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Lockdowns are typically portrayed as prudent precautions against Covid-19, but they are surely the most risky experiment ever conducted on the public.
From the start, researchers have warned that lockdowns could prove far deadlier than the coronavirus. People who lose their jobs or businesses are more prone to
fatal drug overdoses and
suicide, and evidence already exists that many more will die from
cancer,
heart disease,
pneumonia, and
tuberculosis and other diseases because the lockdown prevented their ailments from being diagnosed early and treated properly.
Yet politicians and public-health officials conducting this unprecedented experiment have paid little attention to these risks. In their initial rush to lock down society, they insisted that there was no time for such analysis — and besides, these were just temporary measures to "flatten the curve" so as not to overwhelm hospitals.
But since that danger passed, the lockdown enforcers have found one reason after another to persevere with closures, bans, quarantines, curfews, and other mandates. Anthony Fauci, the White House advisor, recently said that even if a vaccine arrives soon, he does not expect a return to normality before late next year.
He and politicians like New York governor Andrew Cuomo and British prime minister Boris Johnson profess to be following "the science," but no ethical scientist would conduct such a risky experiment without carefully considering the dangers and monitoring the results. After doing so, a group of leading researchers this week called for an end to the experiment. In a joint statement, the
Great Barrington Declaration, they predicted that continued lockdowns will lead to "excess mortality in years to come" and warned of "irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed."
Comment: What else can you do when faced with ludicrous restrictions and social isolation? The students have probably realized that the virus itself is a NothingBurger™, so why not have some fun within the limits of the authoritarian's diktats?