Happy Anniversary of "15 days to Slow the Spread"!!
We were told to lock down, it didn't work...
Today's the day, Happy One Year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread!
Try to think back to where we were a year ago and what we were told at the time:
“The virus was about to sweep across the country, 80% of us would get it, 3% of those who got it would die from it! Our hospitals would be overrun in mere days, and New York state alone would need more ventilators than the entire country had stockpiled!
The only hope was unprecedented, draconian interventions never before contemplated by western societies. As emergency hospitals were being erected across the country, and as stable, but still Covid positive, patients were being discharged from hospitals to make room for the waves to come, our government shut down the economy, forcibly closing businesses and instructing citizens to shelter in place.
It turned out that every aspect of what we were told was wrong. It was guided by flimsy models which both dramatically exaggerated the deadliness of the disease, while simultaneously over estimating the ability of these untested measures to impact the course of the disease.
The measures also ran counter to the many pandemic plans produced by governments prior to 2020. These plans weighed efforts to slow disease spread against the side effects these efforts would have on society as a whole, and these plans were more humble in understanding the limits interventions can have on changing the natural course of a disease.
Instead of balance, we rushed headlong into a year plus of devoting all efforts to thwarting mother nature, damn the consequences! We are only beginning to see the impacts this will have on poverty, life expectancy, and our national debt...
Simply put, "15 days to Slow the Spread" was the first step in the worst public policy decision of our lifetime, and possibly of the last century.
The threats still posed by Covid should not be dismissed or downplayed, but what has become all too clear is that the lockdowns failed in their primary purpose to prevent disease, while their devastating side effects are all too real. The clearest example to date is Florida versus California:
In Florida the schools are open, businesses are free to operate, unemployment is below 5%. In California schools remain closed, businesses are still squeezed by an arbitrary tiered system for opening, and unemployment is north of 9%. And for all that California has higher overall excess mortality and higher Covid mortality when adjusted for age demographics.
It didn't work.
The only question left is when will our leaders get the message? Sadly, with the recent news out of Europe, it appears many still haven't, and we should fear that if there is a spring surge in the US many blue states will likely lock down again.
That's all the more reason to commit to ending this madness at a year! 365 days to slow the spread sounds like enough for me.
Anyway, 0 and 2…