Photo By PaulAnn Egelhoff/Courtesy Rebel Lounge: Restrictions limited the number of patrons allowed at venues such as the Rebel Lounge.
Column By Mike Bibb
“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a notable effect on COVID-19 mortality.”
Johns Hopkins University research study, January 2022
The screw is starting to turn. After being brained-numbed the past two years on the deadly effects of COVID-19, and all the worldwide social ills it’s produced, now comes another opinion revealing compulsory lockdowns promoted by health experts and mouthy politicians as being a life-saving necessity, actually had little influence upon the disease’s fatalities.
Johns Hopkins University – a prestigious school where really, really smart people gather – recently released a study indicating the lockdown mania over COVID’s prophesied deaths was greatly exaggerated.
In fact, mandatory lockdowns reduced mortality rates by only 0.2% of expected deaths without lockdowns. After the first round of lockdowns, ending March 20, 2020, a total of 97,081 people had died. 99,050 had been anticipated to perish without lockdowns.
Say again.
I repeat, lockdowns and all the rest of the mandated silliness, limited COVID fatalities to a measly 0.2% less than estimated deaths minus the lockdowns.
Lockdowns did have “devastating effects” upon world economies.
In the United States businesses, schools, and church closures, social distancing requirements, and vaccine stipulations had an even greater impact upon our economy.
These decrees also succeed in alienating large segments of society. The constantly changing misinformation from health organizations, school boards, state governors, city councils, big business and federal departments of government, including the president, adversely altered previously established modes of living to such an extent that working without being vaccinated became a major Supreme Court issue.
As Johns Hopkins put it “They (lockdowns) have contributed to reducing economic activity, rising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence and undermining liberal democracy.”
Which may have been the reasons prior pandemic lockdowns were not a favored tool of viral suppression. They didn’t work then and they don’t work now.
The report, an apparent contradiction to much of what we’ve been led to believe about the pandemic, is an obvious repudiation of how our government has dealt with it. At least initially.
Anyone who has read my views on the subject over the past two years is fully aware I have not been a big supporter of our government’s COVID solutions. My opinions are regularly expressed in the Gila Herald and were also published in the Eastern Arizona Courier before the former editor and I could no longer agree on how COVID was being presented and managed.
I never did understand how shutting down “non-essential” businesses, including schools and churches, while others were permitted to remain open made any sense, or how wearing a flimsy cloth face mask made in China could possibly stop a microbe, or staying six feet apart – then three – discouraged an airborne germ from flying any further to infect someone, or advocating people inject into their bodies an experimental vaccine in hopes of avoiding or spreading the virus.
Every one of these approaches has been proven to be inadequate. The vaccines may have some positive effects, but are not lasting, requiring additional shots and boosters. No one knows, or saying, how many more shots and boosters will be needed before the virus subsides, or what the long-term health effects of these medicines might be.
Now, the government want’s to vaccinate children as young as five years old. It’s lunacy run amok.
Still, the government’s strategies remain virtually unchanged – test, mask, vaccinate, boost, social distance. Repeat if necessary. Repeat again if necessary. Keep repeating until it finally works.
Actually, the Johns Hopkins study suggested the lockdowns “and their unintended consequences” may have contributed more to COVID mortality rates than previously expected.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure their analysis included the successes of alternative COVID treatments or the importance of an individual’s natural immune system in repelling the virus.
At least the account mentioned the pandemic was an excuse for “undermining liberal democracy.”
Which may actually be one of the most important observations in the entire report. Without COVID as justification, social media goons would be less inclined to censor or cancel individuals who disagree with the government’s reactions, and many of our officials would not have been as successful in implementing their mandates, restrictions, and other controlling efforts.
After all is said and done, I’m surprised no one has insisted COVID is the result of a Trump/Putin co-conspiracy plot using a Chinese virology lab to brew some kind of lethal concoction enabling Don and Vlad to rule the world.
As the saying goes, “When facts are unconvincing, dazzle them with b.s.”
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
