For years, scientists and commentators who questioned COVID policies were censored, blacklisted, and canceled across the country. Many of these dissenting views have since been vindicated from the lab origins theory to the lack of efficacy of surgical masks to the opposition to the closure of schools. Now, a new study in the Journal of Infection further undermines the once orthodox views of the pandemic, concluding that “reopening schools did not change the existing trajectory of COVID-19 rates.” In other words, we shut down our schools, without any demonstrable benefit to the country. We did, however, succeed in reducing free speech in the name of combating “disinformation.”
The report is based on one of the comprehensive studies to date on the pandemic:
“Data were extracted from government websites. Cases and COVID-19 hospitalization and death incidence rates were calculated during the Delta and early Omicron periods in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom, for two weeks preceding and six weeks after schools reopened. We summarized stringency of public health measures (GRI), COVID-19 vaccination rates by age and SARS-CoV-2 testing rates.”
In comparing these different countries, the scientists found no significant differences in reported cases: “No consistent patterns in cases, hospitalizations or deaths despite school re-openings or changes to public health measures,”
The suppression of the lab theory and the targeting of dissenting scientists show the true cost of censorship and viewpoint intolerance.
The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.
Some experts questioned the efficacy of surgical masks, the scientific support for the six-foot rule and the necessity of shutting down schools. The government has now admitted that many of these objections were valid and that it did not have hard science to support some of the policies. While other allies in the West did not shut down their schools, we never had any substantive debate due to the efforts of this alliance of academic, media and government figures.
Not only did millions die from the pandemic, but the United States is still struggling with the educational and mental health consequences of shutting down all our public schools. That is the true cost of censorship when the government works with the media to stifle scientific debate and public disclosures.
Many still hope that Congress and the incoming Trump administration will conduct a long-needed investigation into the origins to allow for a more credible and open debate. That hope was increased by the nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the organizers of the Great Barrington Declaration, to be the next head of the National Institutes of Health.
One of the most lasting costs was born by our children who have shown both educational and psychological harm from the shutting down of schools. The study confirms what dissenters said all along: there is no evidence that this was necessary or had any benefit to society:
“Our findings show that there were no consistent patterns to case, hospitalisation or death rates in each country or jurisdiction, irrespective of whether schools were open for onsite learning or changes to PHSM. School closures were adopted by many countries as part of a suite of PHSM but in the future should only be implemented where there is strong evidence of effectiveness. Predesigned and approved study protocols, along with scenario-based planning for schools are needed to prepare for the next pandemic. The negative consequences on child health and development are profound, so understanding the role of schools in SARS-CoV-2 transmission should be a priority for pandemic preparedness and response.”
We started this nation by firing a king and driving a stake through the heart of Divine Right. And we did it with the Indispensable Right. And thanks to platforms like this one, for as many times as the Lot’s Wife of authoritarianism caves in to the temptation to look back to Sodom, we’ll see a new pillar of salt. We might bring forward an idea from WWll that our parents brought to bear, from Rosie the Riveter to General Leslie Grove on the Manhattan Project: if it’s difficult we do it immediately. If it’s impossible it takes a little longer.
If masks work, why don’t masks work?
If vaccinations work, why don’t vaccinations work?
But I believe in science!
Today’s disinformation becomes tomorrow’s truth.
Two facts to keep in mind. 1. The US had a far far worse covid death rate than other peer countries. 2. Red states had a worse covid death rate than blue states. This was true even on the individual level with Republicans faring worse than Democrats.
COMMUNITY NOTE: This may be disinformation.
It is disinformation – there is no MAY about it.
“The US had a far far worse covid death rate than other peer countries.”
When “died *with* Covid” = “died *because* of Covid,” your statistics are meaningless.
Sam: Amen
– in addition to the lack of favorable comps (one example, red states being more rural with less geographically-accessible health care) and (to your point) 5 of 6 chronic conditions more common among adults in red states.
In the US the states with the oldest populations and the highest numbers of old people with serious health problems had the worst outcomes. Many – not all of these were Red.
While CA’s mortailty was RELATIVELY low Florida did much better despite a much older population.
Neither public health policies nore ideology had any discerable impact =on mortality.
That is why you can find some staistic that shows red states did worse and others that show they did better.
Because it had nothing to do with red/blue. It had nothing to do with policies.
It is also true that he is just wrong. Canada had a higher mortality rate than the US.
Do you suppose the reported death rates were somewhat skewed. Revisit the annual mortality rates and see what they show.
Let us not forget that the government was giving up to $9K for funeral expenses, if the death was from covid OR “covid-like symptoms.” Big incentive for those who prepare death certificates and funeral home statements.
Franke is just plain wrong – you can adjust mortality numbers if you wish but his claim is full of schiff using CDC’s or JH’s numbers.
Franke Spoke Her Democrat Truths Two facts to keep in mind. 1. The US had a far far worse covid death rate than other peer countries…
@Franke…. bless your little Democrat Useful Idiot Marxist heart!
Let’s add a second fact that you don’t want to mention while Speaking Your Truths:
2. More Americans died while Biden was president WITH a vaccine available than died under Trump. While Lyin’ Biden came into office lying that Trump left him nothing to fight the epidemic with: no vaccine and apparently no ventilators.
Let’s add one more Truth you Democrats don’t want to speak as one of your truths, Franke:
Bribery Biden did permanent harm to a generation of American school kids using major Democrat donor teachers union president Randi Weingarden’s union demands as public health policy. Regardless of whether their parents were communist cheap fake Americans like you or the most constitutionally conservative real Americans.
Old Airborne Dog
The average deaths/month under Trump for 11 months of Covid and the average deaths per month for the first 22 months of Biden are the same.
Overall 3 times more people died of Covid while Biden was president.
Prove it. Cite the source(s) for your “facts”, including study/article author(s), and dates.
The cumulative COVID death rate in the US was always less than that of the UK — despite their NHS — until September, 2021, after Joe Biden let the Delta variant into this country.
As this is a rhetorical column on Wuhan Flu today, here’s a rhetorical question to go with it:
What if somebody else other than Trump had been president, and looking like a sure winner for reelection to a second term as president when the ChiComs either carelessly or deliberately released Wuhan Flu from that lab Fauci was financing?
Would there have been same level of mass hysteria generated by the Democrats and the Democrat-Mainstream Media Propaganda Complex? A bizarro response, where half the population took whatever the president and his administration said and assumed the opposite was true.
Would the news media have performed more like a real news media? Rather than as Democrat presidential election campaign propagandists?
Would doctors and research workers have felt safer about being critical of what was said by Fauci or anybody else in public health with what they advocated?
We in America, with our champion the Anti-Trump Fauci at the head, led and most of the world followed with the response to Wuhan Flu. And millions of people unnecessarily died or suffered severe mental and physical injuries due to that.
The high point right now is a small one: it’s been a few months since I’ve seen a government ad telling parents to get their toddlers vaccinated against Wuhan Flu. Childhood pneumonia has a higher rate of childhood morbidity than, Wuhan Flu even came close to, even with the expansive way Wuhan Flu deaths were attributed. We’ve never advocated parents vaccinate their toddlers against childhood pneumonia.
And while government was advising (and coercing) parents to get their children vaccinated against Wuhan Flu despite the miniscule morbidity rate, they did not advise them to have them vaccinated against pneumonia with it’s much higher morbidity rate at the same time despite Wuhan being a respiratory illness.
We will never be able to calculate it, but what percentage of the Wuhan Flu response “strategy” was purely political? I wouldn’t be surprised if it were well over 80%.
The Great Barrington Declaration gave the world’s health professionals a chance to briefly pause and reconsider before continuing down the road they were on.
The world refused to take that opportunity, and what we have today is the result.
Old Airborne Dog
OAD
I recall something of China’s last internal epidemic resulted in some 5M dead Chicoms. Funny, nobody said a word on the world stage.
China owes 195 countries $250 trillion (to be increased) in damages.
China was responsible for the deliberate or accidental release of “China Flu, 2019” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands, issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.
The International Court of Justice must prosecute China for the deliberate or accidental release of “China Flu, 2019.”
“What if somebody else other than Trump had been president, and looking like a sure winner for reelection to a second term as president when the ChiComs either carelessly or deliberately released Wuhan Flu from that lab Fauci was financing?”
This question is somewhat paranoid, but I think it needs to be asked anyway. If someone else had been President, would the virus have been released at all?
So what? In 2020 closing schools was a reasonable precaution. We had very little data about how covid spreads in a population. Now we have a much better understanding. You can’t blame people in 2020 for not knowing the results of studies that came out in 2025 or even 2022. This also has little relevance to future pandemics because every disease has different transmission mechanisms.
@Franke
Not THAT different, and viruses do not vary greatly in their actual behavior. This one is no exception. It isn’t agent orange or Hantavirus or AIDS, that was very clear by summer 2020; heck, it isn’t even the first coronavirus.
What is clear is that children were not vectors, very few children were at risk (I’d wager mono is more harmful), and that for the average person this was not at any point a crisis of magnitude
“. . . closing schools was a *reasonable precaution*. (emphasis added)
“Reasonable precaution” means based on some evidence, some facts, some proof. As in: There is some evidence it might rain, so a reasonable precaution is to carry an umbrella.
There was *no* evidence, facts, proof for closing schools. It was not a “reasonable precaution.” It was stark-raving mad lunacy. It was public policy driven by mass, irrational terror. And it was fueled by health care bureaucrats and politicians who feed on holding the public in thrall.
Franke posted: In 2020 closing schools was a reasonable precaution.
That’s a bullshyte excuse for a bullshyte state government policy – a policy that Bribery Biden’s government expanded on from the teachers’ union president, Randi Weingarten. Weingarten being America’s foremost public health expert, of course.
Kind of odd that Biden’s government health care experts didn’t advise Americans they took their school Wuhan Flu response policies from Randi Weingarten, union president? Generally you attribute whose expertise you’re following with the government policies you push.
What other “reasonable precautions” would you like to defend? Prohibiting worship services while allowing 570+ Mostly Peaceful riots to “protest” George Floyd? Good to go if you want to head out shopping at Costco, Walmart, etc – but no church services?
I’m not really surprised that those who defended this bullshyte then are still defending it now, despite the damage we saw developing very early on during these school closures.
America’s kids are not going to get that developmental period of their lives back. And if there were justice, those responsible for doing that would be serving criminal sanctions for what they did.
Old Airborne Dog
* because riots were allowed and Newsom party at restaurant etc and schools closed the purpose of covid was to make some people crazy with injustice and laugh behind the scenes as people died. It’s no less than depraved. The understanding is biden and company from many quarters are depraved. IMHO
No, we did know some things about the spread, even back in the early days. I remember reading them about if infected people were asymptomatic, then all the closures in the world weren’t going to work. About how there was not a massive loss of on the cruise ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_cruise_ships
One key factor was that the teachers unions were against reopening the schools. They were particularly vocal in California about the potential danger of the teachers contracting COVID from their students. Also, the Districts were receiving money hand over fist without the normal expenses and many teachers continued to be paid at their salaried rates for being home. What was not to like?
They aren’t a real brain trust.
“In 2020 closing schools was a reasonable precaution.”
Nope, before Covid left China we KNEW that it had the most pronounced age/mortality curve we had ever seen.
That young people got it and did not even know, and that old people had a 1:3 chance of dying.
“We had very little data about how covid spreads in a population.”
Again false we have been studying disease spread for a long long time.
Although the Imperial college model and the Los Almos models over estimate deaths by a factor of 4, they still relatively accurately predicted the spread.
Further much simpler models that most anyone could work up on their own with a spreadsheet were even MORE accurate.
The way epidemics spread is not some secret.
I would further note that BEFORE covid, we have known that airborne diseases are very hard to spread among children.
They do not have the lung capacity or the muscles to spread a disease very far by coughing.
Kids get TWO kinds of diseases, those that spread by contact with body fluids as kids share body fluids,
and those like Measless that are airborne to the extent that just being int he same room with an infected person will get you infected.
Measles has a transmission rate of 12, Wuhan Covid had a transmission rate of 2.8. There were only a handful of deaths nationwide in those under 18, and all those had serious health problems. Event eh total number of cases among children was small.
Again MUCH of this was known before Covid hit the US.
Next you are using this lunatic left wing nut argument that what we do not know justifies draconian measures.
That too is false.
We do not assume that every scraped knee results in blood poisoning.
“Now we have a much better understanding.”
We do – though most of it confirms what we knew before – aside from the pronounced age curve of Covid and a transmission rate double that of the flu, it behaved like all airborne viruses.
“You can’t blame people in 2020”
And yet you have – you have blamed Trump who did incredibly well without all the data that came later, and you let Biden off for identical results. with greater knowlede.
“This also has little relevance to future pandemics because every disease has different transmission mechanisms.”
False, there are only a few different ways that diseases spread.
There were only two factors that distinush Covid from the flu – the first is that the Wuhan version had a transmission more than double the flu.
The 2nd is that Covid had an incredibly pronounced age/mortality curve.
Both of these were known in Jan 2020.
Note the State of Florida reopened its schools early on during the COVID lockdowns happening elsewhere.
FWIW
There’s development of fear and hate as a rallying point. It didn’t have to be the Jewish people. It could have been any group.
To call someone stupid, or imply that they are ill informed and wrong is considered a personal insult. People do not even like to say “I don’t know”. We prefer incorrect certainty to uncertainty and there is the comfort of being part of a group of like-mined people.
In the late XVI century Giordano Bruno was arrested, imprisoned and tortured for eight years before being brutally immolated alive. His crime was to speak a truth that the authorities (the church) could not tollerate, that Earth revolved around the sun and that the stars in the sky were like our sun and had, perhaps, planets revolving around them. Pretty absurd, right? The church could not tollerate an idea which questioned its dogma and authority.
Today, some countries re still governed by religious dogma, in the west we have the Military Industrial Complex, The Financial Cabal and of course, the Medical/Pharmaceutical Complex. These powerful institutions are dogmatic and peopled by individuals who do not question the orthodoxy, rather they benefit by it.
Most people do not question that authority, some who question it, do so peripherally, with the minutia, like “where did the virus come from?” Even these people must be quashed. Those who question the structure, fundaments and dogma of Medicine, who ask for evidence of the validity of that dogma, are total outcasts, to be figuratively burnt at the stake.
There are, fortunately, more and more scientists who question the fundamentals of te Medical Tyranny under which we all live. They question. They do not accept the old assumptions, the dogma and the teachings emanating from the church of our day.
It is not easy to question authority, to demand accountability for the assumptions, the assumptions that we are told are irrefutable and axiomatic.
I ask you to question your assumptions; ask yourself how you know the ‘facts’ you believe.
How do you know there was a pandemic?
See https://denisrancourt.ca/entries.php?id=130&name=2023_06_22_there_was_no_pandemic_essay. Denis has vast research about Covid.
See The Final Pandemic, An antedote to Medical Tyranny… https://www.amazon.com/Final-Pandemic-Antidote-Medical-Tyranny/dp/0473701995
Ask yourself how you know that vaccines work.
dissolvingillusions.com/
Ask yourself how you know that viruses exist…
drsambailey.com/resources/settling-the-virus-debate/
drsambailey.com/a-farewell-to-virology-expert-edition/
Ask yourself where is the scientific evidence for contagion.
Can You Catch a Cold? by Daniel Routs
amazon.com/Can-You-Catch-Cold-Experiments/dp/1763504409
humanley.com/
Five years ago I believed all the Medical dogma. The Covid fraud got me asking questions and finding answers.
I do not wish to insult anyone with the epithet ‘stupid’. But how do you know what you think you know?
If your answer is,”because I was told” or “because I trust my doctor” then I ask you simply to look into it all for yourself, don’t unquestioningly accept the dogma. It might be a revelation, like realising that Earth is not the centre of the Universe, as we were told for centuries by the past authority.
Pace!
“The Theory of Stupidity”
This sounds precisely like the “Reign of Terror” of “Crazy Abe” Lincoln.
Secession was never unconstitutional and has always been fully constitutional.
“Crazy Abe” never had any constitutional authority to commence a war of aggression against a sovereign foreign nation.
The stupid sheep in the judicial branch failed by design to tell America and Americans that Lincoln could not deny fully constitutional secession and that only Congress has the power to declare war.
The nation was ravaged by military force, and 1 million men were killed.
“Crazy Abe” illicitly and unconstitutionally denied valid statutory law duly passed by America’s legislative branch as part of its representative government, suspended habeas corpus, confiscated private property, and was derelict in his duty to adhere to existing immigration law, and the stupid sheep in the judicial branch again failed to tell America and Americans that Lincoln had no authority or power to commit those acts.
Lincoln and his communist successors ultimately put America on a path to the incremental implementation of the principles of communism, and this country has been there for quite some time now.
The Theory of Stupidity sure sounds familiar to Americans.
Not one of the fascist measures that Democrats forced down the throats of American citizens had anything to do with the COVID virus. Mask, Vaxx, Lockdown, distancing – all were fascist measures designed to subjugate, inculcate fear, and display the ultimate authoritarian power of the Totalitarian Socialist State.
@Anonymous
Yep!
* it’s done for depraved entertainment.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
To the point, the Democrats had no constitutional basis to impose “emergency powers” that are nonexistent.
Americans enjoy the freedoms of mobility, assembly, enterprise, and markets, attending work and school or not, acquiring healthcare in free markets, etc.
For as much as we think we know, we know even less. If there is a next time, as history shows there will be, there is no beating nature or human stupidity by playing god with viruses, what will that look like? More screeching for lockdowns, masks, one way arrows on grocery store floors and other crazy hysterics? Or are we going to look at the data, see what it says, what our own observations are and act as we should?
@Upstate
I actually do believe there are more of us in the ‘never again’ camp, we were just marginalized and silenced to the extent the opposite *appeared* true. It’s what tyrants do, and makes the screeching about ‘misinformation’ downright clownish.
Sweden stayed open, and the pearl clutchers predicted disaster. In fact their death rate was only a small fraction of what others predicted. Just as important, their schoolchildren did not fall behind at all (in contrast to here where our kids fell a full year behind academically not to mention the psychological harm). And then there is the multiple trillions of dollars added to the national debt from businesses closures and the stimulus package needed to compensate for the economic damage caused by.
Overall it was in my view the worst public health response to an emergency in all of human history. Our governments and public health institutions could hardly have failed us more dramatically.
* It’s was a demonstration, a gage of just how mentally ill the USA currently is. Someone actually thinks Dylan Mullaney, Lia Thomas, Bruce Jenner are well? Jenner may just be a clown. Unkn.
Thank you for saving me the time of pointing out Sweden’s success in staying open.
Sweden isn’t depraved? Maybe…
Some of us have been saying this since early 2000 and all we got was a stupid t-shit … and censored by multiple social media platforms. Fortunately, I am retired so they could fire me.
And what other surprising info are we going to unearth now that honest men are in charge of our integrity-damaged government departments, agencies, the executive branch and congress? This may be the first time in so long that we may trust what our government is telling us.
@whimsicalmama
I’m thinking, given just the past week (!), a whole lot. There is justified reason the deep state is sh****** its pants. Thank God their propaganda is basically a wet noodle in 2025.
I doubt anyone will be brought to justice, but disclosure might be even more of a death knell, as it will expose the dishonesty and flagrant disregard for the law, as well.
“Follow the science!” Anybody who because of OSHA regulations (and common sense) ever wore a cartridge respirator doing drywall, body work, mining, time in the military, etc, already knew that face burkhas, the floppy non-sealing medical procedural masks weren’t going to filter an aerosol virus. If they had that ability, blue collar workers and the military would have worn the much more comfortable and smaller fabric face masks while doing their job for decades by now.
So this is a rhetorical column and yet another study/revelation, telling those in the world whose heads weren’t up their asses what they already knew.
Will those who used the power of the positions they held to deliberately lie and deceive the public whose health they were supposedly protecting suffer sanctions for the deliberate deception? No.
Will we the public, regardless of how we vote, learn from this? No.
Old Airborne Dog
This blog should be nailed to the front door of the DNC. Sunny Hostin should be compelled to read it to her national audience.
And Fauci LIED. He was not mistaken. He LIED bigly.
Diogenes: You are soooo right. It appears that NIH, under probe, played semantics for years.
Read carefully (if you wish):
Title: “NIH Official Finally Admits Taxpayers Funded Gain-of-Function Research in Wuhan — After Years of Denials,”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/16/us-news/nih-director-admits-taxpayers-funded-gain-of-function-research-in-wuhan-four-years-after-covid-pandemic-began/
from which the following is excerpted:
photo caption: “Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly denied the US funded research that modifies viruses to make them more infectious.”
“In an October 2021 letter to Congress, Tabak [NIH principal deputy director] acknowledged NIH funded a ‘limited experiment’ at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that tested whether “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.”
“He did not describe it as gain-of-function research [‘the controversial research practice that modifies viruses to make them more infectious’] — but disclosed that EcoHealth ‘failed to report’ the bat coronaviruses modified with SARS and MERS viruses had been made 10,000 times more infectious, in violation of its grant terms.
“The NIH scrubbed its website of a longstanding definition for gain-of-function research the same day that the letter was sent.” (2021)
Then, in 2024, during congressional testimony, the cornered Tabak said the following:
“’Dr. Tabak’, asked Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, ‘did NIH fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through [Manhattan-based nonprofit] EcoHealth [Alliance]?’
‘It depends on your definition of gain-of-function research,’ Tabak answered. ‘If you’re speaking about the generic term, yes, we did.’”
Lin, we should defund the CDC and contract that money to the Swedes and Israelis. Probably save a lot of money, too.
May I correct you with all due respect. It should be stapled to Sunny Hostin’s forehead not the DNC door. A little pain often helps in curing poor behavior.
😉
By summer of 2020 after the “two weeks to flatten the curve!” had stretched into months, it was obvious this was not the End Of Life Event for humanity. Those of us with a degree of critical thinking, reading the data when we could find it, could see COIVD mostly affected those in their latter years and with previous conditions, those with auto-immune issues were the most likely to suffer significantly to include possible death. The Great Barrington Declaration had it right. We have the emails that Fauci and Collins attempted to have the authors discredited.
Unfortunately you and I were a tiny minority. I’ve always thought in the early stages of Covid-19 collectively we lost the ability to think critically on multiple levels. This certainly explains how Democrats win elections in big cities over and over again.
@Dollar Bill, my mom had a hard time understanding the behavior, I tried my best to help her understand.
Fear. We had the government, the CDC, the WHO, and healthcare professionals telling us we would die if we caught covid. They told us there were no effective treatments and no vaccine. People were told not to leave their homes. The news was always all bad. Then there were the videos of hospitals full and hospital staff not being able to keep up.
Fear is a powerful motivator.
Great article and conclusion. Luckily I was retired when Covid hit and stayed home. I was asked to join a Facebook group of Nurses, Nurse Practitioners and Physicians. I could sit and gather data, papers, reports and such and post it so the real practitioners (working in the hospitals and clinics could get information without looking it up since they were already exhausted). I knew that masks were not effective because it was a virus but you had to wear them or you could not get into a grocery store of pharmacy on anyplace else you needed to go you you bent to the necessity. It sickens me that I probably passed on some of the malinformation that was out there and as the years passed it only made me angrier that I had not questioned enough so I have great respect for those that did.
It was probably the best way to show how NOT to deal with a pandemic and it shows that, like the professor has said, what was the cost of speech and information suppression. How many lives did it cost , how much damage to children, how much mistrust of the government did it build, how much goodwill was lost.
Science is questioning and never settled. I hope we have learned that, but time will tell. Sometimes a slap on the face will wake us up but more often a 2X4 is required.
One last thought-when they developed the vaccine they did NOT check for whether the vaccine actually hindered spread. You don’t have to be a scientist to realize that that is important.
In my opinion, the issue was not that masking was initially recommended early in the epidemic but rather the continued mask mandates even after the inability of masks (or “social distancing”) to prevent spread was determined. Believe it or not, in my community masks have recently been again mandated for hospital staff in response to a recent local surge in COVID cases. While masking may initially be helpful to reinforce the need for hospital staff and visitors to be conscious of the infectious risks that surround them, that awareness becomes subconsciously ignored the longer the mandate.
Hundreds of thousands of small businesses went bankrupt too. Many of them were unable to come back once the draconian lockdowns were lifted.
As for the masking of children who did not suffer serious consequences from the virus? I consider that to be a crime against humanity.
The people calling us fascist and Nazis were the very ones acting consistently with that description.
My small Southern town is a popular tourist destination with restaurants and stores on our charming main street. When our state went into lockdown, restaurants were permitted to open IF they could serve people outside. Well, if you have a restaurant whose doors open onto the sidewalk and no place to set up outdoor tables, guess what? You went out of business in a couple of months. The same with stores that are small businesses which were thought to be “non-essential.” Our governor saw the light fairly quickly, and we re-opened over the summer of ‘20, but it was too late for many restaurants and businesses.
Fear is the greatest weapon of the left. Nazism to scare the Jews, put you all back in chains to scare the Blacks, and racism declared by Nancy Pelosi as she strolled through China town. Why then should we be surprised that Covid was used to scare you and justify telling you to keep your mouth shut because if you don’t just like the FBI we have seven ways of Sunday to shut your mouth for you if you don’t. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and old Joe from Scranton are well versed in fright as a motivator that will keep them in power. These people are cultivators of the weak kneed masses. What’s the matter with a few lies to keep you in your place down on the old plantation.
Yep
Dear Mr. Turley, Thanks for a great article. The common folks knew that the masking and isolating of children was not the answer. However, our voices were denied with the fear of being shut down and cancelled. Remember “follow the science”? The “Science” we were told to follow was wrong. The powerful teachers’ union held so much sway with the government health leaders to the point of helping them write the mandates forced on parents of school age children. It is my hope that the allowing of a powerful lobby write government policy will come to an end.