Updated Annotated Anti-Lockdown Commentary!

 

On April 11, 2020; I wrote a blog post in which I detailed my anti-lockdown views.  Somehow, all these months later, we (at least in the NYC area) still find ourselves under many lockdown-related restrictions, yet I stand by every word that I wrote back in April.  Thus, I have decided to write an annotated version of that blog post in which I provide updated thoughts based upon what we now know.  Anything in bold is new, annotated material, while anything in regular font is from April.  Please enjoy!  (Note: I published the original annotated version on February 9.  Then, on March 7, I provided an updated annotated version with two additional annotations, which appear in bold italics.  Bold non-italics represent what I wrote on February 9.)

Let me pose a hypothetical scenario.

It is mid-February 2020, and 10,000 random Americans are asked the question, “If epidemiologists determine that the coronavirus is life-threatening to the very elderly and others with pre-existing conditions as is the case with the flu but spreads at a factor several times greater than that of the flu (and with a greater chance of asymptomatic individuals spreading the virus), what should the government do?”

We now know that Covid has a 99.997% recovery rate for those under the age of 20, a 99.98% rate for those aged 20-49, and a 99.5% rate for those aged 50-69.  That said, we also know that Covid is much more dangerous to those with serious pre-existing conditions like obesity and hypertension.  Therefore, for anyone without such a pre-existing condition, the recovery rate is yet closer to 100% than the percent listed for his/her age group.  Furthermore, for anyone under 50 with no notable pre-existing condition, the flu is more deadly than Covid, and, for people 50-69 without notable pre-existing conditions, it is unclear which of the two viruses is more deadly though the difference is negligible.  Of course, we know that Covid is much more deadly than the flu for those 70 and over and for those with serious pre-existing conditions, and I have always felt that our focus should be almost entirely on protecting individuals meeting these criteria.

My guess is that roughly 98% of people would respond along the lines of, “Let’s isolate those with risk factors until we know it is safe for them to come out of isolation.”  That “we know it is safe” would presumably be the time when we have either reached herd immunity in society (which is created when enough relatively healthy people have had and moved on from the virus) or developed a vaccine.  My guess is that the remaining 2% would say that the government should not be involved.  I cannot imagine that anyone would say, unprompted, “Let’s have everyone, save for a few essential workers, self-quarantine.”  There are several reasons why nobody would say that.  1) Why would we destroy our economy when we can simply have those at risk (and anyone who lives in extremely tight quarters with those at risk) self-quarantine?  2) Why would we close schools and have kids stay at home all day for a virus that is not dangerous for children?   3) Are we going to tell kids that they can’t play with their friends or do most things that kids usually do for fun?  That would all be extreme.

In April, I did not elaborate much on the topic of “herd immunity” after the previous paragraph, but, given that “herd immunity” has become a much more taboo topic since April, I will elaborate here:

The concept of “herd immunity” has been valid for every respiratory disease/virus before Covid.  The concept remains true for Covid too, though some people have tried to say “herd immunity” does not apply here.  The premise of “herd immunity” is that, once enough people have had a virus or been vaccinated against the virus and thus built immunity to the virus, the frequency of transmission of said virus trickles down toward zero.  Of course, in April, we did not have a vaccine nor have any idea if and when a vaccine might come.  Thus, “herd immunity” then seemed to me the only logical way to proceed with Covid.  There is debate about what threshold we would need to reach herd immunity – 50% having built up immunity?  70%?  80%?  Regardless, it seemed clear to me (and to many suppressed scientists and experts) that the logical societal approach was to have the elderly and immunocompromised self-quarantine for however long was necessary until the number of hospitalized Covid patients neared zero.  At that time, we could have allowed those who were self-quarantining to return to their normal lives.

In the spring, people were treating the at-risk well on one hand but poorly on the other.  It was good that many of us were shopping for these at-risk individuals and dropping off supplies (while never personally getting within 6 feet of the people) for them.  However, by all of us who were not at major Covid risk minimizing our interactions with each other (as opposed to minimizing our interactions with only the at-risk, which I recommended), we made sure that herd immunity would take an incredibly long time to happen.  By my preferred approach, we could have possibly had herd immunity by May and thus made the world much safer for the elderly and immunocompromised by May, but instead, we have continued to lock down healthy people to varying degrees, and this has kept those who are truly at risk in danger for almost a year.  Moreover, we have taken millions of people who have had no need to alter their lives in any way other than avoiding the at-risk people, and we have taken away these non-at-risk people’s jobs, destroyed many of their businesses, hurt their mental health, hurt their physical health, caused suicides and drug issues, and caused domestic abuse.  Moreover, the quality of life has greatly decreased for most people, and that is important too.  Life is not just about how many years you live, but it is also about the joy you can have in those years. 

Of course, in the second week of March, we arrived at the afore-mentioned lockdown scenario, a scenario at which I feel that nobody would have arrived in February.  This lockdown approach has been bothersome to me since the moment that we went into lockdown mode, and I am one of the only people I know who seems to be bothered by it.  Thus, it is entirely possible that I am crazy, but I am going to keep writing this blog entry anyway.  After all, Candace Owens and Thomas Sowell agree with me, and they are two of the most brilliant minds on the planet.  Simply put, the approach we have taken to fighting the virus would be valid if the virus was indiscriminately life-threatening to the population.  That is not the case here.  I would have instead taken the approach of having the United States federal government urge people in the at-risk categories to self-quarantine while allowing the rest of the country and economy to continue as usual.

I have since found plenty of other “blue checkmarks” – Alex Berenson, Steve Deace, Jordan Schachtel, Daniel Horowitz, and pretty much everyone at Daily Wire not named “Ben Shapiro”; to name a few – who share my views.

This all begs an important question: If nobody in mid-February would have suggested on his/her own to quarantine everyone, why was everyone OK with it less than a month later?  Sure, we knew more information about the dangers of corona (Yes, this post is old enough that I was referring to “Covid-19” as the more generic “coronavirus”.) after three or four additional weeks of its existence, but that is not the main reason for people’s mindset change.  The big change is a matter of social media.  People spend so much time on social media that corona discussion on social-media platforms ramped up greatly over those three or four weeks.  Thus, by the second week of March, people were more and more panicked that we needed to “shut everything down”.  If we did not have social media, I do not think we would have had the lockdown.  (Furthermore, had this virus happened before the Internet, there is no way a lockdown would have ever happened.  People back then would have had too minimal connection with those outside their homes.)

Anyway, as people became more and more panicked about the virus, I did not.  Before the state governments started to “shut everything down”, I kept saying that it was ridiculous that we should quarantine everyone and destroy the economy.  Again, I felt that option should be reserved only for a hypothetical virus that is equally deadly to all people.  In that second week of March, many people (and many very intelligent people) debated the accuracy of various corona models, debated how much a quarantine would work, debated how well social distancing would work, debated how shutting down a multitude of events would work, etc.  All the while, I kept saying that the one thing that we know for certain is that shutting down the economy will absolutely positively unequivocally “beyond a shadow of doubt” kill many people and ruin the lives of many more in the long run.  That was a guarantee.

Therefore, for me, “quarantining everyone and destroying the economy” was never a viable option.  In recent days, I have seen people debating on social media about how much the quarantine has worked, how much social distancing has worked, etc.  This argument purportedly is to determine whether or not the shutdown was warranted.  However, I find this to be a completely foolish debate.  As Matt Walsh, of The Daily Wire, has often covered, it is silly when people debate “full lockdown vs. no action at all”.  The question should be and always should have been, “Is the difference between the number of lives saved between full quarantine and at-risk self-quarantine greater than or less than the number of lives we will lose from destroying the economy?” I have not seen a model that measures this, but I have never wavered in my thought that the latter number is much, much greater.  I still feel this way.  That said, even if the difference between the number of lived saved between full quarantine and at-risk self quarantine were to end up greater than the number of lives lost by the lockdown, I would still believe that full lockdowns were incorrect policy.  This is because of quality-of-life calculations.  We measure life not only in quantity of living individuals but also in quantity and quality of years lived.  In many other facets of life, we exchange a number of lives for quality of lives.  For example, if people were not allowed to drive, we would lose fewer lives to car accidents, but we all accept that life is better by having cars and accepting that some people will die in car accidents.  The same logic applies here, as, even if full quarantine (versus at-risk self-quarantine) were to save more lives than it takes (though I do not think this is the case), is it worthwhile to cause so much destruction, loneliness, etc. to the living?  I think not, especially when one considers that most of the lives we would be saving are those of elderly individuals, while most of the pain we are causing is to young people, especially children. 

I should also add that, as per my approach, there would be at-risk individuals, as I mentioned earlier, who choose to live their lives normally and risk death.  That does not make these people bad, and they do not deserve our scorn.  My approach has always been about allowing people to make their own choices.  This is one of the reasons why I never understand why people become so upset when states loosen restrictions, as if all of a sudden every person in the state will now be in crowded areas.  If someone lives in Florida and wants to continue to self-isolate, he/she can do that!  To the contrary, if someone goes to a crowded place, he/she will be hanging out with other people who all decided to go to a crowded place.  That’s OK.  That’s good!!!  Nobody is forcing Grandma and Grandpa out of their homes and into the nightclubs.

That all said, even if we forget about quality-of-life calculations, I still believe that the difference between full lockdown and at-risk self-quarantine still takes more lives than it saves.

How many lives would we have lost by doing an at-risk quarantine instead of a full one?  We would have presumably had a few people who were unaware that they had risk factors who would have lost their lives.  (Plus, a few at-risk people might have died after deciding that they wanted to live their normal lives and were willing to accept the Covid risk.  That is OK.  If I were elderly, I probably would have taken that risk too.  Again, it is not only the quantity of years one lives that matters but also the quality of those years.)  However, it is entirely possible that we have actually killed more people with the full quarantine than the partial one in this way: We did not yet develop herd immunity, and we have now sent kids to spend 24 hours a day at home.  That might not be a big deal in a big house with healthy people; however, in places like New York City, where there is a likely a positive correlation between size of one’s dwelling and quality of one’s health, we could be creating many deaths by having kids bond so much with at-risk family members.  I am not guaranteeing that we are going to lose more lives from full quarantine than we would have from quarantining solely the at-risk individuals (though it is a realistic possibility).  However, I do feel safe saying that wrecking the economy will take more lives from us than the net (whether positive or negative) of doing an at-risk instead of partial quarantine.

As of April 11, I clearly had not realized the two major reasons why the NYC area has had so many more Covid deaths per capita than other parts of the world – 1) Governors Cuomo, Murphy, and others panicked that hospitals would run out of capacity and thus sent patients with Covid back into nursing homes.  This caused so many people to die in nursing homes, yet, even in the area (NYC) with the worst Covid results in the world, we still never came to close needing all of the excess medical capacity that was assembled on the U.S.S Comfort and at the Javits Center.  2) Many doctors and medical personnel were so terrified that Covid was more deadly than it actually is that these medical people forced many people onto ventilators in order to avoid having to treat them directly.  In turn, the ventilators were often too forceful and killed some patients. 

Of course, we know that the government has tried to “fix” the economic issues by giving people (who qualify) $1200 payments, and, of course, this does not help a whole lot.  The $1200 does not bring back lost businesses or cover much of people’s lost wages.  However, I don’t understand how so many Republicans were OK with the lockdown but have an issue with this $2-trillion stimulus package.  I am a Republican too, and one of the core Republican beliefs is that individuals know better what decisions to make for their own lives than the government does.  There is no feasible way to distribute $2 trillion, so that it perfectly makes up for all different variations of economic, emotional, and psychological ruin that the shutdown has caused people.  Each person’s situation is different, so there is no government stimulus plan that can perfectly fix each situation.  That said, I am astounded by the fact that so many Republicans (and almost everyone) have been perfectly fine with the shutdown but are choosing instead to nitpick the ins and outs of the stimulus package.

Seriously, behind Door #1 was the self-quarantine policy.  In this case, the government could have told us the risk factors that cause corona to be life-threatening.  The bulk of people with those risk factors would have listened and self-quarantined.  While plenty of people often like to disobey authority, the threat of “if you do not _____, your life could be in danger” usually causes people to listen to authority.  Under the at-risk self-quarantine, the government would have been responsible for two main things: 1) Easing sick-day policies on individuals who are self-quarantining and having companies/workers affected apply for government compensation.  2) It is unclear whether or not this policy would have caused more or fewer people to need major medical care in the near term.  Thus, in the case of “more”, the government might have had to provide additional mobile-care units as it has done in New York City.  However, as I mentioned earlier, it is entirely possible that, by having fewer young people quarantined with older people, the number of mobile-care units needed (behind Door #1) would be less than it has been behind Door #2.

Behind Door #2 was the policy of full lockdown.  With that one, not only has the government chosen the path of more deaths and harming more lives, but the government has also chosen the path of drastically increasing the national debt.  The government is going to have additional stimulus packages that could add to $6 trillion.  Throw in the fact that most companies are shuddered, and we have a recipe for not only large debt but also massive inflation (and thus further economic turmoil).  Also, while I have never cared too much whether I shop “big” or shop “small”, the fact that the government is forcing many small businesses to stay closed while bigger ones stay open feels bad to me too.  Most importantly, Door #2 requires the government to rebuild the entire economy and to try to fix the lives of tens of millions of lives, while Door #1 would have required the government to handle the financial situations of the self-quarantined and possibly to jump-start a larger increase in mobile medical units. (I say “possibly” again because of what I said earlier about the possibility that an at-risk quarantine would have actually rendered fewer people with life-threatening corona cases.)

Also, I cannot understate the fact that the government, by choosing Door #2, is choosing to take youth away from our youth, if you will.  I give a lot of credit to today’s youth, because they are saying all the right things.  However, it does not sit great with me that, to deal with a virus that is not dangerous to young people (barring those with major pre-existing conditions); we have taken these kids out of school, eliminated their sports seasons, proms, playdates, and so much more.  That stuff all matters.  As adults, our greatest joy should be in seeing joy in our children, and we are robbing our children from a whole lot of joy these days.  Again, this all matters. The only argument against that stuff mattering would be that we are cancelling young people’s joys in order to save lives, which brings me to my next big point.

What is the bar here?  Nobody would ever dream of cancelling children’s activities to keep people from dying of the flu.  Similarly, nobody would dream of shutting down the whole economy because of the flu.  Therefore, where is the line of demarcation?  Yes, corona is more contagious than the flu, and people can be asymptomatic for longer with corona.  However, the groups of people to whom the viruses are life-threatening are essentially the same, and the symptoms for those are not in the life-threatening category are roughly the same.  It is funny how so many people seem to forget that, when one has the flu (the legit flu, not a cold), it is an absolutely miserable experience and one that can last a week or two.  (Two years ago, I had a severe cold, not even the flu, for nearly a week, and I had many of the standard Covid symptoms.  I could neither taste nor smell things, and it took all of my energy just to stand up.  That said, if you had asked me then, “Mike, do you wish we had locked down society to make sure that you didn’t end up feeling like this?”, I would have looked at you like you were crazy.  Of course, I would not have wished that!) Therefore, if we experience another virus – one with similar symptoms and life-threatening profiles as those of the flu and corona but with a spread rate between that of the flu and that of corona – what do we do?  Do we shut everything down (like with corona), or is it business as usual (like with the flu)?

There is not really much of a happy medium here.  We saw the slippery slope this go-round with corona.  The first big domino to fall was the NHL and NBA suspending their seasons alongside the NCAA cancelling the basketball tournaments.  (And yes, I do feel terrible for kids on teams like Dayton who were having their best seasons, only to have the tournament taken away at the last second.  We would not have done that for the flu, so where is the line?)  Then governors presumably decided, “If we can’t have people packing 18,000-seat arenas, then we can’t have 1000 people in schools”.  Thus, governors shut down schools, which led to shutting down 65-person restaurants, which led to preventing any two people who do not live together from being within 6 feet of each other.  It is a slippery slope.

Of course, I would have been fine going to packed arenas this whole time.  After all, I was at the Prudential Center on March 9, four days before schools were shut down.  I was at The Rock for the New Jersey hThigh-school hockey championships, and I had no fear being packed with a bunch of people.  As per my herd-immunity approach, I would also be fine going to concerts, hockey games, baseball games, etc. right now because I do not have risk factors. That said, not having those big-venue events (sports, concerts, big religious gatherings, etc.) is devastating on its own when one considers how many people work the events and the spillover venues (neighboring bars, restaurants, parking garages, etc.), as well as the multiplier effect from that spending.  Plus, it would definitely boost the morale of those quarantined to be able to watch sports on TV. 

I would hope that for future viruses, the powers that be would thinking about the panic that shutting down sports creates.  The NHL and NBA suspensions kicked off the panic increase for corona, and this panic can manifest itself in many ways.  I have already mentioned that the panic is at least partially responsible for the fact that most people ended up on board with shutting down the economy.  Additionally, the ramped-up panic has made some people go to the hospital for minor issues but fearing the worst (using resources that could be better used for people with major issues), while it makes others with other major health issues avoid hospitals for fear of infection. 

Referring to the past five paragraphs, never in my wildest April dreams would I have thought that there would still be ANY lockdown restrictions in February 2021.  In fact, I was frustrated back then that any restrictions might even last until May 2020.  That said, my #1 issue with lockdowns remains what we are doing to children.  We have spent almost a year making students learn remotely or in hybrid fashion, avoid each other in general, and wear masks (which I will discuss more later).  We have taken away so many of children’s most fun moments and are conditioning kids to fear other people as nothing more than mere germ carriers.  As we continue to hurt children’s mental health, we are stigmatizing kids, and all people, who test positive for Covid.  We are victim-blaming people with Covid when the truth of the matter is that people are going to get the virus regardless of the non-pharmaceutical interventions we employ.  (Plus, as per my “herd immunity” idea, contracting Covid is helpful to society, as long as the at-risk people are generally self-quarantining, as they have been.) This victim-blaming mentality is terrible for children and truly for all people.  We are actually conditioning many people to fear other people. We have spent a year telling people that they cannot go to any type of crowded event, a message that instills a fear in many people that is hard to shake.  Every time someone watches a crowd-less sporting event, that person (unless he/she is entrenched in his/her views like I am) is further conditioned to believe that crowds are the enemy.  Thus, the prevailing mentality that lockdowns are necessary is what perpetuates the existence of lockdowns.  We have entered a vicious cycle.

Furthermore, I think that the two main reasons that lockdowns continue are that: 1) Too many people are afraid to return to normalcy, as I discussed in the previous paragraph.  2) Politicians know that, once the lockdowns end, and most people become less fearful; many of these same people who have lauded politicians for the lockdowns will start to criticize the very leaders they once praised.  Thus, if you are a politician, why give up the power that the citizenry so easily gave you back in March?

Speaking of politicians; as a teacher, it has bothered me greatly to watch teachers’ unions and so many teachers fight so hard against normal schooling.  We expect our students to make logical life decisions, yet so many teachers are letting illogical fear-mongering hurt the well-being of our children.  I have believed this whole time that school should continue as normal, with the at-risk teachers taking government-reimbursed leave.  Playing out the logic stream; if we cannot have normal schooling because of Covid, we should never have normal schooling because students are more likely to die of the flu or from driving to school than they are of dying from Covid.  The same logic applies to any teachers who are less than 50 years old and lack key pre-existing conditions, while the flu- and Covid- fatality risks for those aged 50-69 and lacking key pre-existing conditions seem roughly equal.  That said, I would have been OK with any teacher over the age of 49 being able to self-quarantine and receive government compensation while on leave.

Returning to an earlier point, I have not understood the people who were OK with shutting down the economy at first but, a week later, were clamoring for us to reopen the economy.  If those people simply changed their minds about what was best for the country, I respect that.  We are all able to change our views over time.  However, I do not understand the people who genuinely thought that we could shut down the country and open it up again two weeks later like nothing had happened.  That type of logic (or lack thereof) displays a complete misunderstanding of how people think.  By going into shutdown mode, something that we have never seen in the history of this country; the government essentially told people, “This pandemic is horrific, and your lives are in great danger.”  How then would one expect the masses to be OK a few weeks later with the government saying, “OK, we are ready to open things up again.  Yes, more people now have the virus, but you will be fine.”? While I would welcome the reopening, I have been analyzing the costs and benefits here from Day 1.  Most people do not do that.  Most people are simply following the government’s lead, and this makes it impossible to do a 180 from “shut it all down” to “open it all up again” so quickly without causing a complete mess.

In April, I thought it would be tough to get people to do a 180, but I figured that, over time, people would do that 180.  I was wrong.  As I discussed to an extent earlier, these past 11 months have conditioned people to have so much fear of getting Covid or of passing Covid to someone else that it feels even tougher to pull off the 180 now than it did in April.  Until March, the Overton window (which is the range of topics generally considered acceptable to discuss in society) never included the idea that we should shut down so much of society to keep people from getting sick.  The Overton window did not have room for statements of the “If it saves just one life…” ilk.  Nobody would have dreamed of panicking because he/she has encountered someone without a mask.  (even though we do not have evidence that masks are useful in stopping the spread of Covid, which I will discuss more later, though we are starting to have evidence that asymptomatic spread occurs in only .7% of those with asymptomatic Covid)  Simply put, over the past 11 months, most people have switched from putting the onus of their own health on themselves to putting the onus on others’ actions, and I do not honestly know how we can flip that switch back in the other direction.

This leads me to some political criticisms.  I am sick of Republicans applauding President Trump every time he talks about wanting to reopen the economy in the future.  First off, he said three weeks ago that he wanted to reopen the economy by Easter, which has arrived.  Clearly that is not happening.  Thus, why should I applaud him now when he talks about reopening the economy?  Plus, he talks about how we had the greatest economy in the world, and we will rebuild to be the greatest again.  That is the most backhanded self-compliment I have ever heard.  We went from having the greatest economy in the world a month ago to having potentially the biggest depression this country has ever seen, and we are supposed to applaud him for simply saying that we will become the best again?  I find it hard to believe that all of the newly unemployed people find much comfort in those speeches.

Furthermore, there are two ironies with my criticism of the president.  The first is that I have spent President Trump’s entire presidency saying more or less, “No, I don’t like a lot of what he says and tweets, but I like things that he does….and that matters.”  On the other hand, he has now taken what I feel to be the worst action of his presidency, but he is saying good things.  Go figure.  As far as the other irony, we have heard countless leftists call President Trump a “fascist”.  Now, we see governor after governor (many who are democrat) implement Draconian measure after Draconian measure while (along with Nancy Pelosi) criticizing the president for not issuing a national lockdown.  In other words, Dems are now criticizing President Trump for not being a fascist, while I sit here wishing he would act like a fascist and tell governors not to lock down their entire states.  Politics make strange bedfellows, as they say. 

I firmly believe that lockdowns cost President Trump re-election.  I think that he handled Covid badly, but my criticism is not what most people’s criticism is.  Most people criticize him for not locking down  firmly early on, instead letting states make their own lockdown choices.  Well, if you have made it this far into my essay, you can guess that I do not share that criticism of him.  I am anti-lockdown, and, while many people say “we didn’t lock down hard enough”, the truth is that our country locked down in March harder than I ever thought possible.  The only way to lock down any harder would have been to make it illegal for people to leave their houses for medical care or necessities or for companies to deliver necessities from place to place, and that was not going to happen.

Thus, my criticism of President Trump was not that he was too lax on lockdowns but instead that he never committed to either the pro-lockdown or the anti-lockdown camp.  I do not think he should have supported lockdowns in the first place, even for “two weeks to flatten the curve”.  However, given that this quote was the alleged initial reason for lockdowns, I believe that President Trump needed to say firmly on March 16, “We are doing this only for hospital capacity.  On March 30, we will return to normal, aside from having the at-risk self-quarantine.”  I still would not have liked this move, as the hospitals were never close to overrun.  (Note: Contrary to popular belief, ICUs always run near peak capacity.  The novel thing this spring was that we would shut down the country over this.  To the contrary, in 2017-18, when 60,000 – 100,000 Americans died of the flu, nobody talked about shutting down the country.  In fact, most people don’t even know that so many people died of the flu.  I realize that having more than 400,000 people die over two winters and a summer of Covid is worse than having nearly 100,000 Americans die in one winter of the flu, but there is nevertheless a stark difference in how our country handled the two situations.  My approach of having the government subsidize the at-risk who choose to self-quarantine would have also been radically different from the “business as usual” approach of 2017-18, but I feel that would have been the best option for the cumulative well- being of the American population.  Plus, that “400,000” number includes people who died of Covid because of ventilators/nursing-home policy and people who died from a reason other than Covid but were Covid-positive at the time.) 

That said, I could have lived with a two-week shutdown with a firm end date.  Instead, President Trump let the lockdowns continue to happen and even criticized people like Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for re-opening too soon.  The president broke the cardinal rule of politics – “Don’t give up the friends you have for the friends you are never going to get.”  I believe this is why President Biden won the election.  Some of you might be shouting at me to say, “He lost because he says and tweets inappropriate things!!!”  However, I believe that, if you are shouting that at me right now, you did not vote for him in 2016 nor 2020.  The inappropriate comments and tweets did not move many, if any, votes from President Trump in 2016 to President Biden in 2020.  I believe that he lost the election directly and indirectly because of lockdowns, as I shall further explain in the next paragraph.

Once the Democrats essentially became the party of lockdowns, and Anthony Fauci became a deity to the Left, the “Trump is too lax on Covid” narrative became entrenched in our media and culture.  Of course, none of these people on the Left were ever going to vote for Trump anyway.  Meanwhile, the lockdowns put many 2016 Trump voters out of jobs or out of business.  Thus, he lost too many votes there, and that probably cost him the election.  Of course, the mail-in voting happened because of lockdowns too, and that was a big part of Trump losing reelection.  While Joe Biden is much less popular than President Obama was, it is much easier for people to mail in ballots in a few-week span than it is to go to the polls on Election Day. 

Meanwhile, I have heard plenty of Republicans say things like, “Trump had to support lockdowns in March. The media gave him no choice.”  Come on.  Lockdowns are the most draconian measures our government has ever imposed, and the media was always going to vilify everything President Trump did, no matter what.  Again, he went much more lockdown-happy than I would have liked, and the media STILL destroyed him.  Thus, he would have been better off being anti-lockdown (for all the reasons I have listed) and forcing the media to make it even clearer that President Trump was pushing freedom, while the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) were pushing fascism.  Unfortunately though, President Trump is never able to stay focused on one matter for long enough to carry out strong agendas with strong articulation.  This trait has hurt him in other matters too, but it never hurt him more than it did with lockdowns.

Lastly, let me just speak of what will age well from this whole experience and what will age badly.  I am really glad to see the outpouring of support for medical personnel and other essential workers.  Hopefully, this sticks with us over time.  It likely won’t, but it is nice to see people applauding nurses, doctors, EMTs, police officers, firefighters, etc.  Meanwhile, anyone who has been calling the cops on kids who have been riding bikes or playing basketball probably won’t feel great about that choice in the years to come.

Anyway, as I wrap up this post, allow me to say that I hope that I am wrong about all of my predictions.  I hope that the economic mess ends up being less severe than I have feared.  I hope that the difference between numbers of lives saved between the two different quarantine policies is greater than I predicted.  I hope that our leaders have done what is best for the United States.  Right now, I feel that my beliefs are correct, but I do hope that, in time, I am proven wrong.

I still hope I am proven wrong, but it has not yet feel this is the case. Anyway, conspicuously absent from my April post were two of the biggest Covid-related sticking points – masks and mass asymptomatic testing/contact tracing - that we have, and I will address those topics and vaccines (a new topic) now, as my conclusion.

1)     Masks:

 

Mask mandates actually started right around when I posted my original blog post.  I had been crafting my post for roughly a week, and I did not want to update it for the new “mask” discussion.  That said, it is worth noting that, on April 8 (shortly before mask mandates began), I went to a Long Island grocery store.  This was during the peak of NYC-area Covid-related hospitalizations and deaths.

 

I was the only person in the grocery store not wearing a mask.  As I walked around the store, one woman said to me, “Wow, you’re brave for not wearing a mask.”  Notice she did not call me “selfish” nor become mad at me.  This is because, for all of history until that point, we believed that the mask protects the wearer, not other people.  As for why I chose to be “brave”, I knew that a) I was not at risk of having a severe Covid issue, and b) all of the science to that point had shown that masks are of negligible help in stopping the transmission of such small viruses, as the particles on which they travel are too small to be stopped by masks.  Plus, there is a chance that bacteria could form on the mask; there is a mental-health fear cost to seeing everyone wearing masks; and mainly I do not think it is healthy to be breathing my own carbon dioxide all day.

 

Thus, as you can guess, I am against mask mandates, and I am especially against the premise that my mask protects you but not me.  Yes, I am sure that many of you think I am the worst person in the world for being anti-mask, but please allow me to explain. 

 

First of all, as per my herd-immunity approach, I have thought it was beneficial for young, healthy people to pass Covid among ourselves, which also has the side benefit of strengthening our immune systems.  That is actually the unselfish thing to do, when one considers that Covid is less dangerous to young healthy people than the flu is.  People get caught up now in the symptoms of Covid, but the truth is that the flu also makes people unable to taste, smell, or get out of bed for several days.  Yes, we hear about the occasional outlier case in which a young, healthy person dies of Covid, and such a case is tragic.  However, we cannot let the outliers dictate policy.  Thus, I return to my premise that young, healthy people (who are more likely to die of the flu or in a car crash than we are of Covid) should have been passing Covid to each other to build up herd immunity (with those who actually feel sick staying home, as they would with any illness), to the benefit of the quarantining at-risk population.  Hence, if masks work in stopping Covid’s spread, they would hurt that herd-immunity goal; and, if mask do not work, then obviously nobody should be wearing them. 

 

However, even if we take herd immunity out of the equation, I have read countless articles trying to find something that says that my mask does protect you but does not protect me.  I have not found one.  This premise makes no sense.  I figured I could find some study that says that maybe the virus jumps from a larger particle to a smaller particle shortly after exhale.  I thought I might find something that says the virus dies if it hits a mask one second after exhalation but not if it strikes a mask more than one second later.  Maybe there was something with the velocity of particles in play here.  I could not find it.  Clearly, I am being open-minded on the matter of masks, but I am not finding anything that says that my mask protects you but not me. 

 

Thus, we are left with this: If my mask is able to block the virus, then your mask will also block the virus, thus rendering the question of whether or not I am wearing a mask moot to you.  If my mask cannot block the virus, then your mask will also not block the virus, thus again rendering the question of whether or not I am wearing the mask moot to you.  Actually, the biggest argument for mask wearing would come if masks block half of all virus transmission, as this stat would mean that having everyone wear masks would cause only a quarter of viruses to make it from one person to the other.  However, it appears that masks prevent a negligible amount of virus transmission, analogous to a chain-link fence trying to stop particles of dust from flying through it.

 

Anyway, if wearing masks had no costs, I would say, “Sure, we should wear masks even if they stop a tiny amount of virus transmission”, but I return to my premise that the people who are most at risk should not be out and about and my premise that there are health costs to wearing masks. Plus, yet again, the rest of us should be trying to build up herd immunity and should be OK with getting the virus, which means that we should not be wearing masks. If an at-risk person wants to go out and about and wear a mask, that is fine.  In fact, I am fine with anyone choosing to wear a mask; I just do not believe in mandating mask usage. 

 

Most importantly, the fact that anyone should be wearing a mask during any type of exercise is patently asinine.  I wear a mask when I lift at the gym, and I hate it.  I do not know how people wear masks during cardio, but I will not do it. I will not run on a gym treadmill because I will not wear a mask when I run.

 

One more note on masks.  I cannot stand the mask-shaming and social-media posts with people demanding that others wear masks.  I always wear a mask when required, and almost everyone who shares my “anti-mask” views does the same.  The virus is spreading because masks are ineffective and especially now because it is winter again.  Dr. Fauci and the surgeon general (Jerome Adams) said last Feburary and March that masks are not effective in stopping the spread of Covid.  All studies to that point backed what they said.  Then, in April, they changed their tune with no legitimate studies to back their change.  I think that they made the change because they realized that lockdowns were much more detrimental than helpful, so it allowed the government to blame rising cases on lack of mask compliance, causing people to be less critical of lockdowns.  Meanwhile, the main study that people use to support mask usage is one in which two asymptomatic hairdressers who tested positive for Covid had appointments with 130 or so patients, none of whom became infected.  However, taking aside that the sample size of two people is way too small to be statistically significant, we also have a study from China that shows that asymptomatic and presymptomatic people are only .7% likely to spread Covid.  If that study is accurate, then that stat actually should have ended all lockdowns on the spot, as “asymptomatic spread” was the big bogeyman that caused all these restrictions in the first place.  In actuality, as Clay Travis or Alex Berenson would say, “virus is gonna virus”, and there is not too much we can do about it.  Plus, returning to the study of the hairdressers, we now know how unreliable many of the Covid tests are, so it is quite possible that the hairdressers had had false positives anyway.

 

Lastly, I am sick of the Left shouting the word “science” to try to end all debate against things that the Left believes.  In science, we are constantly evaluating what we know and changing what we know.  Science allows for debate on issues, while shouting “Science!” at all dissenters is simply bullying.

 

I should also note that there is a Danish mask study, which has done the best job of controlling variables related to Covid and masks, and this study has found that masks do not provide statistically significant benefits to mask wearers.

 

2)     Mass Testing and Tracing:

 

I cannot stand these practices.  Without these, we would have been done talking about Covid by May.  The NYC area in March and April represents the hardest-hit area and time for Covid.  This was where and when hospitalizations and daily deaths were at their worst.  Moreover, in March and April, we were not doing mass testing yet.  That was a good thing.  Now, we test so many healthy people that the media has spent the months since April spreading panic based mainly upon positive tests, not necessarily deaths nor hospitalizations.  Who cares about positive tests, which again are often unreliable anyway?  More people with positive tests than not would not have even known they were sick.

 

One of the worst decisions we have made in this pandemic has been to have such massive testing of asymptomatic individuals and contact tracing.  I have no problem with asymptomatic people choosing to take Covid tests.  However, the mandated asymptomatic testing of those in sports leagues and other jobs and of those who have been near people with Covid are what keep the pandemic mania alive, because every asymptomatic test, many of these tests being quite unreliable, causes not only the testee but also many of that person’s contacts to have to self-quarantine for a week or two.  The interstate quarantines are also bad ideas too.  Covid is endemic in all 50 states, and the world, at this point.  Nobody should have to quarantine after returning from a different state or country.  As long as we have so many symptom-free people and their contacts self-quarantining, this lockdown madness will never end. This is why, ye verily, once and for all, we need to do what I have been saying all along.

 

Have the at-risk self-quarantine until they are vaccinated (which is now a possibility) or until we have reached herd immunity as a society.  As long as we are doing that, there is no reason to have mandated asymptomatic testing nor contact tracing.  Let us end the madness.

 

3)     Speaking of vaccines, we now have vaccines, which was not the case when I wrote my original post in April.  As you know, I believe that life should have continued as normal this whole time for those outside high-risk groups.  That said, once everyone from the high-risk groups has had the chance to be vaccinated, we had really be able to return to normal life.  If the vaccines do not return us to normalcy, we might never return to normalcy.

 

At the same time, I support anyone’s decision not to get the vaccine, and those declining the vaccine are not the same as “anti-vaxxers” in the classic sense.  I disagree with the standard anti-vaxxer view, though I respect people’s right to exercise that viewpoint. With the Covid vaccines, however, we are still learning about the side effects.  Thus, if someone is not in a high-risk Covid group, he/she might be more likely to have severe side effects from the vaccine than a bout of Covid with severe symptoms.  I personally am going to get the vaccine, but I am doing so mainly to comfort the students and teachers where I teach.  Thus, I am getting the vaccine to allay the fears of those whom I feel have been acting irrationally for months.

 

All the while, the vaccine situation remains analogous to my anti-lockdown views.  Given that the at-risk people should have access to vaccines before the low-risk people do, it does not matter to the health of the high-risk people whether or not the low-risk people are vaccinated.  It is analogous to my idea all along that, as long as the high-risk people would have been quarantining, the rest of us would not have been endangering their lives by living ours.  Again, as per herd immunity, we would have actually helped the lives of the at risk.

 

If you made it this far, I congratulate you and appreciate your attrition and perseverance.  I will finish by noting that, with nearly a year of global data examining different levels of not only masking but also lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical Covid-related restrictions, there is no evidence that any of these restrictions and mandates have had any statistically significant impact on Covid death and hospitalization numbers.  Virus is going to virus.  Every Covid death is tragic to those affected by it, but it continues to seem to me that all lockdowns do is add more tragedy than they remove from this world.  Therefore, for the last time, I plead that we end the lockdowns, end the mask mandates, end hybrid schooling, end capacity limits, and end all of the other Covid restrictions.  It is time to return to normal life.