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The Science Is Clear: End the Lockdowns
Our response to the Covid pandemic continues to be incoherent and ineffective. No matter how many interstate comparisons prove that lockdowns confer no permanent benefit, no matter how much economic devastation we endure and how many lives are ruined, we soldier on, refusing to learn from experience.
Our panic-driven approach was originally in reaction to an apparent overall death rate of 3% and the need to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. But we now know that 82 studies worldwide have found a median death rate of 0.2% of all those infected by Covid and supplemental hospital units were mothballed.
Even more encouraging, the virus is not equally threatening to all. The mortality rate for people over 70 is 1000 times greater than for children, who are almost totally protected. In fact, over twice as many children have died from seasonal flu this year than from Covid.
The sparing of the young is of course a great blessing. Yet we continue to pursue policies of blanket restrictions as if all groups are at equal risk.
This is the folly addressed in the Great Barrington Declaration, authored by Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford epidemiologists, now signed by 50,000 medical practitioners and 664,000 concerned citizens worldwide. The declaration calls for “focused protection” in place of the one-size-fits-all lockdowns that have wreaked havoc everywhere.
Societies are urged to concentrate isolation strategies on those most at risk: the elderly, obese, and already ill, who comprise the vast majority of fatalities. Those who would likely experience Covid as a flu-like infection, or nothing at all, follow basic prevention hygiene protocols but otherwise resume their lives.
Unfortunately, what should be a stimulus for rational scientific discovery and discussion has deteriorated into another of the partisan brawls Americans have come to despise. Fights break out over masks. Police block the entrance to gyms and bars. Protests over mandates become unruly. Nut cases threaten public officials.
In this hyper-politicized environment, the right to peaceably disagree goes out the window. Although epidemiology is normally not influenced by political ideology, the reliably left-wing media has been reflexively hostile. Google initially shadowbanned GBD.
Many scientists have resorted to name-calling and silencing rather than reasoned debate. One of the GBD authors was accused of “Trumpian epidemiology” by a colleague. Another doctor charged the GBD was the work of “COVID-19 deniers” similar to “creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and climate science deniers.” Meanwhile, 1300 epidemiologists signed a letter assuring that BLM protests were harmless but all the rest of us should self-quarantine.
Lockdown critics are frequently charged with a heartless over-emphasis on economics. But the UN estimates that 130 million additional people internationally will starve as a result of the economic damage resulting from lockdowns.
Moreover, the fixation on one disease at the expense of all others has severe consequences. Childhood diseases like diphtheria, pertussis, and polio are beginning to reappear because parents are over-focused on Covid. Deaths from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are also trending up from patients’ reluctance to seek routine care.
Mental well-being is in steep decline. Seven in ten teenagers report struggling with their mental health and crisis hotlines are reporting a surge in suicide-related calls. Suicide deaths far outnumber Covid deaths among the young.
School shutdowns may be the most harmful and senseless of all. Since school children very rarely get sick from Covid, they neither endanger themselves nor are contagious to others. The spectacle of millions of children staying home or struggling with distance learning, because the teachers’ unions insist upon it, is an outrage.
The vaccine will help of course, but those expecting a permanent eradication of Covid anytime soon are likely to be disappointed. For starters, 46% of Americans, partly in response to the disparagement of the president who oversaw its development, intend to refuse the vaccine. Moreover, most flu-type viruses mutate freely so immunity, even when achieved, may not be permanent.
We’ll likely be dealing with the virus for some time yet and will need realistic science-based guidance. But science can’t do its job in an environment where anyone challenging the politically dominant status quo gets demeaned or canceled.
Published in Economics, Healthcare
Thank you.
It amazes me that our society converted almost overnight from a free society to a muzzled, un-socially distancing, stay at home and shutter your businesses, martial-law driven society.
Rebellion is in the air. It not only takes place whenever a group of people descends on a state capital, it also occurs when individuals take court actions.
Two state legislators in California did just that. Their lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Golden State”s citizens, gained a victory in court. In her decision, the judge ruled that Gavin Newsom did not have the ability to crate laws. The judge ruled that only that, epidemic or not, only the legislature can create laws, not a governor.
The matter is under appeal, but Kevin Kiley revealed how weak the final gubernatorial arguments he has viewed will be. I am doubting the decision will be reversed.
Kiley’s latest newsletter, published with the understanding it should be shared on social media states this:
Newsom’s Historic Losing Streak
Yesterday brought another loss for Gavin Newsom, as San Diego restaurants can now open. “Given every opportunity, the State has provided the Court with no evidence” to justify the closures, the Judge ruled.
This follows a ruling in LA that banning outdoor dining is “not grounded in science, evidence or logic.” Newsom’s Health Secretary, Dr. Ghaly, then admitted he didn’t have evidence either. Newsom’s political godfather, Willie Brown, just wrote that “there are no data behind this ‘data-driven decision making.’”
I’ve never seen a losing streak quite like Governor Newsom is on – and I’ve been rooting for the Sacramento Kings my whole life. Consider recent headlines from his favored news outlets:
CNN: How It All Went So Wrong for Gavin Newsom
New York Times: For California Governor the Message Is Do as I Say, Not as I Dine
Associated Press: With His Star Dimmed, California’s Newsom Could Face Recall
In another blow, more counties are passing our Healthy Communities Resolution, rejecting Newsom’s lockdowns and insisting they not remain with us in the New Year. San Luis Obispo and Siskiyou counties are the latest to pass the Resolution, which you can download here and propose to your own Board of Supervisors.
We’ve also learned the Pacific Legal Foundation is filing an Amicus Brief with the Court of Appeals in support of our lawsuit. That’s the best legal reinforcement we could hope for as we get closer to ending the concept of a California Autocracy. Our victory at trial started this Newsom losing streak, and our win on appeal can add to that losing streak.
A quick question. Would you be willing to trade an indoor mask mandate for an end to lockdowns?
How about both?
Politics is the art of the possible. I think that that would be a smoking deal. Perhaps an indoor mask mandate only in counties with a population of 50,000, or in cities with a population of 5,000? Also, a recognition that any business may require masks if they so wish.
When I file a lawsuit I ask for everything that I want. But when I am trying to settle cases, I focus on what I really need, not all of the stuff which would be nice to also have.
Plus we would have the Apex Predator negotiating on our behalf.
Masks don’t change the coefficient of spread.
I believe that the science does not agree with you.
You can’t change the number of casualties under the curve after you have flattened it. The only efficacy is for a delay to save the medical system. It comes at the cost of destroying all kinds of human and financial capital.
We already have near universal indoor mask wearing, and the control freaks are still demanding total shutdown of schools and most of the rest of society. In other words, that trade has already been rejected by the lockdown advocates.
What? You are aware that babies are not required to wear masks until 2 years of age, as it impairs their breathing. It impairs everyone else’s breathing as well.
When elected official Kirk Uhler ran the statistics and found out that in Placer County Calif, between March 13th and August 24th, some 16 people had died from or with COVID, but 13 people died from falls, I kept wondering if the victims of falls were mostly workers who had to don masks in hot weather.
Doctors have seen an uptick in patients suffering from bacterial pneumonia from wearing masks for too long a period. Many of these are working people who would not wear masks except for the fact that they must do so to keep their jobs.
That’s why the spread of Coivd has been so much higher in states with strict mask mandates (like new York) than in states without them (like Florida). Because mask mandates are so effective.
(They are very effective is creating a false sense of security.)
THE science? Which one is that? In my state there’s 90+% mask compliance and the virus is exploding.
Really-the vast majority of medical experts disagree with you. Just 2 examples.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltex
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
There is not a major medical association that does not advocate the use of masks- the AMA, the AHA, the Amer Lung Assoc, the Soc of Critical Medicine etc etc
NY has a high rate of mass transit, high density population etc etc. The weather in NY isn’t conducive to outdoor events -one could go on forever
Do you have a single citation for any of these claims? Not someone’s claims-actual data? Not nuts like Dr Blaylock. Medical personnel wear masks for hours a day & yet do not suffer ill effects. Masks do not induce hypoxia:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772655
Did these folks change their mind since September?
Mask Facts – AAPS | Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (aapsonline.org)
“Conclusion: Wearing masks (other than N95) will not be effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, whether worn as source control or as PPE.”
I said a major medical assoc- this one ain’t-they have had numerous problems over the years. They are an advocacy group-not a medical group. Even if you read their piece it has a # of problems-they do not understand that COVID doesn’t fly thru air alone-it is in droplets & they are larger than the pore size of masks etc. While I agree with much of their political advocacy, their medical positions are often suspect.
If the virus was largely harmless to everyone except, say, bearded lawyers, what would we expect society at large, rather than the target population, to do? Would we shut everything down, or expect hirsute attorneys to look after themselves? If ERs were overrun with coughing counsel, where would we assign responsibility? Would we make attendance at court illegal, or leave that to be a decision for the individuals concerned?
AAPS is like the “Frontline Doctors” or Dr Blaylock or the “Bakersfield ER docs”- not an assembly with any significant expertise in the areas they are trying to comment on. Nor is Dr Simone Gold etc. Doc in the Box MDs and concierge MD means “I do not take care of sick people” MD-good for routine problems and for health maintenance but not for ICU level conditions. Similarly, retired Neurosurgeons do not know much of anything about ICU care for infectious diseases. They are almost as useless as Dr Jill Biden in such situations.
addendum- in colloquial medical parlance “sick” means critically ill.
Same here in Cali (though I don’t know what our numbers are right now). I haven’t seen an unmasked face in months.
Whenever someone complains about the lockdown, someone always kneejerks about masks. I don’t know if masks work or not, but I wear one wherever it’s required. And everywhere else I go, everyone else does also.
My grand daughters at 3 and 5 wear masks. Who are all these unmasked people who will suddenly comply once there’s a mandate ?
The mayor of my little town put up a FB post reminding everyone to wear a mask. I asked him why he didn’t put up a post that says: remember : don’t leave the house naked! Or: remember to drive on the right side of the road.
Masks give people the illusion of control. Maybe without this ridiculous fetish we would have come up with a way to have a functioning economy in the midst of “there’s a bad flu going around”.
After The Lancet was forced to retract one of the most erroneous research papers ever published, it would be among the last publications I would utilize to prove a point.
It should be pointed out that real time/real life situations and statistics indicate that mask wearing and lockdowns do not seem to affect the spread of COVID among the general population. If it was true that these restrictions worked, Yolo County and Placer County would not have the same overall COVID infection patterns, despite the fact the former mentioned Calif county has had strict guidelines and Placer County’s have been much looser.
Plus going into broken record mode, if it is a serious infection and we do not want people getting it, then let’s force our ‘health officials” to begin releasing the remedies other nations are utilizing. Just this past week, the nation of India has released a packet of drugs, costing less than 4 bucks per person, in order to combat COVID.
Great Post!
A quick question. Would you be willing to trade an indoor mask mandate for an end to lockdowns?
Hell No! Masks don’t do jack. I believe in the “Science” which says masks are almost totally ineffectual and not in the Voodoo rantings of our Soviet Style Health Establishment.
If you compare the incidence of deaths due to COVID and COVID infections per Capita between Texas which did not have lockdowns and California which has gone way overboard, you will find they are almost identical, meaning that the Lockdown in California had virtually no effect in fighting COVID- the Chinese Biological Weapon but caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of American citizens and ruined the lives of millions more. BTW the highest incidence of deaths are in NY and NJ – both lockdown states.
The day they began slandering medical professionals who refuted them was the day they confirmed this was never about medicine in the first place.
@mimac
What if I said masks don’t do anything incrementally over what else is happening, the environment, or what other initiatives we are taking? I think masks are like a gnat on an elephant.
If you think the AMA is a medical association you are misinformed. The AMA spent more than $20 Million in lobbying efforts in 2019. The American Lung Association is a non-profit group that runs public service ads and uses federal grant money to lobby congress. The Society of Critical Care medicine is a non-profit membership group that has no standards to join other than self-reporting your role in critical care medicine and a valid credit card number. I know plenty of physicians who have never been involved with these sorts of groups. Being a physician does not mean you are a member of the AMA.
There are legitimate medical societies with rigorous membership requirements, such as the College of Surgeons, but they are too busy trying to actually practice medicine to blather on about masks for the general public.
And I agree about The Lancet. The Royal Society of Medicine used to be a respected organization. I would wager that with the transformation of the NHS into a quasi-religion, of course The Lancet would have to retract itself.
When masks are hung around rearview mirrors as ornaments or are re-used without washing, I question their efficacy. When the panic to the Wuhan started in Wuhan with authorities literally welding apartment doors shut with families inside…well here we are.
I won’t carry water for the AMA but unlike the AAPS they support research & medical education, they don’t just lobby. I don’t hold Lancet’s retraction against them-the fact is they moved rapidly to retract the bogus HCQ article when the criticism started (BTW many of the important critics of that article don’t believe HCQ work but also don’t support bogus studies). JAMA and Lancet are good on medical issues but not political ones-AAPS is the opposite and vaccines & masks are, or should be, a medical issue. We have become too tribal & political in way too many areas of life- mostly the left but the right isn’t immune and the problem is increasing.
Mask mandates along with the other interventions have had zero impact anywhere with the possible exception of insignificant brief delays:
Here is my local region with the dates of the mask mandates marked in red:
You could put the mask mandate anywhere on the curve and it would make no difference. COVID does its thing across regions with similar conditions and climate and NO INTERVENTIONS OF ANY KIND have made the slightest dent in those curves. You cannot claim to be all about the science and blow off the data about actual results.
Here is a collection of published papers finding the lack of benefits and the quantifiable harms from closure policies.
Anyone who says that the lockdowns worked or that the mask mandates are actually working is not speaking from science. The data is in. The debate is over. I don’t want to hear about why these interventions should have worked. They did not. Any closing, any lockdown any general mask order, or any policy after April 2020 not focused on LTCs and the vulnerable population as a whole is scientifically, morally, and legally wrong. Morally wrong because there continues to be significant harm done with no cognizable benefit. Legally wrong because these actions are not materially or meaningfully related to the nature and science of the declared emergency even if the powers seized were actually lawful.
I want heads. I want show trials. I want experts canned even if they have “Dr.” in front of their names. This cannot stand.
Wear a mask if you are afraid of the flu. Don’t wear one if you’re not afraid. Mask mandates are just to allow our “betters” to have more control over us “deplorables”.
Actually no one can say that lockdowns do or do not work based on data to date b/c we are still IN the pandemic- it will take better analysis after we are done- just like people proclaiming the Swedish success a few months ago. Much the same with trying to use aggregate data on masks. We do know that lockdowns cripple many businesses. Much of the data on the graphs above are in essence an attempt to run experiments w/o proper controls- the difference between regions with & w/o mandates is NOT solely mandates. There are likely many other factors influencing the outcomes. That is why we do controlled experiments to begin with & why so much social science research is poor- b/c controlling human factors is difficult &/or unethical.
Most of the better science backs masks:https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8
Much of the possible benefit from delaying the spread of the virus was predicated on obtaining a vaccine and using it to stop the pandemic. We may very well be near the end of the pandemic b/c of the vaccines. We will definitely need to look back at what worked & what didn’t.
The authorities have to do something to stay under medical resources. I am not against that. The thing spreads so fast it’s obviously an issue.
It was not the alleged success of the Swedes but the fact that they did NOT do what others did and the same Gompertz curve happened there as well as in Italy with its heavy lockdowns.
I keep asking you to produce evidence in any state or country that demonstrates a positive effect from Mask mandates. The Nature article is long on estimates from Experts. All I want is to see someplace in some region (where the COVID pattern has established a definite form) in which the mask MANDATES made a difference and altered that outcome in some quantifiable way. I agree that in theory, it should have made a difference but that has not happened. Anywhere.
I would like to see some study, somewhere that found some way to quantify the outcomes of any interventions. I can find lots of studies that all conclude that they accomplished little of nothing and have imposed horrific costs. The idea that these closings have such a measurable effect that we can fine-tune outcomes by closing bars two hours earlier or that there is any reason to have kids go to school on alternate days is utter nonsense. We do not need to wait for retrospective studies, especially if they are conducted by the same people who advocate and defended demonstrably failed policies.