Tipsheet

The Coronavirus Lockdowns are Over...And These Studies Really Deliver a Death Blow

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  July 02, 2020 4:15 PM

I know some of you didn’t like my initial piece about the lockdowns. All I can say is that I was going with what the medical “experts” were saying at the time. The market was tanking. There was no real recourse. Then, there were key reversals regarding the virus and the George Floyd rioting began. Some of you knew this was a crock from the get-go. After weeks of being told to stay inside, don't be selfish, and help medical workers from being overrun, it was suddenly okay to go outside and riot over the officer-involved death of Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. If these so-called medical experts could flip like that, then this virus was never a big deal from the start. We went from ‘stay inside and save lives’ to ‘what are you doing inside—go out and protest.’ Silence is violence, remember? It cannot be both. And in mere days the political credibility behind the lockdowns was nuked by the very people pushing them. That’s our medical expert class, which has been infected by political wokeness. I’m done. The lockdowns are obviously over. COVID spread through surfaces has been reworked, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that the mortality rate doesn’t make this virus more lethal than the seasonal flu. Almost half of all deaths from this virus come from nursing homes. 

I’m reborn hardcore. The “Matt” who supported the lockdowns was evil. He’s dead. I killed him and chopped him up a la Richie Aprile in The Sopranos. Don’t eat at Satriale’s Pork Store for a bit. I’m done with the medical experts. If they didn’t know, which is obviously the case, then say that. Don’t lock us up, which gave Democratic governors the ability to arbitrarily enact draconian measures. It’s nonsense. And with every passing day, more data shows that this virus was overblown. After the Floyd riots, there were spikes in areas, where, shocker—protest activity was high. Yes, this virus is real and it’s still contagious, but death rates have not spiked to their April highs. 

If that’s the case, I couldn’t care less about all these new cases that the media is peddling in their panic porn addiction. It’s over, clowns. The lockdowns are done. And the best part is that once the nationwide unrest, rioting, and protests were dying down, you knew the media was going to pivot and say we had to go back inside. Nope. We’re not doing that. 

It’s become quite clear that the medical class, who excused the non-social distancing rioting over Floyd, is more concerned with their progressive bias and hatred towards the president than actually doling out credible advice. In short, the medical experts are now no better than the clowns we see daily on CNN and MSNBC bashing Trump.


And as more data trickles in, more studies are showing that lockdowns actually hurt this nation more than the virus. In fact, like the CDC study on this virus’s mortality rate, it totally undercuts why we even had to stay home in the first place. In fact, maybe the first salvo in this virus being overblown was when the apocalyptic study from the Imperial College of London was proven to be total garbage. For now, we have a team of economists at the very liberal University of Berkeley who have analyzed the figures to show our response to this pathogen has been something of a disaster across the board. Hey, something good came from UC Berkeley for once. Massachusetts Insitute of Technology also did a study which showed resources spent on protecting the most vulnerable instead of those with little to no risk of dying from this virus could have saved twice as many lives    (via WSJ) [emphasis mine]:

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 In what might turn out to be the best paper on the economics of Covid-19, a team of economists from the University of California, Berkeley carefully evaluated empirical data on social distancing, shelter-in-place orders, and lives saved. To measure the impact of social distancing, they gathered data from cellphones on travel patterns, foot traffic in nonessential businesses, and personal interactions.

Their findings? Social-distancing measures reduced person-to-person contact by about 50%, while harsher shelter-in-place rules reduced contact by only an additional 5%. Then, using data on Covid-19 infection and mortality, they estimated that these measures saved 74,000 lives. Finally, after using demographic data to adjust the VSL—which is lower for older people, who have fewer years to live—the study found that the gross benefit of social distancing has been a mere $250 billion.

That finding casts major doubt on the value of lockdowns and even social distancing as a method of reducing the spread of Covid-19. While we can’t yet estimate a specific figure, the economic cost of social distancing and lockdowns will likely be more than $1 trillion.

[…]

Rather than validating draconian lockdown orders, the latest economic research on Covid-19 suggests that social-distancing efforts in general, and shelter-in-place measures in particular, have done more harm than good. That doesn’t mean that all such measures should be abandoned. “To socially distance or not to socially distance” is not the question. The question should be, what policies actually make sense?

To address that, a team of economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently published the results of a study that compared various alternative strategies for limiting the spread of Covid-19. They concluded that twice as many lives could be saved if governments focused limited resources on protecting the most vulnerable people rather than squandering them on those who seem to face almost no risk, such as children.

Yeah, it’s conclusive. It’s time to re-open America—hardcore. Just don’t go into nursing homes. If you’re diabetic, fighting cancer, had an organ transplant, or are over the age of 80, maybe you should stay inside. These lockdowns are more destructive than the virus itself it would seem. Ignore CNN. Ignore the panic porn. We’re going to continue re-opening. And maybe this outbreak wouldn’t be as horrific if people, like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, didn’t force nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients. Call him the grim reaper because that policy killed thousands, the opposite of protecting the most vulnerable, which the media refuses to question on a regular basis. I wonder why? (sarc.)

Also, the death toll from COVID has dropped 90 percent since those April highs, but CNN/MSNBC will never tell you that.