French high-school students make their case FOR lockdowns...
Violence Erupts as High School Students Clash With Police on Streets of Paris (and vid)
"Teachers and students have been opposing the government's decision to keep schools open during the nationwide lockdown, arguing that being forced into a crowded environment puts their health at risk..."
Canadians were 85% against Bill 51. The Liberals supported Harper on it anyway promising to "fix it" if they won the next election.
C 51 actually had majority support in the early days:
February 19, 2015 – Canadians are firmly supportive of Bill C-51, the federal government’s proposed anti-terror legislation that contains a range of measures that would, among other things, provide law enforcement agencies with expanded powers.
Four-in-five (82%) adult Canadians surveyed online by the Angus Reid Institute say they support the draft law, with fully one-quarter (25%) saying they “strongly” support C-51.
Key Findings:
- Support for some individual elements of the legislation is stronger than for the draft law as a whole
- One-in-three (36%) respondents say the bill “does not go far enough”
- Most Canadians (69%) want additional oversight to ensure law enforcement’s powers aren’t abused
- The majority (63%) also say they trust those agencies to access and use Canadians’ personal information only for anti-terrorism purposes and nothing else
More evidence from the UK that lockdowns work:
It’s well-known that local restrictions failed to prevent the autumn surge in COVID-19 infections. The areas placed under such restrictions during the summer were among the worst affected in the autumn.
Despite this, it is now becoming commonplace to claim that the Tier 3 restrictions were responsible for bringing the R rate down ahead of the national lockdown. But does this stand up to scrutiny?
In at least seven areas placed under Tier 3 restrictions in October, including the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham, positive case numbers had peaked and begun to decline days, in some cases weeks, before the new restrictions came into effect (let alone allowing for the delay in their having an impact).
- Liverpool was placed under Tier 3 on October 14th but positive cases had been declining since October 8th, 6 days earlier.
- West Lancashire was placed under Tier 3 on October 17th but positive cases had been declining since October 13th, 4 days earlier.
- Manchester was placed under Tier 3 on October 23rd but positive cases had been declining since October 1st, 22 days earlier.
- Sheffield was placed under Tier 3 on October 24th but positive cases had been declining since October 8th, 16 days earlier.
- Warrington was placed under Tier 3 on October 29th but positive cases had been declining since October 27th, 2 days earlier.
- Nottingham was placed under Tier 3 on October 29th but positive cases had been declining since October 9th, 20 days earlier.
- Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire was placed under Tier 3 on October 30th but positive cases had been declining since October 20th, 10 days earlier.
This suggests local lockdowns are not necessary to end the current seasonal epidemic of Covid – if that’s what it is, and not simply a “casedemic” – and that other factors such as population immunity are more important. The lack of a second surge in London, hit hard in spring, is also telling.
Within days 85% of Canadians did not support bill C 51. That's why Trudeau promised to change it even as he voted in favor.
If a leaky boat has five holes fixing one of them won't keep the boat afloat. ALL of the countries that have been successful have had lockdowns.
Canada's problem isn't lockdowns it is the opposite because we are not trying to stop the spread, only slow it down. Provinces are saying okay, no social events, not even in your own home, but everybody can still go to work and school. People are rightfully deciding that if they can go to school and work they can also see friends and family.
I knew from the beginning it was a ridiculous message.
At this point we should be telling people in advance that we will have to do a full shutdown starting next week in order to reopen just before Christmas. For Chistmas/New Year's we will fully reopen for events personal and public for up to 500 people. Immediately following New Years we will go back into semi-lockdown while waiting for the results from opening up for the holidays. Many businesses make a huge portion of their yearly income during Christmas.
If a leaky boat has five holes fixing one of them won't keep the boat afloat. ALL of the countries that have been successful have had lockdowns.
That is absolutely not true. There are many geographic factors that influence the success or failure of a country in the covid pandemic, and many of these "success stories" turned out to not be after all. If you look at the Worldometers page, you will see that Sweden did better in deaths per million than Peru, Spain, France, the UK, and Italy, all of which did lock down. Look further at Belarus. They never locked down, even went ahead with a big parade in May, and only once did they record a daily death toll in the double digits.
Provinces are saying okay, no social events, not even in your own home, but everybody can still go to work and school. People are rightfully deciding that if they can go to school and work they can also see friends and family.
As people should. What's the point in surviving the coronavirus if doing so means you have to give up everything that makes your life worth living?
At this point we should be telling people in advance that we will have to do a full shutdown starting next week in order to reopen just before Christmas. For Chistmas/New Year's we will fully reopen for events personal and public for up to 500 people. Immediately following New Years we will go back into semi-lockdown while waiting for the results from opening up for the holidays. Many businesses make a huge portion of their yearly income during Christmas.
They have no inteniton of allowing things to be open for Christmas. They are dangling that carrot in front of us to get us to agree to more lockdowns. It is a basic emotional blackmail technique Susan Forward identified that is known as tantalizing. The blackmailer gains compliance by promising a vague reward for a target complying with a demand the target does not want to comply with, only for the reward to be removed and kicked further down the road as the time for the reward approaches. We were initially told that things would be closed for 3 weeks. When it became obvious towards the end that they would stay closed, people should have clued in and started asking questions, not blindly going along.
The British Medical Journal calls out supression of science:
Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health.1 Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.
The UK’s pandemic response provides at least four examples of suppression of science or scientists. First, the membership, research, and deliberations of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) were initially secret until a press leak forced transparency.2 The leak revealed inappropriate involvement of government advisers in SAGE, while exposing under-representation from public health, clinical care, women, and ethnic minorities. Indeed, the government was also recently ordered to release a 2016 report on deficiencies in pandemic preparedness, Operation Cygnus, following a verdict from the Information Commissioner’s Office.34
...
Politicians often claim to follow the science, but that is a misleading oversimplification. Science is rarely absolute. It rarely applies to every setting or every population. It doesn’t make sense to slavishly follow science or evidence. A better approach is for politicians, the publicly appointed decision makers, to be informed and guided by science when they decide policy for their public. But even that approach retains public and professional trust only if science is available for scrutiny and free of political interference, and if the system is transparent and not compromised by conflicts of interest.
Suppression of science and scientists is not new or a peculiarly British phenomenon. In the US, President Trump’s government manipulated the Food and Drug Administration to hastily approve unproved drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir.15 Globally, people, policies, and procurement are being corrupted by political and commercial agendas.16
The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines.17 Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates.18
Should grandparents be separated from their grandchildren on safety grounds?
Grandparenting can relieve stress, improve socialization, encourage physical activity and even boost longevity. In one analysis, researchers examined data from more than 500 people ages 70 and older, who took part in the Berlin Aging Study. They found that seniors who provided some care, whether for their grandchildren or others, had a lower risk of death over a 20-year period than those who did not help others. (Grandparents who were primary caregivers for grandchildren were not included in the study.)
Caregiving not only provides physical and emotional rewards but also improves cognitive stimulation, according to Ronan Factora, M.D., a geriatrician at Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in the study.
As Lisa Esposito reported in U.S. News and World Report, the emotional ties between grandparents and grandchildren can protect against depression. A Reader’s Digest article touts several other health benefits of grandparenting, such as a stronger immune system and a stronger sense of purpose.
These benefits seem to exist throughout the world. A study of European grandparents found that even after earlier life, health and socio-economic conditions were taken into account, a strong positive association was found for the long-term benefits of grandchild care and health. Interestingly, significant association was found only for grandmothers, not grandfathers. CBS News reported on an Australian study published in the journal Menopause, showing the brain health benefits of grandmothers spending time with grandchildren.
Now that we have some real world data, let's look and see how it impacts coronavirus spread. On September 25, Winnipeg was moved into the "orange" level on the pandmeic response scale:
Manitoba’s Chief Public Health Officer says Winnipeg, along with municipalities around the city, will move to a level Orange restriction on Monday, Sept. 28, meaning masks will be mandatory in all indoor public places.
The announcement came Friday when Dr. Brent Roussin called a last-minute press conference at 1:30 p.m. He announced 54 new cases of the novel coronavirus, 44 of which are in Winnipeg.
Note that with masks mandatory indoors in Winnipeg, that is as close to a universal mask mandate as you can get to in every sense that matters.
Heightented measures went into effect on September 28. Total number of new cases in Manitoba on that date: 39
The conventional wisdom is that it takes 2 weeks for public health measures to have a noticeable impact. We saw a dramatic drop-off as of October 13, 15 days later, as follows: 124 new cases.
Okay, that's just a blip. We have far more evidence that these measures worked during this time to protect the provinces nursing homes:
Long-term care facilities in the Winnipeg metropolitan region are all being moved to Red (Critical) under the pandemic response system.
This means any new PCH admission will remain isolated for 14 days upon arrival and there will be no new admission to a PCH with a suspected or confirmed outbreak will be paused unless the new resident is already confirmed to be COVID-19 positive.
The move comes with seven of the city’s PCHs already at the Red level, including Parkview Place, which has a total of 89 cases, including 67 residents.
That's odd. We were told that restrictions would protect people, and yet the virus is still moving around.
Fast forward to October 30, when health authorities announced Winnipeg going into lockdown:
Broad shutdowns will start in Winnipeg and surrounding areas on Monday as Manitoba moves its capital area to the red, or critical, level — the highest stage of its pandemic response scale — following days of record-shattering COVID-19 case announcements.
Movie theatres, concert halls, sports facilities and restaurant dining rooms in the region will be ordered to close starting Monday, as officials struggle to control a rising tide of cases.
Elective and non-urgent surgeries and diagnostic procedures in the region will be suspended in the face of pandemic strain on the health-care system, Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin said on Friday.
"We were left with no choice," he said. "We have to deal with this virus and the transmission now."
The rest of Manitoba will move up to the orange, or restricted, level starting Monday, Roussin said. The order will limit gathering sizes to five and reduce capacity in public-facing businesses.
Number of new cases that day? 480
That measure took effect on November 2. Number of new cases that day: 241 Note if you follow the news releases on a daily basis, you will see that was day 3 of a steep 4 day drop in the new number of cases, far too soon for this public health measure to have an impact. Moving along with this 2-week timeline we are working with, number of new cases on November 17: 270
Wait, Manitoba is locking down and cases are still going up? We also note that the entire province went into the red zone on November 12.
Let's also look at the death count. The deadliest day for covid in Manitoba to this day? November 15, with 15 deaths
These restrictions were all much looser in the summer and early autumn. I actually started wearing masks inside the stores long before any of them required it and before the government mandated it. Yet if all of this works, why are we seeing such a high number of cases? If I were to look at a simple correlation, I could infer that social distancing actually increases the spread of coronavirus, and that if we lifted the measures numbers would fall back down.
That's just one example. You can also look to the outbreak in Melbourne that happened earlier this year, and the data clearly shows that the lockdown had no impact on controlling the spread.
This is the second wave and it was predicted that it would be far worse. A more serious lockdown should have been called starting October 1st. Instead, we have the highest positivity rates in the country.
Melbourne took that exact approach, to the point that mask wearing was mandatory outside and where failure to wear one was punishable by strangulation. Cases still went up all through July, peaked, and started falling off in August. It's ture that the death count in Manitoba is very high right now, but I think that is because we had it very easy in the first wave. Nationwide, the covid fatality rate has been falling even in the face of record high numbers in other jurisdictions. As for lockdowns, all they do is give people the illusion of control over coronavirus. People who stay home feel they are safe, but in practice there are many essential workers doing the essential work that needs to be done who will be in contact with each other, so that doesn't solve the problem. Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown has even said that lockdowns in Peel won't have an impact because so much of its workforce is considered essential:
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said the city is home to a disproportionately high number of essential workers in industrial settings who face a heightened risk of infection.“In Brampton, we have the largest food-processing sector in the country and the largest transportation logistics centre in the country,” Brown said. “The fact that you’d have more COVID positivity in an area that has more factory workers, more industrial workers, more essential workers is of no surprise.”
The numbers should serve as a “wake-up call” that these workers need more support, including a federal sick benefits program that is easier to access than the current model, he said.
There’s no isolation centre in northeast Brampton to help these workers self-isolate after a positive test, even though they may live in crowded conditions, he said.
“You have people living paycheque to paycheque and the notion that they could afford to rent a hotel room for 14 days to safely isolate is too much of a stretch,” he said.
It’s unfortunate that some people are pointing fingers at Peel Region or Brampton, blaming its residents for COVID-19 spread, he said.
“If you go to a grocery store in Kingston or Timmins or Barrie you need to thank someone working at a food processing plant in Brampton,” he said. “We are critical to Canada’s supply chain.”
Furthermore, the worst care home outbreaks in Ontario and Quebec happened in the spring when everyone was staying at home and things were more closed.
People who have the luxury to stay home throughout the pandemic should certainly feel free to do so. That does not give them the right to try and control other people's behaviour to the point of restricting how many people they can have in their houses or whether they should be allowed to gather and sing.
Lockdowns do work if they are really lockdowns. I think China is the only country in the world that had a real lockdown. The term is being used very broadly. Canada has definitely not had a single lockdown. What we have had is varying restrictions, just like Sweden has had varying restrictions.
At this point there is no need to listen to politicians or scientists. Listen to the doctors and nurses at your local medical facilities. It isn't like at the beginning when we had no local data.
You don't need to be a scientist to understand that a spike in infections means X days later there will be a spike in hospitalizations followed by a spike in deaths. If your local hospital is saying that they will be cancelling elective surgery within weeks that should tell you that people need alter their behavior.
The governments from city to country are doing a terrible job of managing the pandemic and a terrible job at informing people because they are trying to manipulate us to take the risks that keep the economy going while not taking risks that are of no benefit to the economy.
If they would be more honest with people there would be more compliance out of understanding the balance of risk/reward and the capacity of the health care system.
We need more and better information. We need more testing. We need more PPEs. We need basic income.
It is far too simplistic to just lock down or not lock down. Because we are not getting sufficient information in a timely manner we have to take our cue from what the health care system in our community can handle. If it is close to capacity we should be voluntarily hunkering down not waiting for restrictions. The CDC/US recently reported that 50% of the cases of transmission are asymptomatic people.
We should all be wearing masks in public indoors and out as a matter of common sense like not going barefoot in the winter. Common sense should tell us to avoid large gatherings including in private homes. See each other in smaller groups and keep track so if there is an infection everyone can be contacted quickly. We should be using the tracking app if it is cleared by privacy watchdogs.
Distance learning should be broadly available to all with schools opened for those it doesn't work well for either because parents are working or don't have the capacity to help for other reasons. A mix of the two should also be available.
Until the vaccines are broadly available we will have rolling restrictions. It would work much better with an educated public. Exposure risks are on a sliding scale not just risk/no risk like a light switch.
People who have the luxury to stay home throughout the pandemic should certainly feel free to do so. That does not give them the right to try and control other people's behaviour to the point of restricting how many people they can have in their houses or whether they should be allowed to gather and sing.
"We" aren't doing that. Those are government restrictions which the majority of people support.
The equation is very simple. X number of cases = Y number of hospitalizations. When hospitals are getting too close to capacity we have to have more restrictions. It doesn't matter whether or not it is fair. The hospitals would still get overloaded which would bring the death rate up.
It's great that the death rate is improving. It means hospitals are keeping more people alive.
The flu is down 98% over last year and that is before many people get immunized. Covid-19 is still spreading in high numbers because it is more virulent than the flu. That is why we can't just let it run rampant.
If people don't want to live in a community they are free to become hermits. Otherwise they must live by the communities collective decisions when it comes to public health.
So I see that the presentation of real-world data which may suggest the measures we have taken could be ineffective isn't resonating with people. That's good to know.
So I see that the presentation of real-world data which may suggest the measures we have taken could be ineffective isn't resonating with people. That's good to know.
We've already heard it all and answered it all. That cases still went up even with a mask mandate does not prove that masks don't work. Masks lower the risk they are not 100%. So, transmision still occurs and can rise. They just won't rise as fast as they would have without masks.
The precautions we have been taking for Covid-19 has stopped the flu in its tracks.
There is no real world data proving masks are ineffective because they are effective. Why do you think nurses and doctors and surgeons wear masks ? It is because they work.
Doctors and nurses wear masks to stop transmission of dangerous microbes, and masks do work in those particular settings. That is completely different than when people are wearing masks everywhere and covid is still moving around, moreso than when there were fewer masks in the summer.
Lockdowns do work if they are really lockdowns. I think China is the only country in the world that had a real lockdown.
You should probably do a little more reading. As a CBC listener and person inside the NATO propaganda bubble that is a reasonable impression but it is not factual. Here is a starting point for looking at lockdowns globally.
The pandemic has resulted in the largest number of shutdowns/lockdowns worldwide at the same time in history. By 26 March, 1.7 billion people worldwide were under some form of lockdown,[239] which increased to 3.9 billion people by the first week of April – more than half of the world's population.[240][241]
Restrictions first began in China,[242] with other countries in East Asia like Vietnam soon following it in implementing widespread containment measures. Much of Europe, North America and Africa took much longer to bring in tough measures. Lockdowns between and within nations are of varying stringency.[243]
By mid April, nearly 300 million people, or about 90 per cent of the population, were under some form of lockdown in the United States,[244] around 100 million in the Philippines,[245] about 59 million in South Africa,[246] and 1.3 billion were under lockdown in India; the largest of all lockdowns. Check the list of COVID-19 Hotspots or containment Zones of India.[247][248]
By the end of April, around 300 million people were under lockdown in various countries of Europe, including but not limited to Italy, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom; while around 200 million people were under lockdown in Latin America.[245]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_lockdowns#Countries_and_...
More evidence that lockdowns work:
The world has gone through many pandemics since the Spanish Flu of 1918. In the six month October 1957-March 1958 period, excess deaths in the US numbered 62,000. In the three-month February-April period in 1963, excess deaths numbered 57,000. In these two instances, excess deaths were 36 and 30 per cent higher than “normal”. In the US, at the peak of the crisis March-May, excess deaths were 1,22,300 and COVID-19 deaths around 9,50,00. Expected deaths —around 6,60,000, so excess deaths about 18 per cent. Eighteen per cent too many deaths, but what did the US do to confront the nearly double excess death crisis in both 1957-58 and 1963?
It did absolutely nothing. It is worth quoting a paper by David Henderson and his colleagues, published in 2009 — Public Health and Medical Responses to the 1957-58 Influenza Epidemic. The late Dr Henderson had a major responsibility for setting up the CDC influenza surveillance programme in the US: His stature as an authority was similar to Anthony Fauci today. The paper explicitly rejects even partial lockdowns and states:
“The 1957-58 pandemic was such a rapidly spreading disease that it became quickly apparent to US 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.” (Public Health and Medical Responses.., p. 7, emphasis added)
...
In my paper, I report the result of various studies on the effectiveness of lockdowns; except for a few, most of these studies report that the lockdowns were highly successful in saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Since the average death rate from COVID is 2.5 per cent, these results imply that somewhere between 10 to 20 million less infections resulted from this unnatural experiment.
xamination of the contradiction between the observed reality of 40 million cases, and the experimental reality of lockdown research, is the purpose of my above-mentioned paper. We replicate the variety of tests available in the literature and add the following important test of lockdowns — a before-and-after comparison for over 150 countries, and for one, two, and three months from the date of lockdowns. No matter what the test, the dominant result is that not only lockdowns were not effective, but that, in a large majority of cases, lockdowns were counter-productive i.e. led to more infections, and deaths, than would have been the case with no lockdowns. My analysis stops in end-July and, therefore, ignores the post-July second wave of infections. If these data are included, the fate of lockdowns would be a lot worse.
This article is 2 months old. Since that time, the Northern Hemisphere entered its flu season. Every country that normally grapples with a flu season saw a second wave, including prior "successful" countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
Lockdowns increased poverty in Britain:
New research by the Legatum Institute has found that poverty is soaring. Its analysis estimates that since the start of the crisis, an additional 690,000 people have fallen into poverty. An astonishing 270,000 of this 690,000 have fallen into the deepest form of poverty.
That's what happens when a government doesn't want to invest in its population:
This rise comes despite unprecedented government interventions. Legatum’s research estimates that temporary increases in Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits, as well as the suspension of the Minimum Income Floor, have successfully insulated 690,000 people. But hundreds of thousands have, tragically, fallen through the cracks.
Similarly, though the furlough scheme has provided welcome relief, it is those on the lowest wages who are most likely to have been furloughed and who have still endured a sharp fall in earnings. The so-called working poor have been disproportionately harmed.
How skeptics lost the argument:
Lockdown sceptics have made all kinds of important, well-reasoned, fact-based arguments against the lockdowns and other restrictions that have been imposed upon us. The problem of ‘deaths with’ COVID-19; the many issues with the accuracy of PCR tests; the inflation of the IFR; the comparisons to other diseases; the excess death charts; the fact that the NHS is always nearly overwhelmed every year. None of it has cut through, because most people just don’t respond to fact-based argument. They respond to what they consider to be the moral truth. More importantly, they really don’t respond to fact-based argument if that would mean owning up to being immoral and abnormal. If in order to change your mind you have to become a pariah, then human psychology 101 provides a quick answer: you won’t change your mind.
Second – and this is an even bitterer pill, perhaps the bitterest of all – we have the failure of our liberty-based arguments. We have made all kinds of appeals to freedom and civil liberties during the past year. But the brute fact is that most people apparently couldn’t give two hoots about freedom when the chips are down. Security and safety are what matter. The moral truth for our compatriots is not that the Government rode roughshod over our liberties this year. The moral truth for them is that the Government justifiably deprived us of our liberties to keep us safe – and we’re grateful for it. We can bemoan this and debate the reasons for it all we like. But it’s the world in which we live.
So what next?
What we need to emphasise, in other words, is not reason, or not reason alone, but emotion. We quite clearly live in an emotional age – one in which ‘don’t kill your granny’ is a more effective argument than any Ivor Cummins video. So emotion has to be emphasised. What do lockdowns mean emotionally? They mean suicides. They mean depression and anxiety. They mean school closures which harm children’s life chances. They mean rising inequality. They mean cancelled hospital treatments. They mean poverty and economic devastation in the developing world. They mean lack of hugs and family and social warmth. It is not that we haven’t talked about all of these things. But we haven’t talked about them enough. We have to acknowledge that while we have all manner of fantastic knock-down factual arguments and statements of principle against all of this nonsense, people aren’t interested to hear them: nobody wants to be knocked-down, fantastically or otherwise. People want to conform with what they perceive to be a moral truth. So we have to set about generating that. We have to start talking not about numbers or rights, but about the human tragedy that lockdown has created. We need stories about real people, real sadness, real misery, real illness. It’s not charts, graphs, numbers or science that will convince people. It’s establishing a moral truth that matters.
Early on the in pandemic, the television news was almost nothing but emotion. Stories about young people, children, and key workers getting sick and dying. People weren’t interested in ‘the science’. They were interested in how awful the virus was and how scared they were of something happening to them or a loved one. How different things might be now if there had also been regular stories in the news about people who had lost a loved one due to a failure to get medical treatment, people sent into downward spirals of depression due to social deprivation or job loss, children whose development has been damaged by lack of education or socialisation, people with severe mental health problems deprived of face to face treatment, and so on? Maybe this is the sort of thing that is now required, in recognition that this war has been lost, but that others will follow.
The sceptics lost the argument because the general public felt that facts and reasoning were not on their side. For instance when people compared Anthony Fauci's facts and reasoning with Scott Atlas's facts and reasoning they heavily favoured Anthony Fauci's facts and reasoning. Compared to Fauci, Atlas seemed like an ignorant quack. The sceptics lost the argument because leading and respected scientists and experts on viruses basically disagreed with the sceptics.
The left supports restrictions therefore they don't have a case against lockdowns. The only people arguing against restrictions are right wing or libertarian.
This very much smacks of anti-abortionists claiming feminists should support legislation against sex selective abortions. Feminists and leftists can decide for themselves what their positions are and should be.
The sceptics lost the argument because the general public felt that facts and reasoning were not on their side. For instance when people compared Anthony Fauci's facts and reasoning with Scott Atlas's facts and reasoning they heavily favoured Anthony Fauci's facts and reasoning. Compared to Fauci, Atlas seemed like an ignorant quack. The sceptics lost the argument because leading and respected scientists and experts on viruses basically disagreed with the sceptics.
To be fair, Scott Atlas is a horrible spokesman. I think people like John Ioannidis or Sunetra Gupta would be very good public faces for the lockdown skeptic movement. I'm not sure if they have the stomach for the kind of public scrutiny they would endure.
Increasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity (adjusted rate ratio [RR]=1.06; 95%CI: 1.01–1.11), median population age (RR=1.10; 95%CI: 1.05–1.15) and longer time to border closures from the first reported case (RR=1.04; 95%CI: 1.01–1.08). Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence (RR=1.12; 95%CI: 1.06–1.19) and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (RR=1.03; 95%CI: 1.00–1.06). Reduced income dispersion reduced mortality (RR=0.88; 95%CI: 0.83–0.93) and the number of critical cases (RR=0.92; 95% CI: 0.87–0.97). Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people. However, full lockdowns (RR=2.47: 95%CI: 1.08–5.64) and reduced country vulnerability to biological threats (i.e. high scores on the global health security scale for risk environment) (RR=1.55; 95%CI: 1.13–2.12) were significantly associated with increased patient recovery rates.
I'm not sure why lockdowns would be associated with higher recovery rates. There is, however, enough according to this study to discredit the mantra that "lockdowns save lives."
Increasing COVID-19 caseloads were associated with countries with higher obesity (adjusted rate ratio [RR]=1.06; 95%CI: 1.01–1.11), median population age (RR=1.10; 95%CI: 1.05–1.15) and longer time to border closures from the first reported case (RR=1.04; 95%CI: 1.01–1.08). Increased mortality per million was significantly associated with higher obesity prevalence (RR=1.12; 95%CI: 1.06–1.19) and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (RR=1.03; 95%CI: 1.00–1.06). Reduced income dispersion reduced mortality (RR=0.88; 95%CI: 0.83–0.93) and the number of critical cases (RR=0.92; 95% CI: 0.87–0.97). Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people. However, full lockdowns (RR=2.47: 95%CI: 1.08–5.64) and reduced country vulnerability to biological threats (i.e. high scores on the global health security scale for risk environment) (RR=1.55; 95%CI: 1.13–2.12) were significantly associated with increased patient recovery rates.I'm not sure why lockdowns would be associated with higher recovery rates. There is, however, enough according to this study to discredit the mantra that "lockdowns save lives."
That is just fucking bullshit. Do you even bother to read the stuff you post? You are now spreading "information" that is outdated and thus totally irrelevant to the deaths occurring in the US and the lack of the same in China, now that there has been time to measure the effects of the various strategies.
Since the data was continuously evolving, 01 May 2020 was set as the final data capture timeline as many countries began relaxing more restrictive public health policies around this time. Only data for the top 50 countries as of April 01, 2020 by number of case counts were included in the current analysis (listed in electronic-supplementary Table-1). However, data on the number of critical cases were only available as of April 01, 2020.
That is just fucking bullshit. Do you even bother to read the stuff you post? You are now spreading "information" that is outdated and thus totally irrelevant to the deaths occurring in the US and the lack of the same in China, now that there has been time to measure the effects of the various strategies.
Does that factor in the possibility that the strain that emerged in China was not as transmissible as the strain that moved around the United States, or any other country where the virus rapidly spread, for that matter?
That is just fucking bullshit. Do you even bother to read the stuff you post? You are now spreading "information" that is outdated and thus totally irrelevant to the deaths occurring in the US and the lack of the same in China, now that there has been time to measure the effects of the various strategies.Does that factor in the possibility that the strain that emerged in China was not as transmissible as the strain that moved around the United States, or any other country where the virus rapidly spread, for that matter?
Your response is nonsense and has nothing to do with the article you posted to prove something that it did not prove. Your arguments are one thing but disinformation is a whole different level of stupidity.
Why the capitalists need lockdowns and medical mandates:
Whether you believe that covid-19 broke out as a result of capitalism’s ever-greater need to turn the environment into commodities;[1] that the infection and death rates have been inflated by sleights of hand[2] to justify lockdowns and a profit-motivated vaccine arms race; that the outbreak was planned bioterrorism all along; or that there is no proof that covid-19 even exists as a novel virus (on the basis that it has apparently never been isolated; see here also); one thing is undeniable: given the dire state of the world economy, the timing of the pandemic could not have been more convenient for the ruling class and the needs of capital accumulation....
Capitalism has now entered its deepest ever crisis. A decade of savage austerity after the financial crash of 2007–09— whereby governments redirected large portions of public spending into subsidising capital — proved inadequate. Capital required a deeper depression. The lockdown induced, for example, Britain’s worst recession since 1709 (an economic contraction of around 30%, taking the size of the economy back to that of 2002, when the population was 59.24 million compared to 2019’s 66.65 million). Economic growth, which has slowed decade-on-decade for 50 years,[5] was already grinding to a halt — Germany’s economic growth in August 2019 was 0.1%; Britain’s 0.2% — before the hardest ever stock market crash on 19 February 2020.
Even before the financial crash, world debt had reached mountainous heights. It has since continued to hit new highs for so-called ‘peace time’ — the US, UK and Europe are of course waging endless wars on the Middle East and elsewhere — with the spending on the pandemic (rising subsidies for capital; enforcing lockdowns) reaching world-war-like proportions. This is not just capitalism’s deepest ever crisis, though — the system is approaching its final breakdown, since the contemporary innovation required to raise the productivity of labour — automation — is now conversely abolising the source of profit, i.e. capital’s exploitation of commodity-producing labour.
The depth of the crisis of accumulation is such that the centralisation of capital is accelerating at an extraordinary pace. Capital’s dependence on public debt is reaching extreme highs. Monopoly capital has no choice but to make the state its number one customer if it is to remain profitable. This has always been true of weapons manufacturers, for example. Without capitalist states waging wars, weapons manufacturers cannot remain profitable, and so bogus justifications for wars (remember Saddam Hussein’s never-found weapons of mass destruction?) have to be dreamed up to retain enough support for the government of the day and capitalism in general from the general population.
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If governments really cared about public health, they would nationalise pharmaceutical companies and health care (which has been increasingly privatised and rationed over the past 40 years, the reason hospitals get overwhelmed every flu season). They would not be sending untested and infected patients into care homes (which have been starved of resources have been turned into de facto prisons) and covering this up “to protect commercial interests”. (This smacks of eugenics, as did austerity and making ill and disabled people return to work. Isolation itself increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and Alzheimer’s; and is as deadly as obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Slashing pensions and other expenses on the elderly and disabled means such expenditure can be transferred into subsidising capital. When the US death rate (the age-adjusted share of US Americans dying) rose slightly in 2015 for the first time since 1999, at least 12 corporations stated in annual reports that slips in mortality improvement reduced their pension payouts by a combined $9.7bn.) They would not be allowing an “evictions avalanche”. They would be taking pollution reduction, which causes one in five deaths (isn’t this a worse kind of pandemic?), far more seriously, instead of ‘failing’ to wind down subsidies for fossil fuel companies .They would be reducing extractive production and ramping up investment in nuclear, hemp and mycelium production instead of expanding deforestation and habitat destruction.
If the virus is really so deadly (the survival rate is about 99.8%) and they really wanted to stamp it out, they would be making sure poorer countries (which they make poor in the first place) had access to vaccines. Instead, they are putting off waiving patent rights for as long as possible to keep prices as high as possible for as long as possible, while working out ways to defeat protections and competition from vaccine makers in Russia and China. (Not to mention to generate prejudice against unvaccinated potential migrants, a classic case of racist divide and rule tactics.)
Numerous studies have argued that ‘lockdowns’ (read social enclosure) are much more harmful to public health than covid-19 and aren’t especially effective at suppressing transmission[6] (when the peaks and troughs of the virus followed seasonal flu patterns; and flu miraculously disappeared with covid-19 infections at their peak).
But (despite the claims of social democrats like Owen Jones) lockdowns suit monopoly capital perfectly. They have been used to depress wages through mass unemployment and furlough schemes (a direct public subsidy to employers) that do not pay full rates; and to wipe out swathes of small and medium capital that can be bought up on the cheap by big capital. Much of the workplace has been moved to the home, saving capital costs on office space; pushing running costs such as electricity and water onto workers; and deepening the rate of their exploitation. About 30% of remote workers in a UK survey said they were working more unpaid hours than before lockdown, with 18% reporting at least four additional unpaid hours a week. Confined to the home, or at least unable to wander far from it, we have been made evermore dependent on online shopping. Amazon and co have cashed in while increasing the rate of exploitation of their warehouse and courier workers.
Nothing but propaganda. It makes perfect sense that the flu couldn't get a foothold this year. It is far less contagious than Covid 19.
Capital exploits all situations. It's like gas goes up when there is a shortage but never goes down for a surplus. Capital in the tourist and entertainment industry is suffering.
Some insight into the left-wing reaction to lockdown:
Why do you think there has been so little pushback from the Left against lockdowns?That is a good question. First off, the working class movement has gone through almost four consecutive decades of record low levels of class struggle. This fact has weakened the revolutionary Left for sure. Also, our association with socialism to these authoritarian states (from the former Soviet Union, to China, to Cuba, to Nicagagua, to Venezuela) as opposed to insisting on understanding socialism as direct working class control of all production through the institutions of working class democracy. Socialists have become infatuated with top-down State institutional answers to questions that can only be answered through working class struggle and insurrection.
That those on the Lockdown Left continue to support the Tory lockdown exposes their deep callousness and misanthropy. For years they have criticised the Tories for the casual cruelty with which they have treated the vulnerable, for their vindictive and punitive economic policies. But when it came down to it, these leftists did nothing to counter the Tories’ grim view of society. The Lockdown Left has done its utmost to realise the old Thatcherite slogan, ‘There is no such thing as society’. While once upon a time Corbynistas would happily compose social-media rhapsodies to the virtues of collective solidarity, human warmth and compassion as the basis for social reorganisation in the wake of Tory rule, when the moment came precisely to maintain those values in opposition to a politics of fear led by a Tory government, they opted instead to collaborate with the Tories in destroying social and civic life and inflating state power.How did so many self-avowed socialists end up being so hostile to society? If the pandemic has exposed the deep ineffectiveness of the British state, it has also exposed the absence of any genuine solidaristic politics on the left. That the majority of the left has supported lockdown speaks to the fact that many leftists’ politics are defined today not by any belief in our collective capacity to reshape social life, but rather in a vision of us all as fragile, isolated and vulnerable monads, who all threaten each other with our diseases, divergent opinions, toxic attitudes and unhealthy behaviours.
A leftist from Greece has good insight:
One of the aspects that proponents of a “zero-COVID” strategy do not sufficiently discuss is the extent to which many people cannot “stay at home” even during the strictest of lockdowns. These include people working in critical infrastructure (energy, telecommunications, water/sewage, transport), in the supply chain, in the health and care sectors, and, of course, people working in crucial aspects of the state apparatuses.
If we add to this the fact that various forms of human interaction will continue, then the possibility of completely suppressing transmission seems unrealistic.
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Finally, this erosion of sociality, and of course the extensive use of authoritarian measures that have also been used against forms of protest and political intervention is not something that we can accept. There is the danger of the normalization of a very authoritarian state of exception.
Although the Left rightly opposes privatizations in favor of public services, we should not be in favor of a paternalistic strong state regulating people’s lives. The socialist tradition is not about a “strong state”; it is about self-organization, initiative, and worker control.
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However, we have seen that although reducing overall mobility does reduce transmission (a reduction that is spread unequally along class lines), it does not deal with the problem of transmission to the vulnerable, as is exemplified by the tragedy of nursing homes. Attributing all these deaths to the general transmission of the virus in the community overlooks the lack of measures and preparedness in implementing alternative, safer forms of hospitality, care, and support.
In contrast, a more focused approach to protecting the vulnerable and the susceptible offers a real chance of lowering mortality. This approach would require a profound reorganization of social life, both through state intervention and self-organization: finding alternative forms of hospitality and care for the elderly (including new forms to support their ability to live within the community); answering the challenge of the new housing question that has led to the problem of overcrowded multigenerational households; making sure that all those over a certain age or with underlying health conditions and who cannot work remotely are offered paid leave and are replaced by younger persons; organizing new forms of community-based care at home; redesigning school classes, university lectures, theaters, etc. in order to make them safer instead of simply closing them down.
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One of the most important aspects of the management of the pandemic has been the many ways that science and scientific work have been used to legitimize government decisions and strategies. Most tendencies on the Left have accepted that the lockdown strategy actually represents “the science” on the pandemic and accuse those that criticize it of having an anti-scientific position.
But the entire science of lockdowns is not founded on some incontestable scientific facts. From the infamous apocalyptic scenarios that were projected in the Imperial College models, to the way the idea of social distancing was elaborated in the preparedness plans for a potential influenza pandemic in the 2000s, to the way social conditions have been underestimated, it is obvious that we not dealing with “neutral” scientific theories and facts.
What is missing here is something that used to be one of the main traits of the radical left, namely, an insistence that science and technology are not neutral. It is as if an entire tradition of critical approaches to science and technology has been forgotten. Here I’m referring to a range of intellectual currents, from the critique of positivist reason and technocracy in the context of Critical Theory, to the critique of the capitalist labor process and the capitalist organization of research and science that originated with the radicalism of the global moment of 1968, to more recent radical feminist, postcolonial, and ecological approaches to science and technology.
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So far, we have failed to take advantage of the opportunity to present the basic idea that there is indeed an alternative road, one that is not authoritarian, does not involve widespread suspension of economic and social life, and can be based upon solidarity, democratic participation, and self-organization. In sum, the essence of socialist politics.
Hi, A24; this thread has been dormant for a year.
I agreed totally with your take; Covid lockdowns were both ineffective and arbitrary. Sweden did fine without them (mortality there now ranked outside top-20 most affected in Europe, and top-50 most affected worldwide).
Japan was quite unnoticed in rejecting lockdowns, and had very low mortality despite its many risk factors (age of population, travel hubs, proximity to China etc.)
Overall, the famous 2020 PR about "two weeks to flatten the curve" in Canada proved to be self-evidently misguided. Any lessons for the broader left?
