Liberation From Lockdown Now

David R. Henderson. Excerpts:

"“For a family sitting around the dinner table tonight,” said Dr. Nancy Messionnier, a spokesperson for the CDC on January 17; “this is not something that they generally need to worry about.” Anthony Fauci said on January 27 that “the American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It’s a very, very low risk to the United States.”"

"Congress and the President quickly produced one of the most expensive spending bills in history, a bill that, tragically, will pay tens of millions of workers more to be unemployed than to work. The politicians claim that their spending is “stimulus,” but it’s not and it can’t be. A government cannot stimulate production that it has forbidden."

"Those who think discussion is needed before we take such a bold step should answer this: how much public discussion was there before March 16, when San Francisco Mayor London Breed, in what she called a “defining moment,” shut down most of San Francisco’s economy? Days later, did the county governments of California discuss with their citizens whether to impose “sheltering in place?” California’s governor? New York’s governor? Most of the other governors? No. Nor was there debate or much consultation on the White House’s sudden and shocking bans on international travel that have trapped possibly more than 100,000 American students abroad, forcibly separated from their families?"

"Those government officials based their decisions on a model of a disease that neither they, nor we, fully understood. We know more now than we did even a few weeks ago, but not enough to justify these egregious policies.  As for the disease itself, we’re pretty sure that social distancing works to slow the spread. But most state governments didn’t give voluntary social distancing more than a week to work."

"Why did so many governors and mayors, with the encouragement of the White House that reversed its previous position, impose the lockdown? After all, Sweden did not. Neither did Iceland. South Korea maintained an open society. Japan too has outperformed in stopping the spread without stopping society.

In the U.S., it seems to come down to the predictive models. On March 13th, the Centers for Disease Control projected a high of 1.7 million deaths. That claim was in retrospect outlandish. Models are as good as the assumptions built into them. But it was just the beginning of policy-by-projection.
The big moment for government officials was March 16th. The Imperial College of London model projected that as many as 2.2 million people in the United States could die from the coronavirus. Worst case. Four days later the New York Times reported on a Columbia University study with an upward “do nothing” scenario of half a million new “cases” per day – with the usual ambiguity about “cases” and about whether “doing something” meant being careful ourselves or coercively shutting down the whole economy."

"Now even Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health predicts that there will be about 60,000 deaths by August. This number is striking. Why? Because it’s virtually equal to the 61,000 U.S. deaths that the CDC attributed to the flu just two seasons ago."

"Dr. Birx made a plain, up-front announcement that every death from any cause that tests positive for COVID-19 is now counted as a COVID-19 fatality, which is basically an admission that not even the data can be trusted."

"there are apparent differences between COVID and flu: the speed of transmission, the hot-spot pattern of infection, and length of hospitalizations. But these differences require an intelligent medical response, not upheaval."

"Many of us are convinced by the preliminary results of social distancing."

"As of April 10th, 78% of verifiable deaths that the Center for Disease Control attributed to COVID-19 were people aged 65 or older. As an Imperial College London study from March 30th demonstrated, this disease is particularly deadly for one demographic. It kills an estimated 13.4% of patients 80 and older, compared to 1.25% of those in their 50s and 0.3% of those in their 40s. The sharpest divide between a temporary issue and death is the age of 70. The overwhelming majority of those who died had weakened immune systems due to preexisting conditions. 

As for the overall case fatality rate – which is drifting ever lower – we do not know it because of the dearth of testing."

"Being elderly, the vast majority of the victims are not employed outside their homes and can more easily stay sheltered in place if they choose to. The disease has ravaged nursing homes. This demographic and these institutions should have been the focus of the concern and resources rather than allowing policies to crush the whole of society.

This disease should have been regarded as a medical problem with a medical fix"

"people with COVID-19 should be allowed to use any drug that they and their doctors think are worth trying. The first COVID-19 patient in New Jersey, James Cai, was saved by Gilead Sciences’ not-yet-approved remdesivir."

"If you add up all the suffering and death generated as a secondary effect of the shutdown, we are looking at carnage that could be in the same ballpark as COVID deaths. Emancipation now could in fact be a strategy for minimizing fatalities"