Kerby Anderson
Four years ago, we heard the announcement about “15 days to slow the spread.” The anniversary of that campaign brought many articles. Scott Atlas wrote about “Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later.” John Stossel did a YouTube video and follow-up commentary on “Covid: Don’t Let Them Off the Hook.”
Scott Atlas reminded us that the benefits of the lockdowns were tiny. It supposedly prevented some deaths, but those numbers are very small when compared to the number of Americans who die of the flu each year. The number of non-Covid excess deaths are huge, especially when compared to other European countries. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the U.S. “would have had 1.60 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Sweden.”
The impact on the economy and jobs was staggering. “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 49 million Americans were out of work in May 2020. This shock had health consequences.” And prolonged school closings led to permanent learning loss and later increases in “psychiatric illness, self-harm, obesity, and substance abuse.”
John Stossel says he was always wary of politicians but “was surprised at how authoritarian many were eager to be.” Many mayors and governors locked down the society in ways that didn’t even make sense from a medical perspective.
It is worth mentioning that four years ago, I did a radio program and radio commentaries on the book, The Price of Panic. It was written by experts in several fields documenting the problems with the lockdowns and predicting much of what we can now see clearly.
These are lessons learned that we need to remember, especially during this election year when candidates will be asking for your vote.
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Penna Dexter