthy. Doctors would rightly reject the treatment as unethical. Today, unfortunately, the government does not seem to understand the point. The societal and health costs, when tallied in years to come, will be far worse than anyone in Parliament seems to realise. It is not too late to change tack."
From November, once again suggesting that lockdowns kill more people than they save. Sadly his warnings went unheeded, most probably due to political incentives. Yet Boris still gets bashed, suggesting that leftists are just making hay by attacking him regardless of what he does

J-value: judging the risk - "A computer simulation of the Covid-19 epidemic has been updated with data that became available on 14 May 2020. The model parameters have been adjusted (i) to provide the best match to data from Public Health England on daily new lab-confirmed infections to 30 April 2020 and (ii) to ensure that the model reproduces the Office of National Statistics central estimate of the average number of recently infected people in England in the week before and the week after 3 May 2020. The new information allows outline guidance to be given for the first time on the approximate consequences of each of the four main options for the UK coming out of lockdown in the absence of an effective vaccine. The options may be ranked based on minimising the sum of deaths due to Covid-19 and those due to national impoverishment. The Government's currently declared aim of keeping the basic reproduction number below 1.0 emerges as the worst in terms of life preservation."

Lockdown could last until summer, No 10 warns as experts warn relaxation of rules could trigger new Covid wave
This doesn't even seem to take into account the new variants, which will require modified vaccines. So... eternal lockdown!

Rising Homicides This Year May Be Yet Another Side Effect of Covid Lockdowns
I remember Salon claiming that defunding the police wasn't responsible for the rise in homicides, and they blamed it on covid. But what one hand giveth, another taketh away...

Lockdown loneliness and lack of exercise spark rise in depression among over-50s

Lockdown was never the only option - "In a more rational era, particularly in the supposedly liberal West, you might have expected our representatives to strain every sinew to avoid putting an entire population of healthy people under house arrest. But in a climate of hysteria, the wide-ranging discussion we needed never took place. The only permitted questions were whether we should have locked down earlier, harder and for longer... Properly protect care homes
In Britain, more than 20,000 Covid deaths between March and June took place in care homes. The peak in deaths in care homes actually came after the peak in hospitals, suggesting that the virus continued to spread around care homes even as the rest of society was locked indoors. Politicians and the media didn’t say much about the care-homes carnage until mid-May, some seven weeks into the first lockdown. Even from the earliest, patchy data from China, it was clear that the elderly were most at risk from Covid. In fact, the elderly are more than a thousand times at risk than the young. SAGE’s modellers were aware of this. But they assumed that care homes were shielded because, as Dr Ian Hall admitted to the BBC, ‘we never checked’. In April, instead of protecting care homes, government guidance advised patients to be discharged from hospitals into care homes. A negative Covid test was not necessary, even if a patient had previously tested positive. Instead of being shielded, care homes were thrown to the wolves to free up capacity in hospitals to ‘protect the NHS’. Last week, the Department of Health, once again, issued guidance that elderly patients who have been in isolation in hospitals after a positive test should be discharged into care homes...
Fever hospitals...
Although the data are incomplete, it is clear that a substantial number of Covid infections are acquired in hospitals, a problem that cannot be addressed by a general lockdown. In May, the NHS estimated that 10 to 20 per cent of its Covid patients were infected as inpatients... One way we could have both increased capacity and reduced hospital-acquired infections would be to have re-established fever hospitals, as outlined by Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. These hospitals were common a century ago though as many infectious diseases have now been vanquished by modern medicine, the hospitals had largely become redundant. But even in their heyday, many fever hospitals remained closed most of the time and were only reopened in the event of serious outbreaks...
Proper case isolation...
Make shielding liveable
Whenever anyone demands additional protection for the vulnerable, the predictable response is that you cannot just lock up old or disabled people indefinitely. (The same people, of course, argue that it’s fine to lock up the whole population, which also includes old and disabled people.)... More alarmingly, there are still calls from fanatical voices demanding a continuation of lockdown even when the most clinically vulnerable have been vaccinated, by which point the death rate will have collapsed. There is also a very real danger that lockdown will be deployed as the tool for dealing with the next pandemic, or even other threats such as climate change. What is perhaps most tragic about lockdown is that it has demobilised society by shutting everyone indoors, when we should have mobilised the country to the task of protecting the vulnerable."
Clearly the best way to protect care homes is to lock down the rest of society while discharging covid patients into them Obviously we must lockdown till covid is as eradicated as smallpox and cannot open up any sooner

Lockdown is a luxury few can afford - "The pretence that we can all ‘stay at home’ highlights how the response to the pandemic has been driven by the preoccupations and interests of well-off, middle-class professionals, and, to a lesser extent, the more securely paid public-sector employees. The part-time, zero-hours, self-employed and otherwise precarious workers, who have faced cuts in wages and redundancies, have been abandoned to sort out their own childcare.So, while the closure of schools is a privilege for a select few, schools opening is a necessity for many. This is why they need to reopen."

The sinister ‘spirit’ of lockdown - "‘Spirit’ has become a scary word. Derbyshire police have been criticised after they ‘surrounded’ Jessica Allen and Eliza Moore, who had travelled five miles for a walk near their home. Derbyshire police issued the women with £200 fines. They claimed that driving to a location to exercise ‘is clearly not in the spirit of the national effort to reduce our travel’. They suggested the women could not carry hot drinks, as this would make their meet-up a ‘picnic’.The health secretary, Matt Hancock, backed Derbyshire police when asked about the case, claiming that ‘every flex of the rules can be fatal’. However, Derbyshire police have since dropped the fines and apologised to the women ‘for any concern caused’.The belief in the ‘spirit’ of lockdown is rendering coronavirus enforcement increasingly absurd. Earlier this week, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said people should stop sitting on park benches during their daily exercise. Home secretary Priti Patel has said that anyone sitting on a park bench could be questioned by police and asked to move along. It is also resulting in appalling injustices. Carol and David Richards from Bridgend were fined £60 for driving 20 minutes to see Carol’s 90-year-old mother in a care home (care-home visits are permitted for compassionate reasons).It is claimed that only the most serious breaches of the regulations will result in legal action. But this is becoming harder to believe. Data published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that 32,329 fixed penalty notices were issued by forces in England and Wales between 27 March and 21 December. Prosecutions are starting to increase, too.The lockdown regulations in England have been revised 64 times since the lockdown began in March. This flurry of law has blurred the line between legality and illegality. This is why the phrase ‘spirit of the lockdown’ is so scary. We are expected to abide by the ‘spirit’ of regulations, rather than their letter... We are being encouraged to assume that behaviour is illegal unless it is explicitly allowed for. This is why police officers feel able to say that carrying a hot drink is classified as a ‘picnic’, even though there is no possible justification for this in law. These officers believe that they should be able to fill the gaps left by the ambiguity of the regulations.Civil liberty demands that where a law does not forbid behaviour, that behaviour ought to be permitted. The government’s approach to lockdown enforcement has undermined this completely. Once the pandemic is over we will not be able to win back our freedom by simply repealing the coronavirus regulations. We will need to go further. We will need to defeat the ‘spirit’ of the lockdown. We will need to reassert the principle that we are free to do what is not forbidden by law. We will need to reassert that the role of the police is limited to enforcing the law. We will need to rescind any official ‘guidance’ which may intrude on our capacity to decide what is best for our own lives. We will need to defend communities against the intrusion of law and regulation. The lockdown may formally end in spring. But unless we push back, the corrosive ‘spirit’ of the lockdown may be around a lot longer."

Boris Johnson told his leadership will be 'on the table' without exit strategy from restrictions - "Boris Johnson has been warned by a senior Conservative MP that his leadership will be "on the table" if the Government fails to set out an exit strategy from the coronavirus restrictions.Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group of Tories, on Thursday urged colleagues to step up their campaign over coronavirus rules.Mr Baker, a past leader of the hardline Brexiters known as the Spartans, was seen as a key architect of Theresa May's downfall... "If we continue forward with a strategy that hammers freedom, hammers the private sector, hammers small business owners and hammers the poor, inevitably the Prime Minister's leadership will be on the table: we strongly do not want that after all we have been through as a country.""

Canadian expert's research finds lockdown harms are 10 times greater than benefits - "Dr. Ari Joffe is a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Alberta... There are a few reasons why I supported lockdowns at first. First, initial data falsely suggested that the infection fatality rate was up to 2-3%, that over 80% of the population would be infected, and modelling suggested repeated lockdowns would be necessary. But emerging data showed that the median infection fatality rate is 0.23%, that the median infection fatality rate in people under 70 years old is 0.05%, and that the high-risk group is older people especially those with severe co-morbidities. In addition, it is likely that in most situations only 20-40% of the population would be infected before ongoing transmission is limited (i.e., herd-immunity). Second, I am an infectious diseases and critical care physician, and am not trained to make public policy decisions. I was only considering the direct effects of COVID-19 and my knowledge of how to prevent these direct effects. I was not considering the immense effects of the response to COVID-19 (that is, lockdowns) on public health and wellbeing.Emerging data has shown a staggering amount of so-called ‘collateral damage’ due to the lockdowns. This can be predicted to adversely affect many millions of people globally with food insecurity [82-132 million more people], severe poverty [70 million more people], maternal and under age-5 mortality from interrupted healthcare [1.7 million more people], infectious diseases deaths from interrupted services [millions of people with Tuberculosis, Malaria, and HIV], school closures for children [affecting children’s future earning potential and lifespan], interrupted vaccination campaigns for millions of children, and intimate partner violence for millions of women. In high-income countries adverse effects also occur from delayed and interrupted healthcare, unemployment, loneliness, deteriorating mental health, increased opioid crisis deaths, and more.Third, a formal cost-benefit analysis of different responses to the pandemic was not done by government or public health experts. Initially, I simply assumed that lockdowns to suppress the pandemic were the best approach. But policy decisions on public health should require a cost-benefit analysis. Since lockdowns are a public health intervention, aiming to improve the population wellbeing, we must consider both benefits of lockdowns, and costs of lockdowns on the population wellbeing. Once I became more informed, I realized that lockdowns cause far more harm than they prevent... framing decisions as between saving lives versus saving the economy is a false dichotomy. There is a strong long-run relationship between economic recession and public health... I had underestimated the effects of loneliness and unemployment on public health. It turns out that loneliness and unemployment are known to be among the strongest risk factors for early mortality, reduced lifespan, and chronic diseases. Third, in making policy decisions there are trade-offs to consider, costs and benefits, and we have to choose between options that each have tragic outcomes in order to advocate for the least people to die as possible... I did not consider all of the other so-called ‘collateral damage’ of lockdowns mentioned above. It turned out that the costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population wellbeing than COVID-19 can. It is important to note that I support a focused protection approach, where we aim to protect those truly at high-risk of COVID-19 mortality, including older people, especially those with severe co-morbidities and those in nursing homes and hospitals... I think that the initial modelling and forecasting were inaccurate. This led to a contagion of fear and policies across the world. Popular media focused on absolute numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths independent of context. There has been a sheer one-sided focus on preventing infection numbers. The economist Paul Frijters wrote that it was “all about seeming to reduce risks of infection and deaths from this one particular disease, to the exclusion of all other health risks or other life concerns.” Fear and anxiety spread, and we elevated COVID-19 above everything else that could possibly matter. Our cognitive biases prevented us from making optimal policy: we ignored hidden ‘statistical deaths’ reported at the population level, we preferred immediate benefits to even larger benefits in the future, we disregarded evidence that disproved our favorite theory, and escalated our commitment in the set course of action... on November 21 this year, COVID-19 accounted for 5.23% of deaths in Canada (2.42% in Alberta), and 3.06% of global deaths... We need to better educate ourselves on the risks and trade-offs involved, and alleviate unreasonable fear with accurate information. We need to focus on cost-benefit analysis – repeated or prolonged lockdowns cannot be based on COVID-19 numbers alone.We should focus on protecting people at high risk: people hospitalized or in nursing homes (e.g., universal masking in hospitals reduced transmission markedly), in crowded conditions (e.g., homeless shelters, prisons, large gatherings), and 70 years and older (especially with severe comorbidities) – don’t lock down everyone, regardless of their individual risk.We need to keep schools open because children have very low morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, and (especially those 10 years and younger) are less likely to be infected by, and have a low likelihood to be the source of transmission of, SARS-CoV-2.We should increase healthcare surge capacity if forecasting, accurately calibrated repeatedly to real-time data (up to now, forecasting, even short-term, has repeatedly failed), suggests it is needed. With universal masking in hospitals, asymptomatic health care workers should be allowed to continue to work, even if infected, thus preserving the healthcare workforce."

COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink - "the initial modeling predictions induced fear and crowd-effects [i.e., groupthink]... I present a cost-benefit analysis of the response to COVID-19 that finds lockdowns are far more harmful to public health than COVID-19 can be"

A sedentary Covid-19 lockdown can impact health in just 2 weeks

Gavin Newsom Says California Will Stay On Lockdown Until Scientists Discover Cure For Death | The Babylon Bee - ""Once we have beaten the last enemy, death itself, we can slowly begin to reopen over a 40-year period," Newsom said at a press conference Tuesday. "Counties that report even one death for any reason will be forced to keep closures in place indefinitely, until we have answered the eternal question of how to reverse aging and ensure no one can die ever.""We can't be too careful -- we must all cower in fear until death has been conquered."... At publishing time, Newsom had clarified that, of course, his own winery would remain open regardless."

Coronavirus: Health experts join global anti-lockdown movement - "Thousands of scientists and health experts have joined a global movement warning of "grave concerns" about Covid-19 lockdown policies.Nearly 6,000 experts, including dozens from the UK, say the approach is having a devastating impact on physical and mental health as well as society.They are calling for protection to be focused on the vulnerable, while healthy people get on with their lives... As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all - including the vulnerable - falls, they say.And this would be a much more "compassionate" approach.The declaration recommends a number of measures to protect the vulnerable, including regular testing of care-home workers, with a move as far as possible towards using staff who have acquired immunity.Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered, it says.And when possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside.Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick, should be practised by everyone." On the Great Barrington Declaration

Don Martin: Resistance grows against lockdowns driven without data - "Premier Doug Ford shut down indoor restaurants, gyms, sports and theatre venues as coronavirus feeding centres in the red-zoned national capital region, Ottawa councillors retorted with a unanimous challenge on Wednesday: Prove it.And the authorities can’t. Or won’t.  The city’s public health officer says eight per cent of positive cases mentioned a restaurant or gym as a pitstop in their recent travels, but she gulped on further details.After all, it’s impossible for her to clarify causes when her overwhelmed operation has given up on contact tracing, leaving ‘no information’ and ‘no known source’ listed as two of the top three sources of infection.  This sort of mess is unfolding across the country as federal and provincial leaders put on a public face of unity designed primarily to protect their butts from blame as the widely-predicted second pandemic wave hits governments which act like they were caught by surprise.This general failure to anticipate and take timely preventative precautions is driving a rebellion in the real world that wasn’t there last spring... As a doctor friend of mine observed, hitting the brakes, hitting the gas and then hitting the brakes again as lockdowns are started and stopped is not a sustainable option for a pandemic expected to drag well into next year.Without the data to show how, where and why infections spots are going hot, hitting hospitality, sports and fitness sectors with widespread clampdowns are a lazy, ineffective and irresponsible response.For example, to close hundreds of safety-enhanced gyms and other indoor venues in Toronto and Ottawa because one spin class in Hamilton triggered an outbreak is over-reaching madness.To shutter all indoor dining, even those which have taken costly precautions to make it safe, punishes an entire industry for the careless sins of a few, if indeed any are an actual source of transmission... The surrender on contact-tracing and failure to facilitate rapid at-home testing (80 per cent reliability is better than no testing at all) is an abdication of political and public health leadership."

Coronavirus: WHO joins the Great Barrington Declaration by condemning lockdowns - "Dr. David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus.He also claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said. “We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr Nabarro told The Spectator.“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”"

Coronavirus Australia: Correctly counting the cost shows Australia's lockdown was a mistake - "Australia’s economic policies in response to the coronavirus threat have been driven in the main by projections of death and infection rates, produced by epidemiological modelling, that since have been proven to be orders of magnitude above what any country anywhere in the world, regardless of policy, has experienced.Meanwhile, the welfare costs of our economic policy responses have been either overlooked entirely, gestured towards vaguely but not actually calculated, or calculated in ways strikingly out of alignment with international best practice when estimating the welfare costs of different policy alternatives – eg, using full value-of-a-statistical-life (VSL) numbers, rather than age-adjusted VSL or quality-adjusted life years, when valuing lives lost to COVID-19 (which are predominantly the lives of older people with a few years, not an entire life, left to live). A leading reason for points 1 and 2 is that it’s a lot less work to count bodies and point to scary body-count projections than to think hard about the many and various costs – many invisible and requiring a reasonable counterfactual that is, again, mentally taxing to create; many manifesting only over time – that arise when we take the drastic economic policy actions we have taken... That comparison of what-we-will-have to what-we-could-have-had can be expressed in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and wellbeing-adjusted life years (WELLBYs), and compared directly to estimates of the QALY and WELLBY costs of the COVID-19 deaths and suffering that our policies have averted.When you make this comparison, correctly, the evidence is clear that Australia’s lockdown has been a mistake."
One Australian covid hystericst called me a defeatist for observing that for all Australia's vaunted "success", they were still having lockdown after lockdown

Lockdown only made corona crisis worse, claim experts - "Three Hebrew University professors claim that Israel and other countries could have controlled Covid-19 without resorting to lockdowns.Their data-based study, “Managing the Covid-19 Pandemic without Destructing the Economy,” argues that the “medieval” approach of quarantining the population for a prolonged period takes a catastrophic economic and social toll... One of the study’s conclusions is that lockdown is not necessary in countries that have more than 60 ICU beds per million available for Covid-19 patients.Israel’s hospitals had 2,000 dedicated beds before the pandemic and now have 3,000. According to the model, no more than 600 would have been needed even without a lockdown.In countries with less than 60 ICU beds per million, they said, a temporary partial quarantine of high-risk populations may be required... a Gertner Institute study showing that on March 9, when the disease just started spreading in Israel, the infection rate was very high but decreased significantly by March 22 — before the start of the lockdown period–presumably due to hygienic precautionary measures.“Since the beginning of the lockdown the further reduction in the infection rate was minor and most likely is a result of the behavior of the population and not the lockdown itself,” the authors said.What about Italy, Spain and the United States, where despite the lockdown thousands of people died?... the researchers believe that the number of deaths related to lockdown will prove higher than the deaths related directly to Covid-19 infection. They conclude that widespread lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic may have a similar effect to “iatrogenesis,” a phenomenon where the treatment is more detrimental than the disease."

‘India paying price of draconian lockdown’: Health experts write strong letter to PM - "According to the signatories, the Indian government failed to consult epidemiologists who had a better grasp of disease transmission dynamics, and that the lockdown was based on modelling of infectious diseases by popular institutions. As a result, “India is paying a heavy price both in terms of humanitarian crisis and disease spread,” said the signatories, calling it a “draconian lockdown”. India's nationwide lockdown from March 25 till May 31 has been one of the most "stringent" and yet COVID-19 cases have increased exponentially through this phase... "This draconian lockdown is presumably in response to a modelling exercise from an influential institution which presented a 'worst-case simulation'. The model had come up with an estimated 2.2 million deaths globally. Subsequent events have proved that the predictions of this model were way off the mark”... this lockdown cannot be enforced indefinitely, “as the mortality attributable to the lockdown itself… may overtake lives saved due to lockdown mediated slowing of COVID-19 progression”... Calling for fundamental changes to our lifestyles and in policymaking, especially in health policymaking, the experts said, “Evidence-based scientific and humanistic policies will help us in overcoming this calamity with minimal loss to human life, social structures and economies.”"

The world's toughest lockdown has resulted in the world's highest COVID-19 death toll - "Pandemic panic promoters have been quick to criticize neighboring Brazil for its leadership’s more relaxed policies towards the virus, but they’ve been noticeably absent in discussing Peru. That’s because Peru implemented arguably the earliest (for their region) and strictest lockdowns in the entire world, along with several attempted suppression measures with the hopes to contain the virus, and none of it worked... The military has enforced a nationwide mandatory 10pm-4am curfew (some cities have lengthened the curfew to 8pm-5am), most “essential” stores are only open for a handful of hours a day (most grocery stores close at 3pm), and citizens face extreme penalties and legal consequences for failing to abide by the rigid restrictions... Even the pro-lockdown mainstream press, from the BBC, to The Wall Street Journal, to The New York Times, has acknowledged that Peru has had one of the strictest, if not the toughest lockdown in the world. In addition to the lockdown, Peru implemented a universal masking mandate in its attempt to “stop the spread.” The country has even gone as far as to mandate the use of face shields on public transportation in some cities, including the capital city of Lima... Instead of learning from their mistakes, and admitting that the lockdown failed and the several suppression measures undertaken were a catastrophic error, Peru is doubling down on the madness"
Clearly they didn't lockdown enough
Addendum: Ironic, given that they were earlier praised as a success story

Q&A: Michael Levitt on why there shouldn’t be a lockdown, how he’s been tracking coronavirus - "I saw lots of reports on the amount of deaths from COVID-19 compared to the deaths from the Vietnamese war. Well, maybe the numbers were the same, but the deaths from the Vietnamese war were people in their twenties being sent to defend their country. And it isn’t the same thing. One thing that also I found disturbing was The New York Times ran a front page where they listed the names of the first hundred thousand COVID-19 fatalities. How many of those people died from lots of other reasons? 90% of the people who died from COVID-19 have heart problems, lung problems and other conditions. During the time that a hundred thousand people died from COVID, another 500,000 people died due to other problems... no one was brave enough to discuss it. People didn’t want to say that if you were 95, you had heart problems and died of COVID, but it wasn’t just a terrible tragedy. It isn’t a tragedy. You have something like 8,000 people who die every day in the U.S. and you don’t hear about them. And so this is something which I thought was a mistake. It wasn’t making it easy for the policymakers to make decisions based on this information because they would be called the “granny killer.” The trouble is that the drop in the economy is going to kill many people as well... I think lockdown is a very crude, medieval-sounding phrase. I think closing schools, closing business and places of work is not such a great idea and causes huge damage to the economy. It’s wicked to people in the economy... Tobacco use has increased very substantially, and that is going to end up killing people. If people smoke 5% more, it would result in much more deaths than all the COVID-19 deaths by far... The newspapers are saying Florida has record cases, but the truth is that if these cases aren’t actually killing people, they’re actually very good. If you can get cases without killing people, that’s wonderful. And the last thing you should do is lock down because you want people to get infected if they are not dying... I think that when we come to look back, we’re going to say that wasn’t such a terrible disease. The deaths accounted for maybe one or two months of deaths normally, but the effect on the economy will be devastating, particularly for young people. This should be a wake up call to young people to realize that it’s your world; the future belongs to you, and it is time [to decide] what is important for you."
I'm surprised the Stanford Daily managed to publish this. Perhaps the incessant editor's notes on Levitt's responses (which I've never seen happen in any other interview) was the price they had to pay

It's time to ignore the lockdown fanatics and open for business - "Lifting restrictions too quickly could trigger a surge in hospital cases. But over-caution could be equally dangerous, destroying livelihoods and creating an epidemic of mental illness... We must learn to live with this virus, adapting to future mutations, providing annual jabs for all, and maintaining social distancing and masks for as long as necessary."
Since variants mean vaccination will always be catching up, clearly we need to lock down forever

Lockdowns failed to alter the course of pandemic, JP Morgan study claims - "Coronavirus lockdowns have failed to alter the course of the pandemic but have instead 'destroyed millions of livelihoods', a JP Morgan study has claimed.Falling infection rates since lockdowns were lifted suggest that the virus 'likely has its own dynamics' which are 'unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures', a report published by the financial services giant said... Author Marko Kolanovic, a trained physicist and a strategist for JP Morgan, said governments had been spooked by 'flawed scientific papers' into imposing lockdowns which were 'inefficient or late' and had little effect. 'Unlike rigorous testing of new drugs, lockdowns were administered with little consideration that they might not only cause economic devastation but potentially more deaths than Covid-19 itself,' he claimed... The JP Morgan report includes graphs showing that 'the vast majority of countries had decreased infection rates' after lockdowns were lifted.Infection rates have continued to decline even once a lag period for new infections to become visible is factored in, the report says.A second graph shows a similar effect in the US, showing that many states saw a lower rate of transmission (R) after full-scale lockdowns were ended... An Oxford University professor has previously suggested that the crisis in Britain began falling from its peak before Boris Johnson ordered a lockdown on March 23.Professor Carl Heneghan said last month that the peak of new cases had come on April 8, suggesting a peak of infection three weeks earlier around March 18.The JP Morgan analysis linked the decision to impose lockdowns to 'flawed scientific papers' predicting millions of deaths in the West. 'This on its own was odd, given that in China there were only several thousand deaths, and the mortality rate outside of Wuhan was very low,' it says"

Covid: England's third lockdown sees 'no evidence of decline' in cases - "A third national lockdown in England appears to have had little impact on the rising rate of coronavirus infections, according to the findings of a major study, with “no evidence of decline” in the prevalence of the virus during the first 10 days of tougher restrictions."
Clearly an even stricter lockdown is needed!

Lockdowns Have Depleted Capital in All Forms - "When lockdowns first happened, my initial thought was geeky, and only later did I begin to realize the implications for human rights and liberties... how is planning possible? You have dinner reservations, a party planned, a wedding with contracts, a business meeting, a concert, a delivery scheduled, or anything at all, and everything can be closed for an indefinite period of time. This could happen any time day or night, all on the authority of government officials and all because of a positive PCR test. Australia is widely celebrated as a success but is it success when any state within Australia can fall to totalitarian control at the drop of a hat, in a country that has locked its citizens within its borders and locked visitors out, thus smashing the whole of the tourist industry?Do we really want to live in this world? And also a relevant question: what does this do to the ability to plan and invest in the future? There is the thing called “time preference” which refers to the willingness of individuals to put off current consumption for the future. A low time preference is essential for building a progressing economy and social order and it is contingent on a stable and predictable regime that doesn’t randomly invade people’s rights. When arbitrary power comes along to pillage people’s property, inhibit their freedom of movement, and restrict their associations, the effect is to make planning for the future less possible and hence disincentivize it. In effect, you encourage people to live for the moment rather than planning for the future. Hope is replaced by nihilism. Lockdowns also attacked other forms of capital: professional, educational, and social. About one third of workers in America started working from home. For many, the word working should be in quotes. Life changed dramatically. Forget the commutes, the traffic, the office environment, the waits for the elevator, the lunch hour, the after-hours cocktails with friends. Instead work became about laptops, houseshoes, all-day snacks, afternoon drinking, and binging Netflix in the background. Laziness became too easy.Maybe this was viable for a few weeks. But after several months, it became obvious that people’s personal capital was under attack. Some people could continue to receive a paycheck while staring at a screen while others have to hustle, go to work, cut the meat and stock the shelves, check out the customers, slog around the hospital, paint the houses and do the yardwork, serve people where dining was allowed, and so on. Still others were forcibly put out of work (movie theaters, the arts, conference venues, and so on). Whether you could deploy your labors to your benefit depended entirely on the exigencies of the planning elites.All this terrible disruption has shattered people’s confidence in the system and rattled people’s sense of their own value. Lockdowns have taken their toll on our confidence in the law and our optimism that we live in a world in which our persons and property are safe from invasion by political elites. A very practical example of a form of investment concerns the decision to have children. Kids have been locked out of their schools for a year, depleting educational capital. One million mothers have left the workforce to care for kids, depleting professional capital. Three quarters of families have said they feel intense stress. Early on after the lockdowns began, people were predicting a new baby boom.Not so much anymore. Now there is growing wonder whether people will decide not to have children because of the burden, the lack of educational security, the possibility that this whole nightmare could happen again and leave parents with impossible circumstances yet again. Then there is the deeper question of whether we really want to bring children into a world in which they could be so brutalized as they were in 2020. Perhaps this accounts for why births in Italy alone plunged 22% since lockdowns.The same fear is expressed by many capitalists. Why open a restaurant if it can be shut down? Why build a hotel if travel restrictions can leave it empty for months and even years? If you don’t have confidence in a stable legal regime for the future, what can one say about whether investing in anything physical or that depends on customers coming and going is really a good idea? Do we really want to open a factory that can be closed any time by decree?Outside of a major war, it is hard to recall a time when government policies have so seriously roiled business practices, economic structures, and personal lives as much as lockdowns have, not only in the US but all over the world. The consequences will be felt for many years in the future."

Numbers show lockdowns didn’t help contain COVID-19 — opening up didn’t boost it - "TrendMacro, my analytics firm, tallied the cumulative number of reported COVID-19 cases in each state and the District of Columbia as a percentage of population, based on data from state and local health departments aggregated by the Covid Tracking Project. We then compared that with the timing and intensity of the lockdown in each jurisdiction. That is measured not by the mandates put in place by government officials, but rather by observing what people in each jurisdiction actually did, along with their baseline behavior before the lockdowns. This is captured in highly detailed anonymized cellphone tracking data provided by Google and others and tabulated by the University of Maryland’s Transportation Institute into a “Social Distancing Index.”Measuring from the start of the year to each state’s point of maximum lockdown, which range from April 5 to April 18, it turns out that lockdowns correlated with a greater spread of the virus. States with longer, stricter lockdowns also had larger outbreaks. The five places with the harshest lockdowns — DC, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts — had the heaviest caseloads.It could be that strict lockdowns were imposed as a response to already severe outbreaks. But the surprising negative correlation, while statistically weak, persists even when excluding states with the heaviest caseloads. And it makes no difference if the analysis includes other potential explanatory factors, such as population density, age, ethnicity, prevalence of nursing homes, general health or temperature. The only factor that seems to make a demonstrable difference is the intensity of mass-transit use.We ran the experiment a second time to observe the effects on caseloads of the reopening that began in mid-April. We used the same methodology but started from each state’s peak of lockdown and extended to July 31. Confirming the first experiment, there was a tendency (though fairly weak) for states that opened up the most to have the lightest caseloads. The states that had the big summer flare-ups in the so-called “Sunbelt second wave” — Arizona, California, Florida and Texas — are by no means the most opened up. The lesson isn’t that lockdowns made the spread worse — though raw evidence may suggest that — but that lockdowns probably didn’t help, and opening up didn’t hurt. It defies common sense. In theory, quarantine ought to control the spread of an infectious disease. Evidently not in practice"