Why Do Politicians Ignore the Futility and Collateral Damage of Lockdowns?

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Imagine administering a dose of chemotherapy to a healthy patient with no sign of cancer? After all, it can only help, right? That has been the attitude of our government as it continues to push lockdown policies and the trickle-down panic that flows from them – without any evidence that they help mitigate the virus and without any regard for their side effects.

California never really emerged from its original lockdown, yet Gov. Gavin Newson is now reinstituting the closure of many businesses. Evidently, a few dozen people carefully spaced in a gym or salon are a greater threat than thousands of people jammed pack in uncontrolled protests.

The Houston mayor is calling for another lockdown as well, with no mention of the fact that George Floyd had the largest funeral held in his city (while everyone else had to be buried without a proper funeral) and Houston police began contracting the virus in greater numbers right after the protests.

But they all fail to learn the lessons of the first lockdown – in that they don’t work to stop the deaths and they cause so many more excess deaths from the inimical side effects.

Lockdowns kill more people from the side effects

According to a recent published by Jama Network, there were 87,000 excess deaths from March 1 to April 25, but only 56,246 (65%) were attributed to COVID-19. What happened to the remaining 31,000 excess deaths? Until now, supporters of lockdown like Dr. Anthony Fauci have attributed those excess deaths to an undercount of the virus death toll. However, the study’s authors found that “The 5 states with the most COVID-19 deaths experienced large proportional increases in deaths from nonrespiratory underlying causes, including diabetes (96%), heart diseases (89%), Alzheimer disease (64%), and cerebrovascular diseases (35%).”

Clearly, as we observed during the peak of the lockdown, so many people were scared to come in for other urgent treatments as a result of the fear generated by lockdown policies. Also, thanks to the suspension of other medical maintenance procedures and critical but not emergent surgeries, people likely died from untreated ailments.

The numbers were particularly jarring in states like California and Texas, which saw 55% and 64% of its excess deaths respectively attributed to non-COVID-19 deaths. These were states where the virus barely spread during April but the lockdown likely shut down and scared off other medical care like it did in the harder hit states. Thus, for much of the country outside of the northeast until May, the lockdown was the bigger plague than the virus.

When the economic and mental health factors are coupled with the denied care, one study estimated that 65,000 people would die per month of lockdown. Also, given that the victims of lockdown, on average, were younger than those of the virus, they estimated that the lockdown, over its entire duration, has caused the loss of 1.5 million life years, as compared to 800,000 life years from the virus itself. Do we really want to continue propagating a feedback loop of panic that results in more deaths for a strategy that is completely unproven?

Lockdowns simply don’t work to stop a virus

Whether you compare state to state or country to country, there is absolutely no correlation between positive results and lockdowns, especially after the virus had already become so pervasive. Lockdowns have been in place in so many states like California and yet the virus still spread. Other states like Wisconsin haven’t had restrictions for two months because of a state Supreme Court ruling and has had very few hospitalizations or deaths.

J.P. Morgan conducted a data analysis on a scatter diagram of all 50 states and found that “reopening dates also don’t predict infections and hospitalizations.”

“There are no easy answers for why US infections have soared recently; reopening dates, mobility changes and other empirically measured behaviors do not lead to higher infections in any statistically consistent way,” wrote the major financial institution in its latest economic assessment.

The reality is that the timing of the spike occurred way too late to blame on the late April/early May openings. On the other hand, they have coincided perfectly with the mass protests, and in the case of the border states, with Mexico’s peak from its first round. Miami’s mayor admitted the demonstrations played a major role in the resurgence in Florida, which, unlike northeastern states, did not achieve enough immunity to withstand such ubiquitous mass gatherings. Either way, people are forgetting that the virus will always spread to any place that has not already achieved 15%-20% seroprevalence, irrespective of human factors.

The virus does not go away simply because of a lockdown. Countries like Israel and Australia are learning that now. They are similar to America’s south and west in the sense that they locked down early before the virus spread much (unlike in America’s northeast where it was too late). However, lockdowns don’t kill the virus. They kill many citizens from the collateral damage and just delay the ability to achieve herd immunity with a less vulnerable population.

This is why Sweden is pretty much done with the virus, having achieved de facto herd immunity without having shut down the country and without suffering all of the collateral deaths. Their only fault was failing to protect senior care facilities. Nearly 90% of all deaths were among those over 70 years old and there were more than twice as many deaths among those over 90 than under 70. It’s likely that many of them were going to die within a few months or actually died of old age, but thanks to Sweden’s liberal coding of COVID-19 deaths, they were included in the count. This is why a view of their excess deaths this year compared to past years shows almost no significant epidemic to speak of.

Sweden’s numbers are getting better every week and they are now in a period of negative excess deaths. Again, all without any lockdowns or mask mandates. Now, they are in better shape than every other country that forestalled herd immunity at a very painful cost to their medical care, mental health, and economy.

For such tough chemotherapy as a lockdown, shouldn’t we have to see results? How many more states can continue intermittent lockdowns and mask mandates for months while the cases continue to spread before we realize that this is a farce?

What we should really do is shield the vulnerable and avoid large gatherings like mass riots. That way we can achieve herd immunity through the less vulnerable and without spreading it too rapidly as to overwhelm the system. Yet, these are the two things most governors failed to do, and in the case of 26 million protesters, they actually encouraged and facilitated the greatest mass gatherings in recent memory – in midst of a pandemic they believe should lock us in our homes. Are we going to allow these mendacious politicians to get away with this libel against our liberty and lives? (For more from the author of “Why Do Politicians Ignore the Futility and Collateral Damage of Lockdowns?” please click HERE)

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Ghislaine Maxwell Has Breakdown After Judge Denies Bail; Geraldo Rivera Attacks Federal Judge for Not Allowing Maxwell Out on Bail; Ghislaine Maxwell Is Also Under Investigation in U.S. Virgin Islands

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By New York Post. Ghislaine Maxwell cried as she was ordered held without bail Tuesday — with a Manhattan judge ruling the accused sex abuser “poses substantial actual risk of flight” after she purposely hid from authorities.

The 58-year-old British socialite and pal of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein wiped tears from her left eye several times, using the back of her left index finger, as federal Judge Alison Nathan refused to free her from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until her trial next year.

“No combination of conditions” could ensure that Maxwell wouldn’t try to flee prosecution, Nathan said during a video conference in Manhattan federal court — where Maxwell appeared on the feed remotely from a closet-size room at the jail.

“The risks are simply too great,” the judge said, adding that Maxwell has exhibited an “extraordinary capacity to evade detection.”

Maxwell, the daughter of disgraced late newspaper baron Robert Maxwell, briefly hung her head when it became clear that she wasn’t going to be released at all — much less to a luxury New York City hotel, as she had requested — until trial. (Read more from “Ghislaine Maxwell Has Breakdown After Judge Denies Bail” HERE)

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Geraldo Rivera Attacks Federal Judge for Not Allowing Maxwell Out on Bail

By Fox News. Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera accused the New York federal judge presiding over Ghislaine Maxwell’s case of “copping out to the mob” Tuesday after she denied the British socialite’s bail request as she awaits trial on sex trafficking charges.

“I think this was a political decision,” Rivera asserted on “Bill Hemmer Reports”. “I think that the question is not whether she committed these hideous offenses. The question is whether or not she would show up for trial. She bought a house in New Hampshire, for goodness’ sakes. She went to all this trouble to stay in the country. . .

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he said before claiming that prosecutors in the case “are doing this to put pressure on her.”

“They are punishing her before conviction,” Rivera argued. “She has never been held liable in a civil suit, never been convicted of a crime. She is not Jeffrey Epstein. I think this is a terrible, punitive decision.” . . .

“Remember, these charges relate to offenses that happened 25 years ago, from 1994 to 1997,” Rivera concluded. “I think these are charges that are wobbly on their face and for this judge to chicken out and not give this defendant bail I think is copping out to the mob.” (Read more from “Geraldo Rivera Attacks Federal Judge for Not Allowing Maxwell Out on Bail” HERE)

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Ghislaine Maxwell Is Also Under Investigation in U.S. Virgin Islands

By Bloomberg. Ghislaine Maxwell is also under investigation by the U.S. Virgin Islands for her alleged participation in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

The Caribbean territory gave notice of its investigation in a court filing Friday in which it seeks to intervene in a lawsuit she filed against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. The socialite sued earlier this year seeking reimbursement for legal fees she was incurring, claiming Epstein had repeatedly promised her that he would support her financially.

The island’s Department of Justice “is investigating Maxwell’s participation in Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking and sexual abuse conduct,” according to the July 10 filing. It’s also using the case to subpoena Maxwell, a process the government said she has evaded since March.

“The government’s need to intervene is further fueled by Maxwell’s inappropriate use of the Virgin Islands courts to seek payment and reimbursement from the Epstein criminal enterprise, while she circumvents the service of process of government subpoenas related to her involvement in that criminal enterprise,” the filing states. Epstein was a resident of the Virgin Islands for more than 20 years and owned two islands — Little St. James and Great St. James — which the government said it’s seeking to claim as part of its legal effort. (Read more from “Ghislaine Maxwell Is Also Under Investigation in U.S. Virgin Islands” HERE)

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Churches Fight Back Against Second Shutdown

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When California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that large sections of California would have to shut down businesses and churches because of a coronavirus resurgence, many religious leaders refused to comply with the order.

The Monday order, which allows churches to continue socially distant services outside, effectively sends some of the most densely populated counties back into a full-on lockdown for an indefinite period of time. Newsom in a Monday press conference said that he expects the virus to keep spreading unless the state remains locked down because “COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon until there is a vaccine or an effective therapy.”

But even with the state’s caution, some church leaders say that shutting down again is not an option. San Francisco and Western America Russian Orthodox Archbishop Kyrill, in an open letter to Newsom, said that the state’s strictures on religious services, especially on singing, are “open discrimination,” reminiscent of the “the era of godless persecutions in the U.S.S.R.”

Kyrill noted that while the Orthodox Church had complied with the state’s previous shutdown, forcing members to participate in Lent and Easter services online only, he was upset to see the state’s permissiveness to protesters demanding racial justice.

“We now observe a contradiction in that mass protests take place everywhere, at which absolutely all precautions are violated with impunity,” he wrote, adding that the church will “defend the rights” of its members to continue to worship. (Read more from “Churches Fight Back Against Second Shutdown” HERE)

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New Study: Millennials Think Their Risk From COVID-19 Is Exponentially More Than the True Threat

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There is no vaccine, effective treatment, or herd immunity for the virus of panic and fear sown by the media that is propagated straight to people’s brains from their smartphones. And unlike with coronavirus, the young are more seriously afflicted with this intractable disease than seniors, according to a new study.

Four researchers published a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research studying people’s perceived personal health risks associated with COVID-19. The most striking result of their survey of 1,500 Americans from May 6 to May 13 is that the younger the age of the respondent, the more the individual seemed concerned about the virus being deadly to them – the exact inverse of the true threat assessment of the virus.

It’s reflective of a generation that is inundated with Apple, Google, and Yahoo’s sensational news headlines on their phones and, unlike their parents and grandparents, have no minds of their own to decipher the information and interpret it with the proper context.

When asked by the four researchers, who hail from Harvard, Oxford, and Università Bocconi, out of “1,000 people very similar to you” how many would die from COVID-19 over the next nine weeks, the median estimated guess by respondents aged 18-34 was 20, or 2%. In other words, the average Millennial thought that 2% of everyone like them would die within nine weeks from the virus. In contrast, in contrast, the respondents aged 70 years or older, which is exponentially more at risk, asses their risk of dying at about 1%.

What is the infection fatality rate (IFR) for younger people? The CDC estimates a 0.05% IFR for everyone in the age cohort of 0-49. Other estimates based on Spain serology tests broken down by age suggest an even lower IFR for those 18-49.

But that is only the risk once someone contracts the virus. When you couple the chance of not getting the virus together with the chance of not dying from it once infected, the rate is even lower. Four infectious disease doctors in Canada estimate that the individual rate of death from COVID-19 for people under 65 years of age in Canada is six per million people, or 0.0006% – 1 in 166,666, which is “roughly equivalent to the risk of dying from a motor vehicle accident during the same time period.” Those numbers are even lower for people under 35. In other words, the respondents in this study overestimated their risk of dying by at least a factor of 3,000.

According to the CDC, the IFR for those over 65 is 1.3%, although it is heavily skewed by nursing home deaths in the numerator. For seniors in better health, the numbers are much lower. Thus, the senior respondents in the survey are much closer to reality in their thinking.

According to the CDC, there have been 944 COVID-19 deaths among those aged 15-34. And that is with a liberal definition of a COVID death that has included young people who died of alcohol poisoning, gunshots, and drug overdoses, which, incidentally, are increasing because of the panic and social isolation, which in itself is exponentially disproportionate to the threat of the virus itself.

Now consider the top causes of death for youngsters, courtesy of a table published by Avik Roy last month. In 2016, there were 37,879 deaths by unintentional injury among those 18-34, which obviously is very much influenced by car accidents. That is 40 times the number of deaths from the virus. There were 10,548 deaths by homicide, more than 11 times greater than from the virus.

How many Millennials do you know who think twice before getting into a car or engaging in a fun-seeking activity that could result in injury or death? And remember, while accidents are more likely to occur among reckless people, they can and do end lives of all people. The few virus deaths for those under 35, on the other hand, are almost all among those with specific serious heart conditions or comorbidities.

The answer is very simple. People’s phones are not blowing up with news of people dying in car crashes every second. Smartphones and the information that pings their users are like the Bible for this generation of American youth. The same source of their anxiety over catching the virus is the same source that made them temporarily suspend that anxiety to protest in the streets in large crowds. They are the same people who believe black youth are more likely to be killed by police than by gang members. For Millennials, the media is like a game of Simon Says. It’s an amazing contrast from the youth of the 1960s who wore T-shirts saying, “Question authority.”

This disproportionate degree of panic and fear sown by herd mentality and magnified by technology is not cost-free. When you have young people thinking their risk of dying is thousands of times greater than the actual threat, they can resort to extreme behavior that is more dangerous than the virus. Perhaps this is why drug overdoses are spiking in some states.

This point was driven home in a paper co-authored by D.A. Henderson, the former dean of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, who is widely credited with helping to eradicate smallpox. In that 2006 publication from Johns Hopkins, Henderson and three other authors note that lockdowns would produce so many negative effects that “this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.”

Perhaps the most destructive element of lockdown is the panic and fear that such severe measures help confirm, in this case, wrongly so, in the minds of the young and impressionable. As the paper concludes, “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”

In other words, we need to flatten the fear. (For more from the author of “New Study: Millennials Think Their Risk From COVID-19 Is Exponentially More Than the True Threat” please click HERE)

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Trump Endorsed Tommy Tuberville Defeats Jeff Sessions in Republican Runoff for U.S. Senate

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Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville defeated former Attorney General and US Senator Jeff Sessions for the Republican nomination for US Senate to face Democratic Sen. Doug Jones.

Jones was elected in a December 2017 special election to replace Sessions, who vacated the seat he represented for over 20 years to become President Donald Trump’s attorney general. Now, as Jones is up for re-election for a full term, Sessions is fighting for his old US Senate seat in what could make or break his political career.

Sessions and Tuberville advanced to a runoff, which was delayed to July 14 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after the March 3 primary.

The race largely played out into a fight over which candidate is more loyal to Trump, who won the state by a margin of 27 percentage points in 2016 and remains highly popular in the state.

While Sessions had tried to tie himself to Trump, both Trump and his campaign have actively repudiated Sessions in the run-up to the runoff in addition to Trump endorsing Tuberville. (Read more from “Trump Endorsed Tommy Tuberville Defeats Jeff Sessions in Republican Runoff for U.S. Senate” HERE)

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White House Adviser Pens Scathing Op-Ed Blasting Colleague Dr. Fauci

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Peter Navarro, White House director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, publicly declared his distrust of fellow Trump administration official Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday, penning a column condemning the infectious disease expert over his guidance amid the coronavirus pandemic. . .

In a piece published by USA Today, Navarro said of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director: “Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”

Navarro slammed Fauci for fighting against President Donald Trump’s ban on flights from China back in January, for “telling the media not to worry” about the pandemic the same month, for “flip-flopping” on the use of masks by the public, and for insisting “that there was only anecdotal evidence in support of hydroxychloroquine to fight the virus” despite studies indicating otherwise. . .

The trade adviser’s op-ed blasting Fauci comes the day after Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, said during an interview on NBC News, “I respect Dr. Fauci a lot, but Dr. Fauci is not 100 percent right, and he also doesn’t necessarily — and he admits that — have the whole national interest in mind.”

(Read more from “White House Adviser Pens Scathing Op-Ed Blasting Colleague Dr. Fauci” HERE)

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Iran Official Jokes About U.S. Navy Fire, Alludes to Nuclear Site Attack

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A senior Iranian official has joked about the “interesting” fire that ravaged a U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship in San Diego, quipping that the incident may be claimed by a supposed domestic dissident group like recent explosions in Iran.

. . .According to Iran’s state-controlled PressTV channel, [Foreign ministry spokesperson Seyed Abbas] Mousavi added, “It’s interesting how quickly U.S. destroyers catch fire,” referring to the Bonhomme Richard, which is capable of carrying a mix of fighter jets and helicopters.

“I have no stance,” Mousavi told reporters. “But just search news sources to see if ‘American Panthers’ have claimed responsibility.”

This remark alluded to a series of recent mysterious explosions in Iran that have prompted suggestions of a broad sabotage campaign by a foreign power or a domestic dissident group. One group calling itself the “Homeland Cheetahs” claimed responsibility for an explosion at a sensitive nuclear site in Iran earlier this month. (Read more from “Iran Official Jokes About U.S. Navy Fire, Alludes to Nuclear Site Attack” HERE)

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Goya Outrage Shows Cancel Culture Out of Control

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. . .To hear them tell it, expanding the opportunities for minorities has always been their party’s idea. But when President Donald Trump took a stab at it, announcing a business and educational project aimed directly at Hispanic people, the left wasn’t about to cut him some slack. And worse than that, they’re out to destroy anyone who does.

For Goya CEO Robert Unanue, Thursday’s executive order had been a long time coming. Like most Hispanic Americans, he was eager to work with the administration to improve his community’s way of life.

When Trump invited Unanue to join his Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, he eagerly accepted. And, at the signing ceremony, he praised Trump, saying: “We are all truly blessed … to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder. We have an incredible builder, and we pray. We pray for our leadership, our president.”

No sooner had he spoken the words than the cancel culture, led by ringleaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., started the hashtag #BoycottGoya.

. . .“You’re allowed to talk good or talk praise to one president but … all the sudden that’s not acceptable,” Unanue told Fox News. “If you’re called by the president of the United States, you’re going to say, ‘No, I’m sorry, I’m busy, no thank you’? I didn’t say that to the Obamas, and I didn’t say that to President Trump.” (Read more from “Goya Outrage Shows Cancel Culture Out of Control” HERE)

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GOP Lawmakers Urge Attorney General to Defend Couple’s Gun Rights After Firearm Confiscation (VIDEO)

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GOP lawmakers wrote a letter to Attorney General William Barr Friday, urging the protection of the firearm rights of the St. Louis couple that saw their guns confiscated after they went viral for defending their home against demonstrators, according to reports.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey were seen in a video brandishing a M16A2-style rifle and small handgun outside of their home as demonstrators broke through a private gate and encroached on their property line in June. Police executed a search warrant Friday and confiscated the couple’s rifle, and later their pistol, despite not yet filing any known charges against the pair, according to KSDK News.

The dozen Republican congressmen who signed the letter to Barr said the decision to commandeer the family’s guns could leave a “chilling effect” on all Americans, according to Fox News.

“At this crucial time in history, our nation needs the Department of Justice to exert strong leadership to ensure that none of our constitutional protections are eroded by mob rule,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, according to Fox News. “Charges against this couple will have a chilling effect on the entire nation, sending the message that American citizens no longer have the right to protect themselves at their own homes.”

The signers of the letter were Reps. Louis Gohmert and Brian Babin of Texas, Paul Gozar of Arizona, Andy Harris of Maryland, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Greg Steube of Florida, Alex Mooney of West Virginia, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Steve Watkins of Kansas, Steve King of Iowa, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Jody Hice of Georgia, according to Fox. (Read more from “GOP Lawmakers Urge Attorney General to Defend Couple’s Gun Rights After Firearm Confiscation” HERE)

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WATCH: Bernie Says Biden’s Proposals Aren’t Extreme Enough

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On Tuesday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden’s proposals are “a significant step forward,” and, if implemented, would make him “the most progressive president since FDR.” Sanders also stated that he doesn’t think Biden’s proposals “go far enough” and that the solution is to elect Biden and then “strengthen our grassroots movement to make sure that…we have a government that represents all of us, and not just the few.”

Sanders said Biden’s proposals are “not only a significant step forward, but are going to win widespread support from the progressive community.”

(Read more from “WATCH: Bernie Says Biden’s Proposals Aren’t Extreme Enough” HERE)

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