“We now know U.S. scientists collaborated with their Chinese counterparts on controversial gain-of-function experiments and that grants from NIAID flowed to the Wuhan lab through various channels. It’s highly likely that U.S. researchers provided the skills and our government offered some funding that allowed Chinese researchers to continue independently tinkering with deadly viruses until one accidentally escaped the lab. From the start, the NIAID head used his enormous bureaucratic clout to make sure no one explored that relationship. While Dr. Fauci repeatedly told the media that the Covid lab-leak scenario was “just conspiracy theories,” he was conspiring to quash questions about his agency’s possible role.”
– James B. Meigs, in the Wall St Journal ($)
Here are a couple more paragraphs for those of you unable or unwilling to get past the paywall. I think it is notable that a bastion of free market, centre-right opinion, the Wall Street effing Journal no less, is letting rip in this vein:
How did Dr. Fauci enforce public unanimity, despite these scientists’ private doubts? Power and money, for one thing. As the head of the NIAID, he operated with minimal political oversight and supervised a $6 billion research budget. Politics also played a role. Once President Trump mentioned the possibility of a lab leak in April 2020, few scientists or media figures wanted to be seen as carrying water for the White House. For science reporters, the question of Covid’s origin should have been the story of a lifetime. But almost no one touched the topic for the first year of the pandemic. When a few later did, a New York Times reporter said, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
This is not the way a healthy democracy responds to a disaster. After the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, President Reagan appointed a blue-ribbon commission to investigate. NASA opened its books and answered every question. When a mysterious virus began killing thousands of Americans a week, Dr. Fauci and other public-health leaders did the opposite. They gaslit reporters, stonewalled congressional inquiries and evaded Freedom of Information Act requests. In two recently released emails, another Dr. Fauci ally urged the Wuhan lab’s Dr. Shi not to share information with a respected American virus researcher. Talk about a coverup.
A reason why this matters as much as it does in my view is that it shows the extent of the intellectual and moral corruption of parts of the scientific/public health/media/public policy community, and that corruption is a major reason for loss of trust, a loss that alas extends to those who don’t deserve it. And it also shows how people are more willing to give cover to the likes of a brutal regime – China – than they are to be open about the causes of this pandemic. It raises questions about the merits or otherwise of “gain of function” research and why countries should engage in it, given that on a risk-reward tradeoff, chances of catastrophe, even if small, are enough to get people to press the “no” button. For that matter, I wonder what happens when such research intersects with AI, but that’s a topic for another time.
This virus originated in a city that has one of the world’s central labs for doing research on exactly this kind of virus and does gain of function research on this kind of virus, and which is known for its poor safety record.
How is it possible that people didn’t automatically assume it was the source unless proven otherwise by overwhelming evidence? Surely the only serious question was “was it an accident or was it deliberate or maybe somewhere between the two?”
Instead we got a “it might look that way but we scientists have secret knowledge that you plebeians don’t have, we looked at the magic DNA and used our huge brains to discern things that you could not possibly understand, and you just have to trust us that it is from a wet market. Oh and these scientists over there who disagree with us, they are evil and we are going to destroy them.”
It is so outrageous, and the outrage is exceeded only by the fact that nobody has gone to jail, in fact nobody has even been fired. We can only hope that Fauci suffers some consequences over his contempt of congress; small comfort though it is when the man got rich off the massive suffering and death he is at least indirectly responsible for. Most likely though he will not, either from the wobbly republican senate or a 95% “we love Fauci” DC grand jury.
It is simply shocking that a public servant who continues to draw a gigantic pension from the public treasury would plead the fifth in front of a congressional committee, particularly so while being immunized and, consequently having no 5th amendment privilege.
How can we ever trust the public science establishment ever again? Certainly not until they apologize and accept blame, or at the very least stop gaslighting us that they were right all along.
@Fraser Orr
I suspect the only serious question to those directly concerned was “Will I get the blame for this?”
That Fauci nearly got away clean with this massive coverup surprises me far less than the fact that nearly half the population still believe (firmly!) that masks were a good idea, that the mRNA vaccines were exactly what they purported to be, that it’s racist to assert that the Wuhan virus (also known after much Woke flailing as COVID) originated in Wuhan China, and that it’s still important to Trust The Science™.
They are the Immovable Herd meeting the Irresistible Force of actual events. What will happen next?
The fact that Trump failed to fire Fauci right at the beginning is pretty strong evidence that Trump really is as dumb as his detractors say he is.
What I want to know is why were US governemnt departments funding weapons research IN AN ENEMY COUNTRY!!!!???? Were they funding V2 research in 1940s Germany?
George, I believe you are very much mistaken. Trump would have been pilloried had he laid hands on Fauci. Fauci was, after all, the embodiment of “science” itself. To fire Fauci would have instigated yet another impeachment. Trump was in an untenable position with regards to Fauci.
“nobody has gone to jail”
Shit to that, these actions are treason, under US law they should be put up against a wall and shot. The Rosenbergs did less.
US Congress said, no funding for gain-of-function research – it’s too dangerous, and the entire point of it is to enable bio-war.
Many researchers would lose their incomes, PLUS there is a valid point that the rest of the world isn’t going to halt, and we lose automatically if we let everyone else blow past us on a major weapon vector.
So top dawgs quietly transferred lots of grant money to foreign labs – easier to hide the legal violation when they all kept on doing gain-of-function testing.
And – CHINA?! – why TF would we do this with China?! Well, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I guess. They won’t get too far ahead of us if we share.
We won’t tell them everything we know, we don’t expect them to tell us everything they know, but maybe in the differences in what they tell us and what we know they should tell us, something will be revealed.
@bobby b
And – CHINA?! – why TF would we do this with China?! Well, keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I guess. They won’t get too far ahead of us if we share.
Perhaps one reason would be to have involvement to ensure that they do the research safely since a mistake could badly affect you with or without belligerent intent.
I think we can definitely label that a fail.
I may be a little cynical but I suspect that NASA would have attempted a cover up if there was any chance of muddying the waters, but in the circumstances it wasn’t going to be easy.
There’s an amusing 70s romp on this theme called Capricorn One.
The first rule of bureaucracy is CYA. We should be surprised only if and when that is not the first move. What is extraordinary is that it’s taken six and a half years to uncover the A, and it’s still not fully exposed even now.
The Swamp has more circles, bolgias and rounds than the Inferno.
Covid came from the lab in Wuhan – Tony Fauci and Peter Daszak (Peter Daszak of the Eco-Health Alliance and World Health Organisation) and the rest of the international establishment, knew that – but denied it, repeatedly. Tony Fauci also urged that people be allowed to travel from Wuhan to the United States – he seems to have wanted the maximum chance of the virus spreading from Wuhan into the United States. The World Health Organisation (and other such) also, at first, downplayed the risk of the virus – in order to discourage nations from putting restrictions on travel from China.
Tony Fauci (and the rest of the international establishment) knew that the “lockdowns” were medically useless – yet still demanded them, partly to inflict harm on society – but also as a sort of trial run for the forms of social control they desire. It is not a surprise that the all (all – not just Sweden) countries that did NOT lockdown had a LOWER (not higher – lower) Covid death rate than the United States, Britain, and other countries that did lockdown.
Tony Fauci (and the rest of the international establishment) knew that there were effective Early Treatments for Covid – but they denied this, repeatedly. As they wished to have an excuse for their mass injection program.
Tony Fauci (and the rest of the international establishment) knew that the injections were dangerous and did NOT prevent people contracting Covid, passing on Covid, or dying of Covid – but, repeatedly, said the injections were safe and effective.
How many people will die (or not be born) due to the long term effects of the injections remains to be seen.
Don’t forget that a full reckoning involves the main proponent of Operation Warp Speed: Mr. Trump.
Don’t get me wrong: the Fauci cartel had that teed up, whispered in Trump’s ear that he could be the hero of the moment…what politician, or NY real estate mogul, could resist that?
Still, the reckoning needs to include Trump. After the midterms!
That’s the way to go: since we cannot inflict enough pain on Fauci as a deterrent, we must inflict collective punishment on the medical/scientific establishment. As a deterrent.
NB: I say that without any irony.
And a disclaimer: I have a PhD from a medical school in North-America. That does not make me a member of the establishment. Nobody asks me my opinion.
@GregWA
Don’t forget that a full reckoning involves the main proponent of Operation Warp Speed: Mr. Trump.
Although I like to point this out to my “Fauci saved us” friends, I think in fairness to the President this was a really good move on his part, even if it didn’t work out great. A major problem was developing and he jumped in to clear away the bureaucratic obstacles. That is a good thing for a President to be doing. As you perhaps know I am not unwilling to criticize the president, his focus on foreign policy and neglect of domestic policy has been dreadful both from a practical and political point of view. But hindsight is 20/20, and given the information available at the time an accelerated development of a vaccine was surely the right thing to do.
@Snorri Godhi
That’s the way to go: since we cannot inflict enough pain on Fauci as a deterrent, we must inflict collective punishment on the medical/scientific establishment. As a deterrent.
That is such a bullshit thing to say. I don’t want to inflict pain on any but the people who caused so much misery. However, trust is earned and easily broken, and the simple fact is that the medical establishment both here in the USA and all around the world just had a major violation of all of our trust. They need to earn it back, and they are not at all going about it the right way with all their cover ups and dissembling. You will find nobody more regretful than I, of the distrust of science they have all brought about by their shocking behavior.
I don’t want to be distrustful of the public medical establishment, I just think they have shown that they are not currently worthy of trust. Doesn’t mean I don’t trust my doctor, I do, literally, trust him with my life.
Isn’t that how most things work these days? We tend to trust the scientists who design things and the engineers who make and repair them. Think about the things in your home. Vehicles, machines, TVs, computers, phones . . . how do all of the pieces of a phone work? So many things, we trust the people who make them.
How many medicines do you take in a year? You accept that the scientists have used their huge brains to invent them, using secret knowledge the plebeians don’t have . . .
I have colleagues who worked in Covid wards. Everything they described fitted with the Official Narrative. Lots of deaths in 2020, from the same new disease. In 2021, as the vaccine roll-out progressed, less people admitted with Covid, those admitted were less sick – the exception being those who hadn’t had the vaccine. No use of Early Treatment, yet people were less sick.
If Covid was as dangerous as the establishment said, and the vaccines didn’t work, why did it get less serious in 2021-22? Without the sudden use of Early Treatment?
If Covid wasn’t dangerous, what killed so many people in 2020? Are those colleagues lying to me and therefore a couple of nurses in an undistinguished UK hospital are part of the conspiracy? If they are, it can’t be limited to just one hospital, it must be at the same extent worldwide.
We use compressed gas in our labs – the delivery driver spoke of taking lorries of full oxygen cylinders to that hospital, and collecting as many empties, every day. Was he, driving a lorry for BOC, part of the conspiracy? Or was someone emptying them to fool him?
It’s the numbers. Either millions of people are involved, or they’re all ignoring what they see to go along with the Official Narrative.
It’s 5+ years since the vaccine rollout started. Where are the millions, even billions of dead that were predicted due to vaccine injury?
@Lee Moore
I may be a little cynical but I suspect that NASA would have attempted a cover up if there was any chance of muddying the waters, but in the circumstances it wasn’t going to be easy.
It is hard to cover up your rocket exploding on live TV, especially when you encouraged school kids all across the nation to watch live “The first school teacher in space!”. And they all watched their hero blow up in a ball of flames.
Given that teachers, while very useful on earth, are not much use in space, this must surely count as the worst PR stunt in history.
Fraser:
But the medical establishment did cause your misery, by neglecting to ostracize Fauci.
What’s the difference?
Your doctor is not a member of the establishment; otherwise, he’d have no time for you.
GregWA
The opponents of President Trump were far more pro lockdown than he was – and dismissed Early Treatments with vicious hatred (precisely because they knew the Early Treatments were effective – if Early Treatment was ineffective they would not have cared, as they would not have been a threat to agenda of lockdowns, totalitarian social control, and the toxic injections), as for the injections – the stuff I was injected with (twice) had nothing to do with President Trump. The AstraZeneca stuff was so dangerous that even the British government (quietly) stopped it – whilst, continue to lie about it. Prime Minister Sunak blatantly lied in the House of Commons in 2024 – saying the injections were safe – there were a thousand ways that Prime Minister Sunak could have deflected questions from Andrew Bridgen and Christopher Chope – but he choose to blatantly lie, I watched him do it – and he seemed to laugh as he did,it was chilling.
If it had not been for President Trump (bad though he may be) the injections (the so called “vaccines” – which were not vaccines) would have been compulsory in the United States. There would also have been a nation-wide lockdown – individual States (such as South Dakota) would not have been allowed to opt out, and other States (such as Florida) would not have been allowed to end the lockdown when the understood the terrible harm it was doing – yet again all (all) the nations that did NOT lockdown had a LOWER Covid death rate than the nations, such as the United Kingdom, that did lockdown.
Is President Trump wrong to boast about the “vaccines”? Of course he is wrong (horribly wrong) – but the alternative rulers would have been vastly worse.
As far as I know even Senator Rand Paul has been a bit quiet about the Covid “vaccines” (I would be happy to be mistaken about that) – the only Senator I have seen pointing out the harm the injections have done has been Senator Ron Johnson.
But China wasn’t an enemy country. Not to their America, the Deep State of America. China was a valuable friend and ally against their real enemy: Those deplorable right-wing tea-party bitter-clinging revolting peasants. The kulaks. The evil subhuman mutants of flyover country.
I THOUGHT I heard someone calling my name!
Pretty good — nay, excellent class analysis.
Deep Lurker – yes indeed.
“I don’t want to be distrustful of the public medical establishment, I just think they have shown that they are not currently worthy of trust. Doesn’t mean I don’t trust my doctor, I do, literally, trust him with my life.”
Not in the UK you wouldn’t. The UK medical profession is completely bought and paid for by a combination of the State and Big Pharma. There are no doctors who can stand up to them, if they do they will be struck off the doctors register and lose their livelihoods. Patients mean nothing to UK doctors, even private ones, because if they attempted to do something that was in the patient’s best interests but ran counter to ‘public policy’ then they would be toast.
You can see this play out over the whole trans thing – its manifestly NOT in the patient’s best interest to chemically castrate a teenager who is going through some sort of mental breakdown (or indeed is being manipulated by evil people, who may even be their parents) yet doctors have routinely done exactly that, with zero consequences for their careers. Yet if a doctor were to start questioning the value and safety of something like statins for example, all hell breaks loose. Ask Dr Malcolm Kendrick.
So no, do not trust your UK based doctor. He has his own vested interests to put first. You as a patient come a long way down the line.
Jim – that is largely true in the United States as well.
Although there were more brave doctors, who risked everything (their license, their pension, everything) to treat their patients with effective Early Treatments, in the United States than in the United Kingdom.
As far as I know, no one (not one person) in the NHS of “GingerDave”, did this. “Lots of people died in 2020” – yes they did, and they did NOT need to die.
And, yes, the “Trans” mania, especially as regards children, is a disgrace – an utter disgrace, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Thank you, Paul and Fraser, for reminding me about Trump’s actions early in the pandemic.
As Trump reflects on his role in the panedmic, now that the heat on Fauci is up to “simmer”, hopefully headed toward “sear”, I hope he see that he can make up for whatever missteps happened under his previous watch. My favorite suggestion for him is to put Ivermectin on TrumpRx and at costs as cheap as any where, i.e., India. That means about $0.05 to $0.10 per dose vs the $2 per dose we have to pay now, if we can even find it.
This does 2 things: 1) give us a cheap and effective medicine for lots of things besides COVID and 2) would drive all the right people more batty than they already are. Trump should do it if only for reason 2 which would certainly be his main motivator.
I’ve written to the President with this suggestion. I have no idea why he doesn’t listen to me, given how smart he is?! 🙂
GregWA – President Trump could indeed be a lot better (yes – most certainly), but he could also be a lot worse – and the Democrats are a lot worse.
If they take control of Congress after the midterms – it will be an utter disaster. Yes the Republicans are useless – but the Democrats will be Hell on Earth.
What Gingerdave said.
The COVID2 pandemic was real, and was bad.
All the rest is speculation.
Maybe “early treatment” could have helped and maybe not (probably not).
Maybe lockdowns helped and maybe not (maybe helped a little).
Maybe the vaccines helped (probably), and there is no evidence that they caused widespread harm. (I took one).
Masks, hand washing? Maybe it helped a little, but it surely did no harm.
The pandemic was real (whether lab caused or not), and there was no good answer, and people tried many things… They did what they could.
And Dr. Fauci is a liar, and scum, as many government employees are, and other non government people are too.
Jacob, great list. I agree with most of it.
But you might also frame it as “the pandemic” and “the pandemic response by governments”.
You already do this by citing things like mask requirements, lockdowns, vaccine requirements, etc.
But an explicit framing as “what the COVID virus did” and “what governments did” is helpful I think. For one, it helps us sort out the death and destruction due solely to the virus and that due to the government’s incredibly inept reaction–because they were listening to so-called experts.
Admittedly, that sorting is not clean–we can’t necessarily know exactly how much a given death is due to the virus itself (“grandmother would have died no matter what anyone did”) vs the government (“grandmother would still be alive if only Gov Cuomo hadn’t put her in a nursing home with huge numbers of infected, highly contagious people”) but the framing and assumptions behind any analysis are critical first steps.
@Jacob
The COVID2 pandemic was real, and was bad.
It was real and it was bad, but we don’t really know how bad because the statistics we deeply compromised. I know people who died, I know medical personnel who worked in hospitals and said it was pretty crazy. So it was bad, but we do not at all know how bad — medical personnel ALWAYS say things are pretty crazy.
Maybe “early treatment” could have helped and maybe not (probably not).
Many doctors who worked on the patients said it absolutely made a huge difference. The other doctors who said it didn’t, didn’t try, so they don’t really know.
Maybe lockdowns helped and maybe not (maybe helped a little).
But you are only thinking of the first order effects. Did lockdowns maybe prevent some transmission? Possibly, we don’t know. However, data does not support this well. We have solid comparisons on this between states that had different lock down severities, and the data was clear that lockdowns made no difference. This was not some clever data analysis, I did it myself by pulling population densities of states and reported covid rates per state in April of 2020, right at the beginning of the panic. And it was CRYSTAL clear that locked down states did no better than less locked down states, in fact they sometimes did worse. For example California, hyper locked down did slightly worse than Florida one of these least locked down states, despite the fact that Florida has a much larger portion of more vulnerable older people. I did this with a web browser, how come the health authorities, or, god help us, the press did that same analysis.
Nonetheless, if we accept your premise what we do know is that they caused MASSIVE harm. Aside from the enormous economic impacts of closing down the economy, legion small businesses went out of business, trillions were added to the national debt, but they also had other effects such as people delaying going to the doctor so not catching diseases like cancer early enough for treatment, or gigantic learning loss with kids (who were at no risk of Covid) which is showing up loudly in colleges, and perhaps biggest of all the acceptance of the people that the government can, at their own will, just shut down the economy. The cost of lockdowns was perhaps the biggest cost of Covid. If the cure causes more harm than the disease then it is a poor doctor indeed who prescribes it.
Maybe the vaccines helped (probably), and there is no evidence that they caused widespread harm. (I took one).
Tell that to the thousands of mothers who had to watch their children die of myocarditis from a vaccine that kids gained no benefit at all from. How many? We don’t know since the government systematically lied about health statistics.
Masks, hand washing? Maybe it helped a little, but it surely did no harm.
The infrastructure cost billions of dollars for no significant benefit. By what possible interpretation is that “causing no harm”?
The pandemic was real (whether lab caused or not), and there was no good answer, and people tried many things… They did what they could.
It is correct that hindsight is 20/20, and so we did throw things against the wall to see what worked, but it was evident pretty early on these things didn’t make a difference and were causing great harm. The failure to change course is malfeasance of the worst kind.
And Dr. Fauci is a liar, and scum, as many government employees are, and other non government people are too.
Well at least we can agree on that.
Anyone who still (now) says that Early Treatment “probably could not have helped” does not know what they are talking about – Early Treatment prevented people dying, if saving lives is your objective (it was NOT the objective of the international establishment) then that is “helping”.
But then Jacob agrees with “GindgerDave” – a leftist troll, who appears to have connections with the NHS.
“There is no evidence” that the injections (which were not vaccines) caused harm – they killed and maimed people Jacob, I think that is causing harm – unless you want to kill and maim people. Have you not even bothered to follow Senator Ron Johnson’s investigation of this?
As for the lockdowns “helping” – yes they helped undermine Western societies, which is exactly what they were meant to do.
GingerDave is a different matter – he is a troll, it is his function to write what he does, fair enough.
But after all the discussions of Covid we have had here over the last six years – for JACOB to write what he did, was profoundly shocking.
It was as if the Gentleman had never been here before – had never read anything that has been on this site (or, indeed, in many other places), about Covid, over the last six years.
@Paul Marks
It was as if the Gentleman had never been here before – had never read anything that has been on this site (or, indeed, in many other places), about Covid, over the last six years.
Paul, I find this sort of response really annoying. His comments were an attempt at a response from the other side and I appreciated it, and tried to address them honestly to put the other side. I think to dismiss him as a troll, when he did not seem to me to have any malicious intent, is part of the problem. Part of the problem that mischaracterization of people with whom we disagree as having bad intent rather than just mistaken — I don’t agree with that approach at all. I think we should assume good intention on the part of our interlocutors, and discuss honestly with them until any bad intentions become apparent.
It seems to me that hearing from the other perspective, even when we disagree, is a good thing both to help our own understanding and to have the opportunity to help theirs too.
It was as if the Gentleman had never been here before
Well, I’m here frequently. I read most of what you and others wrote here. Not everything you write is God’s own Truth.
So, people can disagree with you on some matters. I think “Early Treatment” is nuts. I think many people refrained from saying so out of politeness and respect.
As to other claims – lockdowns, masks, etc. there is no hard evidence either way.
About vaccines: there is no evidence of widespread damage; claiming that there were numerous deaths and info on it was suppressed by the authorities is a conspiration theory. The authorities are not able to achieve such perfect suppression of knowledge, in all countries of the world simultaneously. There is no proof that there was an excess of deaths due to vaccines.
Did the vaccines play a crucial role in ending the pandemic? I don’t know. I believed, before the vaccines, that the flu will die out anyway within some months, naturally, like most flu epidemics do. It did. But, it is quite possible that the vaccines helped.
@Jacob
As to other claims – lockdowns, masks, etc. there is no hard evidence either way.
So if there is no hard evidence either way then you must surely agree they were a very bad thing to do. Because even if medically neutral they were EXTREMELY harmful in other non medical ways. For example, you will find many news articles from college professors lamenting the shocking drop in preparation of college kids due the the education gap they suffered meaning they have had to start running remedial classes. You will surely be aware of how many small businesses were destroyed by these restrictions, or how much they added to the national debt. You will surely have read some of the articles explaining how very young kids had delayed speech because they could not see the mouths of their parents or teachers to help teach them how to form the words. You will surely be aware of how many people lost their jobs and their pensions because they did not want to participate. And surely you must be aware of the bucketloads of money that were spent on something that, by your argument, made no difference either way?
And surely if it “made no difference either way” you must be utterly shocked that our government ordered people to stay home, to use a useless medical device, to rob them of their liberty like some totalitarian state. And surely you must be shocked by how extremely easy it was for the government to get people to comply with these horrific restrictions on their freedom if, as you say it “made no difference either way.”?
About lockdowns – it is clear and agreed by all that they did enormous damage. What is in doubt is whether they did any good (prevented deaths). They might have prevented some deaths. They were, in my opinion, too strict and too long, despite the risk of more death cases.
But some measures were universally adopted, like travel bans (border closure) and banning of mass gatherings (theaters, sports events etc.). No country was totally free of lockdowns. And only one, Sweden, had mild lockdowns, voluntary and not mandatory. And it is tricky having voluntary partial lockdowns – for example – keeping schools open but making teacher attendance optional.
This is just insane. Typical of Anglosphere libertarianism, i am afraid; but i am not afraid to say that the Emperor has no clothes.
— First, let me clarify that i never had to endure a lockdown, so i am very well aware that lockdowns were not **NECESSARY**.
But why did were lockdowns not NECESSARY in Estonia? (or in its neighbors, or in the Far East.) Because “the curve” was “flattened” before any exponential rise appeared. In other words, because these countries had rational governance.
Yes, even Sweden did take early action to flatten the curve, contrary to Anglo-libertarian fantasies.
— But now, let’s look at countries that did NOT have rational governance; ie, countries in which an exponential rise was observed.
AFAIK in every single one of those countries (or jurisdictions, eg US States) lockdowns were enacted.
And, lo and behold, in every single one of those jurisdictions (AFAIK) an exponential rise in new infections turned into an exponential decay a couple of weeks later; and an exponential rise in excess deaths turned into an exponential decay 3 weeks later.
That provides ample justification for my claim that it is insane to doubt that lockdowns prevented transmission-
In my biased opinion.
@Jacob
About lockdowns – it is clear and agreed by all that they did enormous damage. What is in doubt is whether they did any good (prevented deaths)
But this is a curious argument Jacob. You are saying they may have prevented some deaths, but this is in doubt. So we cause enormous damage and you are not sure if we saved any lives. You know if we banned the use of automobiles in the United States we would save 30,000 lives a year, it would cause enormous damage, but we definitely would save all those lives, not “in doubt”, without a doubt. But I presume you don’t advocate banning automobiles.[*]
But we did something that is in the same ballpark of “enormous damage” but you think they are justified because of theoretical, possible, in doubt “prevented deaths”? That doesn’t seem like a fair trade off at all.
And of course the lockdowns undoubtedly caused deaths though the inaccessibility of medical care, plus a huge increase in drug overdoses from depression (raising from 17k in 2000 to 100k in 2022) delayed medical screening and a shocking rise in deaths from Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients due to inaccessibility of care givers.
But here is an interesting statistic: during the pandemic there was a DRAMATIC decrease in other respiratory viruses, such as influenza going from 26,000 in the 2019 season to 6,300 in the 2020 season, then going back up the following years after lock down relief. Now part of this is sleight of hand by dishonest healthcare bureaucrats reclassifying flu as covid to boost their case, but let’s assume that these numbers are real. Here are 20,000 deaths that, but this argument, were saved by the lock downs. Not “maybe” not “in doubt” but definitely. Doesn’t that mean we should institute a permanent lockdown to prevent those deaths? They are back up to 25,000 a year in a post lock down world. So, it seems to me by your argument we should be on permanent lock down. I’d honestly be interested to here your opinion on this.
[*] It is also worth noting that the more FSD vehicles we have on the road the lower this number would be, dramatically lower if FSD dominated. And yet our safety obsessed government continues to largely ban the use of FSD in most states and countries. Even if FSD is not perfect it is certainly dramatically better than the average driver, and preferring (if not eventually requiring) FSD would be more convenient, not less. So that makes no sense to me at all.
My opinion is this: (I am by no means an expert or anything near it). Mandatory and comprehensive and long lockdowns as practiced in MOST countries, and advocated by Fauci, were an error. But, in a desperately bad pandemic, under intense pressure, people react hysterically, and err. This is – let’s say – somewhat understandable and expected.
In hindsight I would say that that shorter, and milder (voluntary – as in Sweden) lockdowns would have been better, even if the result was some more death cases.
In Sweden, the government decided that it has no constitutional authority to impose strict, mandatory lockdowns. I wish more governments would have respected individual rights and their constitutions, and adopted the model of mostly voluntary lockdowns.
The rush to impose coercive and draconian lockdowns by force was ugly. But, that is hindsight.
I mean: the main problem was the bad pandemic. Not the lockdowns.
@jacob
I mean: the main problem was the bad pandemic. Not the lockdowns.
One final thought for you on this Jacob as to the relative importance of the pandemic and the lockdowns: pandemics come and go, tyranny comes but rarely goes.
And yet, in Italy, there was a lockdown only in the 1st wave.
I never thought that i’d see the day when Italian governance would become less insane than that of English-speaking countries; but here we go.
PS: Even in Italy, the lockdown should have been applied only to the North, or some parts of it. But that would have required controls on long-range travel within Italy.