It Was Never About A Virus

As we should know by now:

Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations - mRNA Scientific Planner: “One of the things we're exploring is like, why don't we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create -- preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we're gonna do that though, there's a risk of like, as you could imagine -- no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses.”

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Examining the research over the past two years revealsseveral robust and clear findings:

1. Epidemiological models that do not include human behaviour changes in response to a novel virus drastically over-estimate the number of hospitalizations and deaths. All of the early models made death predictions that were off by factors of 10 or more. The infamous Imperial College of London model, led by Neil Ferguson, predicted that with full lockdowns in place there would be 132,687 COVID-19 deaths in Canada by July 30, 2020; in fact, by that date there were 9,019 actual deaths.

2. Changes in people’s behaviour in response to the arrival of the virus were immediate, and around the world and in every country infected by COVID-19 changes in behaviour meant that an endemic state was reached in the spring of 2020.

3. Behaviour effects were not limited to acting cautiously. Other behaviour changes including incomplete compliance with mandates—and compliance levels varied over the course of the pandemic. These changes in behaviour meant that deaths and hospitalizations were not substantially different in jurisdictions with different degrees of lockdown when other factors were controlled for.

 4. Ultimately, estimates of the benefit of lockdowns in terms of lives saved were made based on data. Analysts used many different procedures in an attempt to identify the causal effect of lockdowns. Over and over, findings showed only small positive effects on death rates. The most recent and thorough meta-analysis found that after combining all lockdown effects there was only an average reduction in mortality of 3.2 percent. All of the lockdown efforts amounted to almost nothing.

 5. The costs of lockdown go far beyond the lost GDP. In areas like worldwide food insecurity, international trade reductions, reduced travel, increased domestic violence, increased drug/alcohol/mental health issues, and employment disruptions, we are only aware of the costs and no estimates have yet been made of the level of these costs. Much work has been done on the effect lockdowns have had on children’s physical well-being, lost education, early development, IQ, and social abilities. Again, no widespread estimates of the actual size of these losses have been made, but it is generally acknowledged that children and youth have suffered under the lockdowns.

6. Lockdowns created collateral deaths. Behaviour changes in the face of COVID-19 and lockdowns included forms of self-protection that often ended up increasing mortality. These behaviour changes included missing regular medical checkups out of fear of contracting the disease. Estimates in the US show that there were 171,000 excess non-COVID-19 deaths through to the end of 2021. By that time the US had recorded 825,929 COVID-19 deaths. However, if lockdowns only reduce deaths by 3.2 percent, then only 27,303 lives were saved by lockdowns. Just on collateral deaths alone the cost/benefit ratio of lockdown is 171,000/27,303 = 6.26.

 

More:

A newly released essay by Douglas Allen, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, examines why governments repeatedly used lockdowns during COVID-19 even after it became clear lockdowns were ineffective and “failed to isolate the virus and stop it from spreading.”

Lockdowns were sustained with political support, suggests Allen, and lockdowns had “many winners.”

He says for the “laptop class,” the lockdown was “the great vacation,” the “great excuse,” and the “great opportunity.” Lockdowns, said Allen, transferred wealth to this group.

Meanwhile, he says, public health campaigns repeatedly told citizens that “death was ‘at the door,'” ‘now is not the time to let our guard down,’ ‘we are all in this together,’” and ‘let’s not lose what we have gained so far.’

People came to believe in “the absurd goal of ‘zero-COVID,’” despite suffering from government lockdown policies, Allen says. As such, a fearful segment of citizens “supported the policies and actually helped enforce state regulations through social stigma and shaming of those who objected.”

Ultimately, the negative effects of lockdowns fell “disproportionately on the young, the poor, people of colour, those with health problems other than COVID-19, the least educated, blue collar workers, single parents, and many others at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.”

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Workplace vaccine mandates may have been “personally devastating” for some employees but remained lawful, a New Brunswick labour arbitrator has ruled. The decision came in the case of six utility workers suspended five months without pay after declining to show proof they were immunized: “They were faced with a difficult choice.”