Once again, the mainstream media are catching up to independents like The BFD. No, I’m not talking about the first rumblings of dissent with Jacinda Ardern (I’ll deal with that in another post): What I’m talking about is the mainstream media finally admitting the unthinkable.
Unthinkable for them, anyway. Here at The BFD, we’ve been reporting it for over a year now.
The very simple proposition that lockdowns don’t work.
Just as the media have finally jumped onto the “conspiracy theory” that the Chinese virus might have come from a Chinese lab, now they’re finally reporting what they should have been duty-bound to report a year ago. That’s how long the clear evidence that lockdowns are a deadly, failed policy has been around.
But the mainstream media chose to go along with the political lies.
Now, like the lab-leak theory, they’re trying to pretend that this is all a startling new revelation.
Imagine if lockdowns caused more harm than good. That would be a shocking thought for our public health grandees who, with every fresh handful of Covid-19 cases, have been locking down the nation’s largest cities during the past 15 months.
But it’s more than a theoretical possibility for Sydneysiders to chew over during their second lockdown. New American research published last week, comparing the policies of 50 US states and 43 countries, fails to find evidence that lockdowns saved lives in net terms. Indeed, it seems they’ve killed people.
“New” research? There has been research stating exactly this since at least April 2020. The BFD and other independent media reported the research back then, too. From the mainstream media? Crickets.
As we also reported, the evidence is strong that lockdowns not only do not prevent the spread of COVID, they may make it worse.
Even so, the evidence is clear that lockdowns increase deaths from all causes, above anything COVID could cause.
“To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP (shelter in place, a US term for lockdowns) policies and excess deaths,” four economists and scientists from the University of Southern California and the Rand Corporation conclude in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research. By looking at total deaths from all causes, the researchers avoid debates about what constitutes a Covid death and put the same weight on non-Covid as Covid deaths.
“Even if SIP policies reduce Covid-19 transmission, their impact on overall health is unclear, as SIP policies likely have several important unintended consequences,” the authors write, pointing to stress and anxiety due to social isolation, increased drug abuse and suicides, child abuse, domestic violence and missed cancer screenings.
The impact is actually very clear. Britain has recently seen a record spike in children being prescribed antidepressants. Anecdotally, parents report that, even with restrictions lifted, children have become conditioned to fear going outside and playing with each other. This is pure wickedness on the part of governments, bureaucrats and media.
It turns out deaths are higher than normal in Australia too, according to an Australian Bureau of Statistics statement released last week that was largely missed amid the national pastime of discussing cases. “(The) numbers of deaths due to cancer, dementia and diabetes were above historical averages,” the ABS said, referring to a 5 per cent increase in total deaths so far this year compared with the 2015 to 2019 average.
Sweden was attacked for more than a year for an 8 per cent increase in its excess deaths, supposedly because it resisted lockdowns and school closures. Who would have thought the difference between being ravaged and saved was a mere 3 per cent?
What makes the past year of policy failure even more wicked is that they ought to have known better.
Indeed, at least seven peer-reviewed research papers have struggled to find any relationship between lockdowns and Covid-19 cases and deaths. It’s almost as if the weight of scientific opinion, recommending against forced quarantine, published before last year was right[…]
Not one credible scientist recommended a lockdown – let alone several, over years – in response to contagious diseases before 2020. We were wrong then or we’re wrong now. I would pick the recommendations made before collective hysteria took hold.
Having finally decided to start telling something like the truth, the mainstream media next try to deflect blame for their year of shameful fear-mongering.
In the long list of disappointments thrown up by the pandemic, the failure of economists to condemn irrational, destructive policies fuelled by media-induced fear must be high up.
This is arrant, self-serving garbage. Economists did condemn lockdown policies. Economists like Wilfred Reilly, for instance. Australian economist Gigi Foster warned against lockdowns, too. But nobody listened to them.
Instead, it was the anti-science “consensus” bullshit all over again.
Of course, the apologists and authoritarians will gibber that “Jacinda saved us!” Which ignores one simple, all-important fact.
In only three nations did lockdowns appear to reduce excess mortality, according to the NBER study: Australia, Malta and New Zealand. Either each nation shared uniquely brilliant health bureaucrats, alongside hyper-compliant populations or they had the good fortune to be islands. You pick.
The Australian
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD