These Three Things Should Mean an Immediate End to the Lockdowns

If CA Governor Newsom putting in place a "task force" to discuss how to end the lockdown in that state - when none was needed to implement it - isn't enough to convince you that this is all a load of horse manure, maybe these will help:

1. There is no empirical evidence for these lockdowns.

Wilfred Reilly looked at the "data from the Worldometers Coronavirus Project, along with information about the population, population density, median income, median age and diversity of each US state, to determine whether states that have adopted lockdowns or ‘shelter in place’ orders experience fewer Covid-19 cases and deaths than those which pursue a social-distancing strategy without a formal lockdown."

He controlled for a number of variables, also looked at the experiences of other countries, and then says: "I do not find that lockdowns are a more effective way of handling coronavirus than well-done social-distancing measures." 

You can read all about how he did that (with links to the raw data if you want to see that), here.
 

2. Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern.

Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University has looked at the rates of Covid-19 infections across several different countries, and found that regardless of the country's policy regarding lockdowns, the numbers rose and fell in precisely the same pattern. Says Townhall.com: 

"His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week."

According to Professor Ben Israel, "It turns out that the peak of the spread is already behind us for about a week, and it will probably be almost completely wasted within two weeks," (from a translation.)


3. Sweden.

There is a lot to say about Sweden. I won't say it all here. Instead, I will just point to this one indicator. This is from EuroMOMO, which is "a European mortality monitoring activity, aiming to detect and measure excess deaths related to seasonal influenza, pandemics and other public health threats."

What the graphs on this page show us are patterns of excess mortality from ALL causes, over the past four years, in European countries. Here is the graph for Sweden, alongside those for Spain, Switzerland and England (only because these four were all together in the presentation.) I think this is useful to look at because it dispenses with any critique about non-Covid-19 deaths being counted as Covid-19 deaths. This (you can see graphs for all the countries here) simply shows us excess mortality from ALL causes, by country:


(bigger)

In conclusion, for everyone who believes that total state control of our lives is justified by a desire to save lives (a principle that is notably not applied to our freedom to drive automobiles, to pick one obvious example), please just stop. Your unprincipled authoritarianism has already done enough damage, and is only going to do more. 

Just stop.

Reprinted with permission from author's website.

from These Three Things Should Mean an Immediate End to the Lockdowns

Cato Institute Editorial: The Coronavirus Crackdown is Libertarian

When you come across an editorial titled “Libertarianism and the Coronavirus Pandemic” at the website of the Cato institute that describes itself as “a public policy research organization — a think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace,” what do you expect? You may expect the editorial to argue against local, state, and national governments in America, in the name of countering coronavirus, prohibiting people from exercising many individual rights including rights to travel, assemble, engage in commerce, and even just leave home.

Well, think again.

Instead of delivering a strong defense of freedom and a strong condemnation of the coronavirus crackdown in which governments shut down many private businesses and wholesale violate individual rights, the March 25 editorial, written by Cato Institute Staff Writer Andy Craig, endorses the crackdown.

Craig’s objections to the coronavirus crackdown that he expresses in his editorial hardly even qualify as quibbles. He writes that restraint should be applied in enforcing the draconian mandates and that “emergency rules and powers should extend only for the duration of the emergency, and be repealed at the earliest feasible opportunity.” Notably, government officials who have mandated and implemented the coronavirus crackdown across America appear to have typically agreed since the beginning of the crackdown that there should be enforcement restraint and that imposed mandates should be lifted based on changes in circumstances.

You can read Craig’s editorial here.

If you want to read some editorials that deal with the coronavirus crackdown and are more in line with libertarian ideas or, as the Cato Institute puts it, “the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace,” check out libertarian communicator Ron Paul’s editorials “The Coronavirus Hoax” from March 16, “End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!” from April 6, and “What If the Lockdown Was All A Big Mistake?” from April 20.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2020/april/23/cato-institute-editorial-the-coronavirus-crackdown-is-libertarian/

Is The Continuing Lockdown Medical...Or Political?

They say we must "follow the science" and not resist the near-total lockdown of the economy and our way of life. But is "the science" tainted by politics and ideology? Also in today's program: Houston Police push back against Harris County "mandatory mask" orders, the potential danger of ventilators, and a look at Bill Gates' dreams for 2020. Don't miss today's Liberty Report:



from Is The Continuing Lockdown Medical...Or Political?

The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation

The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.

Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total lockdown.

Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.

The recent Stanford University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2 percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.  

In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all US deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000. 

Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.

Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.

We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City, the hotbed of COVID-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44 years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent per 100,000. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7 percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed COVID-19 patients with symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded "age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization." Even early WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness. Half of all people testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.

Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.

We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an immune response — antibodies — so that the infection is controlled throughout the population by “herd immunity.” Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral diseases — to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not even necessary for the vast majority of people who are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data from the Diamond Princess ship, and then in Iceland and Italy. That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact, infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people, ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that widespread immunity from developing.

Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center.

Fair Use Excerpt. Read the rest here.




from The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation

What will post-COVID look like on TV and in the history books?

Difficult situation: There is no way the government can simply walk back from what it did with COVID-19.

It imposed draconian general-population lockdown measures, and closed down the economy, irrespective of the domestic consequences, for a viral respiratory disease that all the recent studies are convergently saying is no worse than a seasonal flu.

How will the government representatives and enablers respond when the dust settles?

They will hold onto the absurd. They will hide the harm of the lockdown (violence, economy, jobs, subservience training...). They will claim that they beat the coronavirus when it slows, and then claim that any resurgence would have been worse had they not intervened; all contrary to known science and the accumulating empirical data, of course.

And ordinary citizens who bought into the lie will continue to protect the government by going berserk when challenged that it was a lie: Surely they were right to enjoy the new circumstances at home and to police their neighbours.

If there are fewer deaths than the artificial predictions then the government will claim that it saved lives, millions of lives.

The low death count right now (even counting every possible death that is not a proven suicide or murder) and the stubbornly normal magnitude of the total mortality rate are problems for the government, since these figures suggest that there really never was a pandemic worthy of the military-scale response.

In fact, the darn thing is not particularly contagious or fatal. It is not a deathly virulent disease by usual standards. Sweden presently has far fewer confirmed COVID-19 deaths per-million-inhabitants than Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, UK, and The Netherlands, without any lockdown; and it estimates that one third of its citizens have already been infected and are now immune.

But governments will argue that their lockdowns prevented infection and death, in time for a vaccine to save the remaining elderly and vulnerable individuals. Since the disease is no plague, their vaccine will "work": There is no real challenge. They will be able to hide the harm from the vaccine and claim that they are vigilantly protecting humanity.

On the contrary, the government should not be allowed to take credit for anything except the mess it has made.

But they will not fund research that examines their mess. Only researchers that go along will be funded and promoted, as always.

The entire episode will be a lot like when they take us into a war. It is the same modus operandi, media-show and all.

We will be proud survivors of "The Coronavirus War". We will have actively engaged in this war (by staying at home), will have won the war; and will have vowed to win all such future wars.

And the government will fabricate such a war whenever it “needs” to perturb or rearrange global finance structures, or take out a geopolitical or annoying national foe. In this case, the synchronous and unprecedented negative price of oil may not be a mere accident of “supply and demand”. Only the USA can print the de facto global currency at will and without limit, for now. Others must endure, while relying on limited reserves.

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a researcher for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association. He has published more than 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science.

from What will post-COVID look like on TV and in the history books?

What's In It For Bill Gates - Does He Want To Rule The World?

Bill Gates doesn't need the money, that is for sure. So what motivates him to spend billions of dollars on organizations that seek to destroy our privacy and run our lives? It is a big ego trip...or worse? Plus - shameful arrest of a mother in Idaho and Texas Governor Abbott's pitifully weak "recovery" plan. All in today's Liberty Report:



from What's In It For Bill Gates - Does He Want To Rule The World?

There is no empirical evidence for these lockdowns

Several weeks ago, one of the USA’s better quantitative scientists, John Ioannidis of Stanford, made a critically important point. During the coronavirus pandemic, ‘we are making decisions without reliable data’, he said.

As Ioannidis and others have pointed out, we do not even know the actual death rate for Covid-19. Terrifying and widely cited case-fatality rates like ‘three per cent’ come from comparing known fatalities to the small pool of people who have officially been tested. Those test cases are mostly made up of sick and symptomatic people or those who had direct contact with someone known to have had Covid-19 – rather than to the far larger pool of people who may have had a mild version of the disease. Because of the same denominator problem, we also don’t know the true infection rate. A recent German study indicates this could be as high as 15 per cent.

Finally, we do not seem to know the effectiveness of the various strategies adopted by national and regional governments to respond to the disease – ranging from the advocacy of social distancing to full-on lockdowns.

This piece tackles that question. As a professional political scientist, I have analysed data from the Worldometers Coronavirus project, along with information about the population, population density, median income, median age and diversity of each US state, to determine whether states that have adopted lockdowns or ‘shelter in place’ orders experience fewer Covid-19 cases and deaths than those which pursue a social-distancing strategy without a formal lockdown. I then briefly extend this analysis to compare countries. In short, I do not find that lockdowns are a more effective way of handling coronavirus than well-done social-distancing measures.

The most basic way to test this thesis is by direct comparison. As of 6 April, seven US states had not adopted shelter-in-place orders, instead imposing social-distancing restrictions such as banning large gatherings and mandating six-foot spacing gaps and maximum customer limits inside all retail stores. Those seven states are Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. These states reported 1,620, 2,141, 952, 343, 1,311, 2,542 and 288 cases of Covid-19 respectively as of 3:40pm EST on 16 April – for an average of 1,321 cases. The states reported 37, 60, 21, 9, 7, 20, and 2 deaths respectively, for an average of 22.3 deaths. Throwing in South Carolina, which did not adopt a shelter-in-place order until 6 April, and still allows most religious services, does not dramatically alter these figures – these states averaged 1,613 cases and 33 deaths.

How do these states measure up to the rest of the US? Rather well. According to Worldometers, by the same time the number of officially tested Covid-19 cases across the US states – including Guam, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC – ranged from 226,343 in New York to 135 in Guam. The average number of Covid cases in a US state was 12,520. The state-by-state number of deaths varied from 16,251 (New York) to two (Wyoming), with the average figure for deaths being 642. Removing the outlier case of New York state, where roughly half of all US Covid-19 deaths have taken place, shifted these figures downward somewhat – to 8,408 cases and 342 deaths in the average state. However, the social-distancing states experienced substantially fewer cases and deaths than the lockdown states, even with New York out of the mix.

An advocate of lockdowns could object that the social-distancing states are little places, located in America’s ‘flyover land’. While this charge might be based as much on bias as reality – Utah, Nebraska and South Carolina are sizable places – the next step of my analysis was to adjust for population, using a standard deaths-per-million metric. In alphabetical order, the seven social-distancing states experienced 12, 19, 11, 12, 8, 7 and three deaths per million – for an average of 10 deaths per million when you exclude South Carolina and 12 with South Carolina included.

Again, these numbers compare very favourably to the US as a whole, despite adjusting for population. Across all US states, the number of deaths per million varied from 828 (New York) to three (Wyoming), for an average of 69. With New York removed from the mix, the hardest-hit remaining state was New Jersey, with 8,480 cases and 396 deaths. The average number of cases-per-million across the states minus New York was 1,392 and the average number of deaths-per-million was 54. Comparing the social-distancing states plus South Carolina to US states minus New York, the social-distancing states experienced 663 fewer cases per million and 42 fewer deaths per million on average than the lockdown states.

Next, I ran a regression model. For those unfamiliar with academic statistical methods, regression – in this case linear regression – is a computerised mathematical technique that allows researchers to measure the influence of one variable on another with all of the other factors that might be relevant held constant. In this case, the variables for each state included in my model were: population, population density, median income, median age, diversity (measured as the percentage of minorities in a population), and the state’s Covid-19 response strategy (0 = lockdown, 1 = social distancing). The data set used to construct this model is available for anyone to request it.

The question the model set out to ask was whether lockdown states experience fewer Covid-19 cases and deaths than social-distancing states, adjusted for all of the above variables. The answer? No. The impact of state-response strategy on both my cases and deaths measures was utterly insignificant. The ‘p-value’ for the variable representing strategy was 0.94 when it was regressed against the deaths metric, which means there is a 94 per cent chance that any relationship between the different measures and Covid-19 deaths was the result of pure random chance.

Fair Use Excerpt. Read the whole article here.

from There is no empirical evidence for these lockdowns