https://trialsitenews.com/why-talk-of-l ... e-science/Why talk of lockdowns, school closures, and masks due to COVID-19 Delta variant is absurd and without any scientific basis: do the CDC and NIH leaders and Surgeon General ever read the science?
Paul Elias Alexander, PhD, Howard Tenenbaum, DDS, PhD, Parvez Dara, MD, MBA
How did we get here? The economic and health fallouts of the lockdowns have been staggering and will take 100 years to remediate by some estimates.
The American Institute of Economic Research (AIER) recently published a seminal piece on the COVID recession by Mulligan that paints a harrowing picture: “the current recession briefly caused a 10% loss of real GDP, with unemployment rising as high as 15%”. Mulligan argues that “the Covid-19 recession was not triggered so much by unsustainable overexpansion as by profound restrictions motivated by public health considerations, and since this current recession did not come from any primarily monetary or public policy cause, we cannot look to economic policy alone to bring it to an end. An especially sharp decline in real GDP output occurred at the outset, but this was over by the second quarter of 2020…we have yet to fully recover in terms of output…there is every reason to anticipate that many of the economic responses will further retard economic growth”. These descriptions place the economic fallout of this pandemic and the devastating lockdown responses into stark perspective.
We begin by making this clarion urgent call to impose no more lockdowns or school closures in response to these existing COVID variants. The pandemic has been over a while now. The variants are very mild and this Delta variant is the mildest (non-lethal) thus far and by all estimates, based on existing reports, will present no or very mild symptoms (cold-like) to those infected. The media reports combined with the hysteria by the alphabet agency public health leaders from the CDC, NIH including the Surgeon General etc. borders on absurdity and is completely illogical. It is irrational based on the evidence out of UK and Israel who have given us good data on the behavior of the Delta, and makes no sense based on the evidence. They continue to exhibit academic sloppiness and it is either they do not read the science or do not understand it.
It is incredible to listen to the specious and often drivel by these so called ‘experts’. The self-harms, the deaths of despair, the suicides etc. by business owners, by employees, and by children/young persons will return if we lock down again. The lockdowns were a gut-wrenching catastrophic failure before, and caused crushing harms and deaths and we predict will do same again. Reports out of the UK for example suggest that five times more children committed suicide than died of Covid in first year of UK lockdown. The United States experiences a devastating surge in children suicides due to the lockdowns. “Jeanne Noble, director of COVID response in the UCSF emergency department, reported that “suicides in the Golden State last year jumped by 24% for Californians under 18 but fell by 11% for adults, showing how children were uniquely affected by “profound social isolation and loss of essential social supports traditionally provided by in-person school”. Just look at what happened in Las Vegas as a result of the school closures and lockdowns. Children killed themselves, and so why would anyone in their right mind contemplate reinstitution lockdowns, school closures, and even masks? Masks for children are devastating on children socially, emotionally, and health wise. The evidence overwhelming shows that the COVID masks are ineffective and we know of reports of toxicity and harms (which we present) especially to children. The World Health Organization (WHO) stipulates that children under 5 years of age not be masked and thus why would the CDC and US health officials call for masking of younger children e.g. 3 years old? What is wrong with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and Dr. Fauci as they are clearly out of step with the science and seem not to understand the data collected well over a year now on how ineffective the masks were (blue surgical and white cloth). What is it that they know that the WHO does not know given the US CDC and all of its public health officials have been flat wrong on everything COVID for over a year now. Alarmingly, the CDC’s updated guidance (July 9th 2021) calls for children as young as 2 years old to wear masks in school if unvaccinated. Is the guidance a form of pressuring and coercion of parents who decided against the vaccine for various reasons, so that they run quickly and vaccinate their child, against their informed judgement?
Did the CDC ever actually look at the evidence and data on COVID and children? The poorer children and females feared worst of all and were least able to afford the collateral effects of the lockdowns. Lockdowns shifted the burden to the poor in society and benefited the laptop class. We know how to handle COVID in July 2021, and we can treat our way out of this and close out the pandemic. We do not need lockdowns and vaccines (especially for our children given there is no opportunity for benefit to them and only opportunity for harms from the vaccine) to address the variants. This is a very misleading, false, and reckless assertion by public health officials. T
he narrative of excess deaths in the unvaccinated is false and as mentioned, is not borne out by the Israel and UK data which shows that the variants are more infectious but much less lethal, and that infections are emerging at about a 50:50 split between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. The mortality rate for the Delta based on UK data is approximately 0.5% versus 1.8% for the Alpha. Makary of Johns Hopkins reminds us that of the 300 approximate children who have died with a diagnosis of COVID, the CDC is yet to define whether it was causal or incidental and their examination reveals these deaths were accompanied by underlying illness (risk).
“100% of pediatric COVID-19 deaths were in children with a pre-existing condition…”. In terms of Delta and children, researchers (at the University of York, UCL, Imperial College London and the Universities of Bristol and Liverpool) also re-iterated that catching COVID-19 increases the risk of serious illness in those with pre-existing medical conditions and severe disabilities and thus emphasising that ‘well’ ‘healthy’ persons with no medical conditions have little issue with COVID. However, germane to the Delta issue in children, they reported that “it is reassuring that these findings reflect our clinical experience in hospital – we see very few seriously unwell children. Although this data covers up to February 2021, this hasn’t changed recently (July 2021) with the Delta variant. We hope this data will be reassuring for children and young people and their families”.
Lest one think that issues of economics and the economy are just about money, while the pandemic lockdown responses were put in place to save lives, we argue that this was and is decidedly not the case! The excess deaths, mental health costs (look at the deaths of despair that have accumulated due to the lockdowns), and all the economic links to it, the (worldwide) hunger and poverty costs, the deep economic costs, the unemployment costs, the education costs, the healthcare costs, the crime costs, have all been devastating and all-encompassing with catastrophic outcomes, many yet to be experienced! We fear the future morbidity and mortality and economic damage is yet to materialize but are coming due to the prior lockdowns.
How after 16 months of these insane, unsound, very draconian and crushing COVID-19 policies that revealed that lockdowns do not control the COVID virus, could our governments even consider lockdowns and masking again? Who re-institutes a failed policy? Lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, masking and all the other COVID restrictions have failed and no one can point anywhere to any example of a successful application. The real question is, after such devastating failures and harms to the societies, who hardens failed policies? This is absurd on every front.
Governments (US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, India, Caribbean etc.) asked for two weeks to ‘flatten the curve’ and as such, allow hospitals to respond without being overwhelmed with cases of COVID-19. Now it is 16 months later and by all accounts it has become obvious that these activities were unwarranted and based on suppositions if not outrights lies. We make this claim after learning that even conservative cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analyses that focused on all societal impacts that should have been anticipated, were not done by any nation! No one thought to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses to examine the impact of their policies?
These global governments and technocrats (and their COVID TASK Forces and advisory bodies) such as in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France etc. made these decisions without a shred of scientifically based evidence and have lost all credibility as a result. Yes, they had 16 to 17 months to prepare their hospitals and health systems, so is this really about their failures that they are placing on the backs of their populations? We argue it is their devastating failures on all fronts for the public has done its part, we did help ‘bend the curve’. We sacrificed and sheltered-in-place for over a year. It is they who have failed, all the Task Forces and all of the medical advisors.
It is clear today in July 2021 that they did not know across 16 months what they were doing and still today, have no idea what they are doing. Governments must be accountable for their actions, and in the case of the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, they must admit that there was not only no benefit from any of what they did, but the harms were immense and in some cases are or will be beyond comprehension when studied retrospectively. Well into the 17th month now we are completely astounded that our governments are considering the reintroduction of new lockdowns (and masking) because of a perceived increase in ‘cases’ of COVID-19, the latter representing false positive test results of 70-90%. Given current evidence showing that the lockdowns had no impact on the spread of SARS CoV-2, we suggest that asking for even more lockdowns now indicates clearly the presence of government incompetence at best and malfeasance at worst. Our leaders and their Task Force advisors have failed us.
This includes the television medical experts who are routinely spewing what could only be characterized as nonsense and drivel. The devastating and crushing economic losses (direct and indirect) continue and by some estimate will take decades if not the rest of the 21st century to re-balance as we pointed out above. The crushing economic harms, from shuttering of businesses and schools, and curtailing of medical services (often life preserving) with restrictions on freedom of movement has had a tremendous and massively destructive impact on the human psyche itself.
Sadly, lockdowns as mentioned, hurt the poorer and vulnerable among us by shifting the morbidity and mortality burden to the underprivileged. Lockdowns were unforgiving in this.
We locked down the ‘well’ and healthy in society, the ones best able to confront the virus successfully, and failed to protect the actual risk groups those being the vulnerable and elderly. Wealth disparities placed those who were more vulnerable economically in a very difficult position in terms of sheltering from the pandemic. They suffered incalculable harm in both life from despair and property from job losses. Meanwhile the rich emerged wealthier with deeper moats around their mansions. The deaths of despair due to the lockdowns, especially among the poorer classes, were staggering. “Local data on opioid overdoses support the hypothesis further that the pandemic and recession were associated with a 10 to 60 percent increase in deaths of despair above already high pre-pandemic levels” (AIER’s Yang and NBER).
The actions of our governments hurt the poor in societies terribly, and many could not hold on and committed suicide. Deaths of despair skyrocketed. Poor children, especially in richer western nations such as the US and Canada, self-harmed and many ended their lives. These children did not die because of the pandemic virus, but due to the ill-conceived lockdowns and school closures. Is this the legacy our governments and their COVID advisors wish to be remembered by? If so they must be inept, or full of arrogance, hubris, and self-righteousness, if they cannot recognize their catastrophic failures while continuing to operate as though the last 16 to 17 months was replete with a blistering array of successes.
We found out in the Spring of 2020, that the disease, COVID-19, could be subdivided into three distinct phases, each requiring different but nuanced and not complicated use of various drug regimens. These regimes included a cocktail of antivirals, corticosteroids, and anti-thrombotic therapeutics. And early on we determined that COVID-19 was amenable to risk stratification and that the baseline risk was prognostic on an individual’s mortality (severity of illness). We knew that this virus could be dealt with effectively with early treatment and based on a focused ‘age-risk’ targeted approach.
Yet all of this critically important information was ignored for unknown reasons. We had passed through Alice’s looking glass so that real science including real world data was somehow akin to voodoo while the bureaucrat/official experts’ pseudoscientific proclamations were the gospel. Shockingly, the media or listeners never asked the public health officials to provide any of the data/evidence or science that underpinned anything they stated. We find no evidence that more lockdowns in July 2021 after 16 months of insanity will better society and reduce risks and that includes masking of 3-year-olds, which is utterly ridiculous, and absurd, if not outright stupidity. It appears downright cruel to the children when such mandates are imposed without any basis. None. This can be considered child abuse by our governments and public health officials. The ongoing research says that children have zero risk of getting COVID-19 virus on the basis of statistical analysis. They do not spread the virus readily or develop severe illness at any statistically reportable level. The risk is statistical zero.
In relation to this Makary out of Johns Hopkins analyzed insurance claims of 48,000 children under 18 years old in the US and demonstrated that when there is no underlying medical condition such as leukemia, the mortality rate in children is zero (0). Even the WHO, not the most reliable medical group when it comes to COVID-19, is advising against the use of masks for children under 5 years of age. What data is the CDC and NIH and people like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Walensky (current Director of the CDC) seeing that we are not?
What evidence are they looking at to support their decisions to mask children July 2021 who are 2 to 3 years old and above? We think this is insane and cruel and dangerous given the potential for harm to children. We think these public health leaders are grossly inept and misinformed.
We clearly do not see the need for masking and lockdowns and if there is science and data that informs them, we certainly plead with them to provide it to us! Sadly, until now, we, the public have not seen any such evidence that supports masking and lockdowns and in particular, closures of schools! And it’s not because the data are unavailable! I
n Sweden it’s been demonstrated in a NEJM publication that of 1.95 million school children who were followed for over one year (<16 years of age), and who attended school without masks (and did not wear masks in general), there were zero (0) deaths! How then, can anyone justify the use of masks for children or school closures? Obfuscations continue from these once hallowed institutions; The CDC has over 20,000 employees on staff yet cannot tell the nation if the 335 children listed as having died with a COVID-19 diagnosis died as a direct result of having contracted COVID-19, or died incidentally but were shown to have mRNA or mRNA fragments of SARS CoV-2 on the basis of the flawed PCR tests used. Why?
The cacophony surrounding the Delta variant as mentioned, is deafening and the emergence of this variant indicates the need for reintroduction of lockdowns again.
Yet virtually all available data show that the Delta variant is less virulent, therefore causing mild disease akin to the common cold in most cases. It is more infectious than earlier variants but is easily suppressed by the human immune system and would be no match for early multidrug outpatient intervention.What is the evidence on lockdowns and other societal restrictions? Lockdowns imposed by the COVID-19 Task Force in the US and used globally have proven ineffective and harmful to the society as a strategy and must not be imposed again. Their strategies were unscientific policies and approved by governments and technocrats and sold by the hysterical media, costing many thousands of lives. The evidence is damning against these governmental and their willing allies in the media as we show below.
We found out conclusively about the catastrophic harms (consequences) and failures of lockdowns (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70). There is one SAGE advisor UK who calls for masks and lockdowns ‘forever’. Yet in the US, as of June 2021, we see that the states with the longest and most draconian lockdowns fared worse as to economic impacts, with higher unemployment numbers being recorded along with the same or even better health outcomes as compared to states with hard lockdowns and other regulations. “With employment numbers (as of May 2021), we find a similar story. The states with the worst unemployment numbers are Hawaii, New Mexico, California, and New York. Once again, these are some of the states with the most strict [COVID-19] regulations and lockdowns”.
You need not look further than the recent pivotal study from Stanford University that observed stay-at-home and business closure lockdown effects on the spread of SARS CoV-2 by Bendavid, Bhattacharya, and Ioannidis who examined restrictive versus less restrictive pandemic policies in 10 nations (8 countries with harsh lockdowns versus two with light public health restrictions).
They concluded that there was no clear benefit of lockdown restrictions on case growth in any of the 10 nations. And yet, we also have the immense burden of harms caused by lockdowns! The treatment is killing the patient.We also learned about the crushing harms of school closures (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56).
Closing schools failed miserably and severely harmed children! Closing schools was catastrophic. It might not be known widely but open schools provide a semblance of normalcy in the lives of vulnerable and at-risk youth because it is at school where school children often their get their only meal of the day, or their eyes and hearing tested. Children are protected in schools where their teachers are often the first responsible adults to take note of sexual and physical abuse in the home, which can then be attended to by the appropriate officials.
Internationally and based on research carried out at Oxford University (June 2021), we know that lockdowns and closures/restrictions (informed by research spanning 22 countries to determine the global scope and scale of missed childhood vaccinations) caused 40 million children in Pakistan to miss their polio vaccination, 61% of 10 to 23-month-olds to miss their measles vaccines in Ethiopia, and a 20% reduction in uptake of the MMR vaccine (year over year) in England, among other notable disruptions. “Obstacles to the delivery of vaccination services during the COVID-19 pandemic drove down immunization rates, especially in disadvantaged people and poorer countries…Due to vaccine delivery interruptions related to COVID-19 restrictions, 2020 saw the first global childhood vaccination reduction in 28 years. Over 80 million children in 68 countries were affected, according to UNICEF”.
Oxford researchers (Heneghan et al.) have now published (June 30th 2021, pre-print) a paper stating among other things that “Obstacles to the delivery of vaccination services during the COVID-19 pandemic drove down immunization rates, especially in disadvantaged people and poorer countries”. We project that this will result in an epidemic of usually preventable diseases in children for years to come. This is what the lockdowns have done. Decades of hard work to bring these diseases under control has been ruined and made in vain. We seem to not care about other infectious diseases that will cause catastrophic harms to society; most importantly the health of our children.
We are acting as if SARS CoV-2 is the only disease in the world that requires elimination no matter the costs in lives and to society as a whole. Along these lines we seem to be rushing to vaccinate children for COVID-19 despite them having no appreciable risk for this disease! And to reiterate we’re doing this with the knowledge that risks for diseases that can be very devastating in children and are preventable when appropriate vaccination schedules are maintained, solely to prevent COVID-19 as if it were akin to the plague! This unscientific and failed strategy must give us pause!
We even know and knew of the catastrophic harms and toxicity due to mask use (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31).
Based on the last 16 months of experience, we also know and knew of the ineffectiveness of masks (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37). Additionally, we know of the failure of mask mandates (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
.
In not one US state, nor in any nation, was there any success, any benefit whatsoever, from mask mandates! Mask use failed catastrophically in stopping transmission or deaths! Readily accessible data show there is a near 100% probability of survival from COVID-19 for those 70 years and under. This is why the young and healthiest among us should be allowed to live their lives normally without fear from harm due to this virus. After all, this is how we have learned to live with annual influenza epidemics and it is noteworthy that unlike SARS CoV-2, the influenza virus does kill children. We must be positioned to ‘protect’ the elderly and high-risk with their naturally acquired immunity and create the much desired “herd immunity.”
It is no secret now that these ‘lockdown’ and ‘school closure’ polices had very limited value in constraining the virus – and an efficacy that has often been “grossly exaggerated” in various scientific journals. For example, epidemiologists Chin, Ioannidis, Tanner, and Cripps indicated that the lockdown policies have been extraordinarily harmful. Tierney wrote that there is no evidence that lockdowns saved lives, but rather they cost lives. The harms to children of closing in-person schooling have been dramatic and catastrophic, including extremely poor learning, elevated school dropout rates, and crushing social isolation, most of which are far worse for lower income groups. We have accelerated dementia in our seniors locked down in their senior homes, and we have driven business owners, employees, and children to self-harm, to contemplate suicide, and actually take their lives. They are not dying because of SARS CoV-2 but due to the ravages of the lockdowns.
These unparalleled public health lockdown actions were enacted for a virus with an infection mortality rate (IFR) that was roughly similar (and even turned out to be lower than that for seasonal influenza). Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis identified 36 studies (43 estimates) along with an additional 7 preliminary national estimates (50 pieces of data) and concluded that among people <70 years old across the world, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.57% with a median of 0.05% across the different global locations (with a corrected median of 0.04%). Keep this in mind; 0.05%. Can one even imagine the implementation of such draconian regulations for the annual flu? Of course not! Ioannidis went further to state “people <65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in pandemic epicenters and deaths for people <65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon”.
With a focus on lockdowns, recent evidence emerged in the Northern Jutland region in Denmark. Seven of the 11 municipalities (similar and comparable) in the region went into extreme lockdown that involved a travel ban across municipal borders, closing schools, the hospitality sector and other settings and venues (in early November 2020) while the four remaining municipalities employed the usual restrictions of the rest of the nation (moderate). Researchers reported that reductions in infection had occurred prior to the lockdowns and decreased in the four municipalities without lockdowns.
Conclusion: surveillance and voluntary compliance make lockdowns essentially meaningless. A similarly comprehensive analysis of global statistics regarding COVID-19, that was conducted by Chaudhry and company involved assessment of the top 50 countries (ranked as having the most cases of COVID-19) and concluded that “rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and widespread testing were not associated with Covid mortality per million people.”
They concluded that there is (and was) no evidence that the restrictive government actions saved lives. To this date, no evidence to the contrary has emerged that favors these draconian policies previously enacted and contemplated again for the near future. When these findings are considered alongside the harms caused by these measures, it beggars the mind as to why they were ever considered in the first place. It is even more inconceivable that reintroduction of these measures is now being considered openly!COVID-19 is amenable to risk stratification and we should have and must now, address COVID-19 based on a targeted risk factor-based approach. We can treat our way out of this pandemic, and despite the ongoing narrative, we need not vaccinate our way out of it.
We know that:
1) early treatment (outpatient) is available and works (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) (see McCullough, Risch, Zelenko, Kory, Vliet, Ladapo etc.). Prompt early initiation of sequenced multidrug therapy (SMDT) is a widely and currently available solution to stem the tide of hospitalizations and death from COVID-19 and it is the optimal approach to close out this pandemic. A multipronged therapeutic approach includes 1) adjuvant nutraceuticals, 2) combination intracellular anti-infective therapy, most notably doxycycline or azithromycin 3) inhaled/oral corticosteroids, 4) antiplatelet agents/anticoagulants, and 5) supportive care including supplemental oxygen, monitoring, and telemedicine (as needed). The antivirals, corticosteroids, and anti-thrombotic, anti-platelet, anti-clotting drugs directly target the three phases of COVID illness (viral replication phase, hyperimmune inflammatory acute respiratory distress syndrome florid pneumonia phase, and thrombotic blood clotting phase).
2) When we put evolutionary pressures on a virus during a pandemic, it has more opportunity to mutate, and as a virus mutates the general understanding is that it becomes less dangerous or virulent; in effect it gets weaker. The Delta variant came out of India and has 7 mutations in the spike protein and one in another component of the virus. It is slightly more infectious in the test tube compared to the initial Wuhan variant but not more so in the community. “It is not three times more contagious” (Dr. Peter McCullough, personal communication, July 19th 2021, France Soir). Yet the Delta is resistant to the vaccines. But the good news is the new variants are mild (as compared to the original wild-type virus) and not lethal (mortality).
And vaccinated patients are contributing just as much as to COVID-19 counts as are unvaccinated patients (despite mainstream media claims to the contrary). Evidently, based on existing data, the new mRNA/DNA vaccines have little to no effect against several variants including the Delta variant.
This is exemplified by the fact that in the UK, 42% of 90,000 people who were infected with the Delta variant had been fully vaccinated! This suggests that the new vaccines only work partially or perhaps they do not work at all on the new variants that have been pushed to mutate away from vaccine-mediated protection in the midst of an active pandemic.
Logically speaking then there is in fact no reason to undergo vaccinations now as the vaccines really do not work against emerging variants. In relation to this, recent data from New Jersey suggests that vaccinations have not been able to fully protect against deaths as this news report suggests:
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... -have-died. Yet the exact opposite, ongoing vaccine mandates, is being recommended by our governments and their health advisors despite the groundswell of emerging evidence showing that the vaccines are more harmful than ever anticipated.
The overall rate of mortality for the COVID-19 caused by the Delta variant in the UK report is approximately 0.8% versus the 1.9% for the alpha variant. The good news is Delta is very mild for everyone whether they are vaccinated or not and the virus will eventually resemble the four common-cold coronaviruses (endemic, seasonal, mild symptoms akin to a mild cold). Vaccination is not needed to return to normal life. In the US, only 48% have taken the vaccine and it is likely that most Americans recognize that the vaccines are not optimally safe and have concerns. Moreover, the US is going back to normal life. The asymptomatic (i.e. healthy) ‘false-positive’ testing is driving the higher infection counts and this testing is driving a false narrative. If necessary, Delta is treatable with early outpatient treatment but does not pose much of a threat in any case in terms of it is very mild clinically.
Conclusion
We conclude not by presenting a discussion on what ‘might happen’ due to the lockdowns and school closures. We actually provided this very early on in our series of op-eds (references 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
. Now we write after 16 months of evidence that bear out our previous warnings.
In closing, we refer to the eloquent argument put forward by Dr. Scott Atlas on the failure of lockdowns and school closures globally and the totality of the evidence presented above and AIER’s troubling compilation of the crushing costs and harms of lockdowns, it is imperative that we end all lockdowns that are still in place and do not re-engage these for this virus. It is way past time that we get life back to normal for everyone but the higher risk among us. It is time we target efforts to where they are only beneficial and no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach which always leads to great harm. Such targeted more focused measures geared to specific populations (based on age and risk) can protect the most vulnerable from COVID-19, while not adversely impacting those not at risk.
The expert officials and policy makers have failed in following their oath of office. They continue to double down on failed strategies. They continue to put the blame of ongoing SARS CoV-2 infections on those of us who opposed lockdowns and school closures. They are using a rather nefarious tactic whereby it is being claimed somehow that those who opposed and questioned these illogical and unreasonable restrictions and mandates are contrarians, dissenters, skeptics or even conspiracy theorists. And that
because we have merely expressed our disagreement with the measures used that we are somehow to blame for their failure to rein in the pandemic. In so doing they are fantasizing, which then allows them to not admit that it was their policies that have led to the huge problems we face now. To reiterate, it was not our opposition and arguments against the specious, failed, and unsound policies that are the problem!
Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who helped eradicate smallpox, was a pioneer in pandemic response modeling and provided us a road map that we have failed to follow here, and seems about to fail again, when he wrote about the 1957-58 Asian Flu pandemic and stated “The pandemic was such a rapidly spreading disease that it became quickly apparent to U.S. health officials that efforts to stop or slow its spread were futile. Thus, no efforts were made to quarantine individuals or groups, and a deliberate decision was made not to cancel or postpone large meetings such as conferences, church gatherings, or athletic events for the purpose of reducing transmission. No attempt was made to limit travel or to otherwise screen travelers. Emphasis was placed on providing medical care to those who were afflicted and on sustaining the continued functioning of community and health services.” His prophetic words were crystal clear then as now!
Dr. Henderson along with Dr. Thomas Inglesby also wrote, “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. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.” Overall, these giants of science told us that there are several options available to governments of free societies to mitigate and ameliorate the spread of pathogens and to preserve life and societal integrity (i.e., traditional public health responses which are less intrusive and disturbing) and the closing society or parts of it, whilst enforcing the use of invalid measures (masking) is not one of them.
We agree with Dr. Martin Kulldorff (co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration) who explained that it is critical that the bureaucrats, the technocrats, the public health system, the Task Force experts, and medical experts (on television also) listen to the public who are the ones actually living and experiencing the public health consequences of their forced lockdown and other actions. The public has been omitted from any of these discussions and it is absurd and reckless given that the public seems much more aware and understanding of the pandemic. In sum, we found out that Social isolation due to the lockdowns has devastating effects and cannot be disregarded and government bureaucrats must recognize that shutting down a society leads to suicidal thoughts and behaviour and excess deaths (deaths of despair to name one). Renewed lockdowns will impose a similar harm again, we lost hundreds of thousands needlessly before. We do not need to repeat that mistake again! The very fabric of society is at risk.
It behooves us as the guardians of our future to remember these words; “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
