20 thoughts on “The Lockdown”

  1. It was perhaps the biggest blunder in human history.

    Now that’s a very stiff competition. Big Mistake Number One leading more-or-less inevitably to Big Mistake Number Two for starters.

    1. Considering that at the same time people like N.Ferguson and the U Washington crew, who provided the excuses for this panic, over estimated by several orders of magnitude, I’d let it go.

  3. I dunno. It was justified to start with when this looked like it would be SARS 2.0 with a near-10% death rate. But once we saw the low death rate from the Diamond Princess, lockdowns became hard to defend. And now it’s clearly just authoritarian politicians doing what authoritarians love to do.

    The biggest scandal is that we knew months ago that it really was a killer when it got into a care home for sick old folks, and yet governments didn’t lock them down hard. Last I read, over 80% of the deaths here in Canada have been from care homes.

    1. We’ll know the “experts” think there’s a “second wave” when the daily body-counts start being reported again.

        1. Possibly, or 2nd wave will be the next Democrat-created hoax to harm President Trump’s re-election chances. I’m predicting a continuous series “catastrophes” between now and November 3rd .

  4. “The original Imperial estimates of deaths in the United States was 2 million with 100 million infected citizens. Ooops.”

    We don’t know how many Americans were infected. I don’t know if I was infected {seems unlikely}.
    But we know that if 100 million citizens over the age of 60 were inficted less than 1% would have died. And don’t have many citizens in US.
    I think we needed the lock down. And there was many reasons for the lock down. One reason is to find out more about the china virus.
    I got into car accident awhile ago, and upon review, I did many things wrong, but one did wrong is I kept pressing on the brake to long. Or brain freeze. Same thing with lockdown, but in that instance it was not problem of seconds, but of months.
    But if you knew the politicans were going to be as stupid as bricks- which everyone should have known. I think I gambled done the lock down and hope there were not as stupid as I think they are.
    As it turns out, they were stupider than I imagined. And not getting out lockdown sooner is almost a small part of the stupid {and it’s an enormous amount of stupid]. And more stupid thing was returning infected patients to nursing homes. This stupid killed a lot people. But I think they tried to stop doing this. Or to be more stupid they could continued to think this was a good idea.
    One could say the lockdown gave more time to figure out how stupid the pols were and we did get them stop sending infected patients to nursing homes.
    But if we had less time, they could done even more of this, and host of other stupid thing in addition.
    Another thing is you do a lockdown, because you know you going to get lockdown regardless of whether you decide to do lockdown or not. Politically speaking it better political choice {and saves lives} if start lock down before the virus causes a lockdown.

    I have a killer argument against people who don’t think we should done lockdown.
    I think WHO committed war crimes.
    If US didn’t do a lock down, US would been as worse as WHO.
    So, no lockdown, means WHO did a ok job. And you can’t make a case that WHO committed any vaguely like a war crime, if you also think the US should not have locked down.
    So, such believers can defend the WHO, and I going claim WHO committed war crimes.

    1. The last death rate I saw from the CDC worked out to about 0.2%. That’s basically bad flu level.

      Many US states had 50% or more of their deaths in care homes. Some US states actively encouraged care homes to take in old farts who had the disease, which all but ensured it would spread there and kill a lot of people. And, as I said above, over 80% of deaths here in Canada were in such homes.

      There was a very good reason to lock down care homes. There were reasons to lock down until we knew more about the disease, particularly to close the borders early to avoid bringing more cases into the country. There has been no reason to lock down healthy people for a couple of months now.

      1. –Edward M. Grant
        June 6, 2020 At 2:36 PM
        The last death rate I saw from the CDC worked out to about 0.2%. That’s basically bad flu level.–
        That depends number people who are imagined to catch the flu and maybe certain type of flu per year. And I don’t know if .2% is accurate, or let’s a say if as accurate as what reporting in terms of total deaths from China virus.
        Of course 1% of 320 million is 3.2 million and .2% is 640,000.
        US death is said to be: 112,077
        And could claim less than 20% of US caught the Chinese virus.
        No one can know if they have got the chinese virus without testing and if tested, you actually still don’t know. Though maybe one assume you didn’t have within last 2 weeks.
        No one can predict how many people will die from a “common flu” in year. No one has ever “measured” how did die in a given year.
        No one is providing any information explaining why India has death count of 5 per million. Or why Brazil has 169 deaths per million. We know with fair certainty why Venezuela has .7 deaths per million. Obviously, it’s because they run their hospitals without power or water.
        Why do most European countries have higher death per million than US?
        Probably, related to population densities. Among other factors.

        1. Death rate on the Diamond Princess, where everyone was tested for it and the population was much older than normal, was about 1%.

          We also knew it was nowhere near as contagious as it was made out to be, because there were couples who shared a cabin in quarantine for weeks where one was infected and the other not.

          As soon as we saw that, we knew that 1% was the absolute maximum upper limit. And the actual rate would be significantly lower, because the general population doesn’t consist of ageing cruise passengers.

          Which makes 0.2% look pretty sensible.

      2. Some US states actively encouraged care homes to take in old farts who had the disease

        “Granny Killer” Cuomo issued an executive order requiring nursing homes to take in patients showing symptoms. He alone is responsible for 10% of the Bat Cooties deaths in this country.

  5. No one is providing any information explaining why [death rates vary between countries]… Probably, related to population densities. Among other factors.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out the lockdowns and border shutdowns allowed the various viral mutations to remain isolated, with some less lethal than others. (See, for example, California vs. Cuomo-land.)

  6. All of these numbers, estimates, and conclusions are drawn from data that should send any medical researcher into convulsions. Between the first proven covid death in the US moving from February 26 to February 6 after the lockdowns started, the lies out of China and any other totalitarian state, and the flip-flops of The WHO, CDC, and most other medical experts, I don’t believe a word of any of it. Until I hear about at least two widely separated studies of the known information gatered about this virus, my doubts will continue. Has anyone found patient zero yet? If not, then we know nothing. They are guessing, and I don’t need help in that department.

  7. Today Amazon suggested exercise masks to me. Masks that had giant holes in them so they wouldn’t restrict your breathing running or cycling. But they gave the appearance of wearing a mask. So, ya know, the important part.

  9. Lockdown might have been prudent at the very start because we just didn’t know.

    But now we know.

    Also, Cuomo pushed Wuhan virus carriers into nursing homes because he thought the hospitals would be overwhelmed. This shows a completely callous disregard for the lives of old people…who cares if they die?

    Next time we’ll know better.

    But the one salutary effect of the lock downs was to rip the facade off the little Stalins that infest the Democrat party.

  10. I think states should carefully re-examine their laws concerning declarations of health or any emergencies by their executives. Including durations and process for extension. Also the ability for the public to seek relief from such orders in the courts. This is for sure the short path to tyranny.

    1. I believe part of the problem is that until this year, “public health” was sort of a political dumping ground where the politicians could dump people whose support they needed into cushy jobs that sounded important but where their incompetence couldn’t do much visible damage to the Party. Patronage payoffs. This year those people suddenly realized their time had come, and were determined to flex their powers and make people notice and respect them. Yes, they need to be restricted in what they do, and the governors (or other elected officials) become responsible for their actions.

  11. We have to be careful, though, because medical issues are the track Socialists use to move in and control other aspects of life:

    Like saying that what you eat and your “resultant” health affects others so the government now will control what you eat. Or having doctors ask you if you have guns in the house

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