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.