(2 Corinthians 11:14 - And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their actions.…CL)
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via
The American Institute for Economic Research,
In a wide-ranging interview in the New York
Times, Melinda Gates made the following remarkable statement:
“What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the
economic impacts.”
A
cynic might observe that one is disinclined to think much about matters than do
not affect one personally.
It’s a maddening statement, to be sure, as if “economics” is
somehow a peripheral concern to the rest of human life and public health. The
larger context of the interview reveals the statement to be even more confused.
She is somehow under the impression that it is the pandemic and not the
lockdowns that are the cause of the economic devastation that includes perhaps
30% of restaurants going under, among many other terrible effects.
She doesn’t say that outright but, like many articles in the
mainstream press over this year, she very carefully crafts her words to avoid the
crucial subject of lockdowns as the primary cause of economic disaster. It’s
possible that she actually believes this virus is what tanked the world economy
on its own but that is a completely unsustainable proposition.
Further, her comments provide a perfect illustration of the core
problem all along: most of the people who have been advocating lockdowns in
fact have no actual experience in managing pandemics. To many of these, Covid-19
became their new playground to try out an unprecedented experiment in social
and economic management: shutting down travel,
businesses, schools, churches, and issuing stay-at-home orders that smack of
totalitarian impositions.
Here
is what she says:
You can
project out and think about what a pandemic might be like or look like, but
until you live through it, it’s pretty hard to know what the reality will be
like. So I think we predicted quite well that, depending on what the disease
was, it could spread very, very, very quickly. The spread did not surprise us.
What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the
economic impacts. What happens when you have a pandemic that’s running rampant
in populations all over the world? The fact that we would all be home, and
working from home if we were lucky enough to do that. That was a piece that I
think we hadn’t really prepared for.
There are plenty of specialists who have lived through pandemics
in the past and managed them by maintaining essential social and economic
functioning. A major case in point is Donald A. Henderson, who as head of the
World Health Organization is given primary credit for the eradication of
smallpox. He wrote as follows in 2006:
Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or
other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social
functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong
political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure
that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either
is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward
catastrophe.
Melinda together with her husband Bill have been the major funding
source for pro-lockdown efforts around the world, giving
$500M since the pandemic began, but also funding a huge range of academic
departments, labs, and media venues for many years, during which time they have
both sounded the alarm in every possible interview about the coming pathogen.
Their favored policy has been lockdown, as if to confuse a biological virus
with a computer virus that merely needs to be blocked from hitting the hard
drive.
We
can look at how this disease traveled around the world and see that the
countries who locked down first, they’re doing better. Many African countries
saw it coming and locked it down early. Their replication rate just never got
as high as many other countries. And that is a good thing.
While it is true that Africa is an odd outlier, the claim that
this is due entirely to early lockdowns has no support. Those
who have looked at the anomaly in Africa point to the
very young population (just 3% are over 65), cross immunities with other
coronaviruses as the main reason for the low death rate, and stronger overall
immunities. Indeed, the demographics alone could account for nearly the whole
of the mortality difference with Europe and the U.S. In addition, Melinda
says here what Bill has said for years: the only solution to a virus is to
suppress it and develop a vaccine – the previously
untested experiment that has brought poverty, death, and despair to the entire
world. Africa in particular was devastated by lockdowns.
It’s still a good thing that she is opening up to the New
York Times so that we can gain better perspective on her
outlook. There will be a reckoning in the coming year concerning why and
how all this happened to us. There will be no chance of suppressing the reality
of what has happened. Indeed the center-left press is already starting to admit
what AIER has been saying since March 2020.
Consider
this roundup from just the last several days:
What Has Lockdown Done to Us? By
Drew Holden (New York Times):
Some researchers worry that the
social isolation has inflicted damage to mental health that will outlast even the
worst of the pandemic. We may not have a full accounting of the consequences
for years to come….There will be significant long term consequences from school
closures as well. About half of the country’s school districts held remote
classes, either exclusively or partially, at the start of the year. This
approach has meaningfully reduced educational quality, particularly for
children of color.
These losses don’t even take into account the direct effects of
the lockdowns on the economy. Small businesses have closed their doors at very high rates as the American economy
sputtered in response to stay-at-home orders. One study estimates that 60 percent of the
millions of jobs lost between January and April were a result of the lockdowns, not the virus itself. The economic
uncertainty caused by unemployment comes with its own health risks….
These tragedies have become an ambient backdrop to everyday
life: present but forgotten, real but ignored. Perhaps America has simply
gotten comfortable ignoring the quiet suffering of others.
“The Problem With Underestimating How Much People Want to
Be Together” by Julia Marcus (The Atlantic)
When a public-health approach isn’t producing the desired
outcome, it’s time to try something different. Instead of yelling even louder
about Christmas than about Thanksgiving, government officials, health
professionals, and ordinary Americans alike might try this: Stop all the
chastising. Remember that the public is fraying. And consider the possibility
that when huge numbers of people indicate through their actions that seeing
loved ones in person is nonnegotiable, they need practical ways to reduce risk that
go beyond “Just say no.”
“Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the
world, finds report” (The Guardian)
The state of civil liberties around the world is bleak,
according to a new study which found that 87% of the global population were
living in nations deemed “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed”…..A number of
governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to curtail rights such as free
speech, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, according to Civicus Monitor, an alliance of civil society
groups which assessed 196 countries.
The parental burnout crisis has reached a tipping point by
Anna North (Vox)
Lack of child care is likely a big reason more than 850,000
women dropped out of the workforce in September — more than in any other month
on record except for this April, Covert reports. Overall, moms have borne a
bigger share of the pandemic parenting burden than dads, with 80 percent of
mothers of kids under 12 saying they are responsible for the majority of
distance learning in their homes in one April survey. And single moms have been the
hardest-hit of all: The share of unpartnered moms in the workforce dropped from
76.1 percent in September 2019 to 67.4 percent in September 2020, a
significantly larger drop than those seen among partnered parents or single
dads, according to a Pew analysis.
“Many aren’t buying public officials’ ‘stay-at-home’
message. Experts say there’s a better way” (Los Angeles
Times)
Health officials are up against a fatigued public, as well as a
number of people who don’t believe in the danger of the virus, (Dr. Monica)
Gandhi said. But she is also part of a growing number of experts who think
there’s a better way to engage those who do want to take the pandemic seriously
— by taking a lesson from the public health strategy known as harm reduction.
Finally, it’s
tremendously gratifying that the last column of the mighty genius Walter Williams specifically named the Great Barrington Declaration
as the answer:
What about the benefits and costs of dealing with the COVID-19
pandemic? Much of the medical profession and politicians say that lockdowns,
social distancing, and mask-wearing are the solutions. CDC data on death rates
show if one is under 35, the chances of dying from COVID-19 is much lower than
that of being in a bicycle accident. Should we lock down bicycles? Dr. Martin
Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, biostatistician, and
epidemiologist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University and an
epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor
at Stanford University Medical School, a physician and epidemiologist were the
initiators of the Great Barrington Declaration. More than 50,000 scientists and
doctors, as well as more than 682,000 ordinary people, have signed the Great
Barrington Declaration opposing a second COVID-19 lockdown because they see it
doing much more harm than good.
The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration never had any
doubt that eventually most everyone would come to see that the traditional
principles of public health prevail over the previously untested and now failed
policy of lockdowns.
They spoke out when they did as a means of forcing the issue,
and their courage will long echo in the annals of history. Now if we
could only get Melinda Gates to see it.
