A second lockdown would smother our economic recovery and only delay the inevitable spread of COVID-19.
European countries are imposing harsh lockdowns again as a second wave of COVID-19 spreads throughout Europe. It was a mistake last spring, when most U.S. states followed Europe’s lead in imposing lockdowns during the first wave, and it would be an even bigger mistake to copy the failed lockdowns again today.
I was stunned when Italy imposed regional lockdowns in late February and a national lockdown on March 9. In short order, most other European countries did the same. Then, influenced by the sensational predictions from Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London that more than 500,000 Britons and 2.2 million Americans might die from the virus, the United Kingdom and most of the United States followed suit.
Panic and herd mentality drove policy making in March, and frightened populations ceded their personal, economic, and religious liberties on a scale unprecedented even during wartimes. With eight months of hindsight, it seems obvious that the lockdowns did more harm than good on a number of accounts. Not only did they throw tens of millions worldwide out of work, decimating entire industries (think restaurants and bars, travel, tourism, airlines and aerospace), but they also triggered waves of secondary medical problems, including anxiety and depression, increased substance abuse and domestic violence, and other adverse health outcomes as many surgeries and screenings were delayed or missed.
Some economic damage was inevitable because of COVID-19, but long, indiscriminate lockdowns made the contractions much worse. The simultaneous timing of increased COVID cases and lockdowns in March and April made it difficult to determine which was, in fact, causing more economic harm. But as Southern states began to reopen over the summer, both their COVID cases and economic activity surged. The region had the highest number of daily new COVID cases and the lowest unemployment rate (6.9 percent) in the country.
The lockdowns probably did save hospitals from being overwhelmed in New York City, New Orleans, and elsewhere, but hospitals were nowhere near capacity in most of the United States. In fact, because of the widespread cancellation of non-emergency surgeries, many hospitals were overstaffed and laid off workers.
Europe and the United States are now facing a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Over the last month daily cases tripled in France and increased by a factor of four in England, six in Germany, and ten in Italy, according to the New York Times Covid Case Counter. As a result, the countries are locking down again.
France has closed bars and restaurants and is requiring people across the entire country to stay home. Factories can continue to operate but “non-essential” stores must close. The United Kingdom just announced what amounts to a new national lockdown. Germany has shut down its restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters and hotels, and is now prohibiting gatherings of more than ten people. Protests and riots have erupted in Italy over its reimposed restrictions.
Here in the United States, meanwhile, cases have nearly doubled over the past month. California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and some other Northern and Western states, have kept many of their restrictions in place and are requiring travelers from other states to quarantine. Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and most Southern and Midwestern states have mostly reopened — and some, such as South Dakota, never locked down.
Even with California, New York, and Massachusetts maintaining tight restrictions on personal and commercial activities, the economic recovery — driven in large part by the open states — has exceeded expectations. The United States recorded its most rapid economic expansion in history during the third quarter (July-September) of 2020 — bouncing back at an annualized rate of 33.1 percent. Unemployment, which hit 15 percent last Spring is now under 8 percent nationally, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A second lockdown would smother the recovery while only delaying the inevitable spread of COVID-19.
Instead of following Europe into a second round of lockdowns, the United States should follow the advice of the top scientists and medical experts who have signed the Great Barrington Declaration. They advise avoiding lockdowns and focusing instead on protecting the most vulnerable, letting the disease spread among the young and healthy to build population immunity.
Heeding their guidance would better preserve the economic recovery and more quickly end the pandemic than another round of lockdowns.
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Eli Lilly Covid Antibody Drug Gets FDA Emergency Clearence
Eli Lilly & Co.’s antibody therapy was granted an emergency-use authorization by U.S. drug regulators for treating Covid-19, widening access to a treatment that early data suggest is effective in keeping people infected with the coronavirus out of the hospital.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the experimental treatment, called bamlanivimab, for use against mild-to-moderate Covid-19 in adults, including those who are 65 and older, and pediatric patients, the agency said in a statement.
Shares of Indianapolis-based Lilly gained as much as 5.2% in late trading on Monday. Through the close, the stock had advanced 8.3% so far this year.
The clearance gives doctors an option for tackling the virus in high-risk patients before they’re sick enough to require hospitalization. Other treatments that received the regulatory go-ahead, such as convalescent plasma, a component collected from the blood of recovered Covid patients containing immune factors, and Gilead Sciences Inc.’s antiviral remdesivir, are intended for use in severely ill Covid-19 patients.
The U.S. government will pay Lilly $375 million for 300,000 vials of the antibody treatment. The initial agreement is for delivery over the first two months following a regulatory green light. The U.S. also has the option to purchase an additional 650,000 vials through next June for as much as $812.5 million.
Now begins an even greater challenge: Keeping pace with demand.
“We’re in the middle of this surge in cases, so we have to continue to try to squeeze out as much supply as we can,” Chief Executive Officer David Ricks said in an interview. “We’re loading the trucks right now, so that they can move as fast as they can. We’ve made 88,000 doses that are being loaded tonight, and we about that much inside of a week shipping out to centers across the country.”
The drugmaker has a manufacturing partnership with Amgen Inc., among others, and plans to pursue more collaboration pacts in order to increase supply, Ricks said. “It still might not be enough,” he said.
Experimental antibody treatments could become a powerful component of the arsenal that doctors use to treat the coronavirus. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease official, has referred to antibody-based medicines as a bridge to a vaccine. The class of treatments was thrust into the spotlight when President Donald Trump received an antibody cocktail made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. after becoming infected with Covid-19.
The therapies, which rely on lab-made proteins that mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off the virus, also are being studied as short-term treatments that could be given to people such as nursing-home residents or staff who may have been exposed during a local outbreak to prevent them from getting sick.
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Flooding our nation with electoral ballots was a catastrophic mistake
If the current vote totals hold up, Joe Biden will win the presidency. But if there’s any truth to the widespread stories we’re now seeing about voting irregularities and even outright fraud, he’ll take office on January 20 not only as one of our most deeply flawed presidents but also as our least legitimate one.
No one — Democrat or Republican — should feel good about such a prospect, but it boggles the mind that such an inept and uninspiring old candidate could amass three million more votes than a youthful and charismatic Barack Obama posted during his remarkable 2008 campaign — a campaign that was unprecedented in terms of its energy, its mass-movement appeal, and its voter-turnout efforts.
It boggles the mind, that is, if we categorically dismiss the possibility of voter fraud.
We’ve already heard about the Sharpiegate lawsuit in Arizona (disputed though it is) and the hundreds of complaints received by the state’s attorney general’s office. And the ridiculous-on-its-face 88% voter turnout in Wisconsin, which was a whopping 21% higher than its higher-than-average turnout four years earlier. And the goings-on in Georgia’s Democrat-rich Fulton County, where Republican ballot-counting officials were told to go home only to have county officials continue to count votes in their absence. And the efforts of Philadelphia’s vote counters to keep Republican observers from getting close enough to see what’s actually happening with the votes being counted.
Again, if there’s any truth to these allegations, none of them instills confidence in our electoral system. None of them sets the stage for a peaceful transfer of presidential power. And that’s because no one knows where Biden’s record-shattering 72 million (and counting) votes have come from.
Normally in matters of politics, there’s plenty of blame to go around. But the Democrats own this problem entirely. After all, they’re the ones who unilaterally rigged the game and flooded the country with mail-in ballots.
What did they think was going to happen? Exactly what is happening. As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy has noted, this deluge of ballots is part of “a two-step scheme to enable post-election cheating: First, infiltrate as many illegal ballots as possible into the state systems; second, keep chanting that ‘every vote counts’ and demagogue anyone who says otherwise.”
Indeed, charges of voter suppression and election stealing are powerful deterrents.
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh comes out and says what a whole lot of us are already thinking: “Mail-in voting and early voting create more opportunities for things to go wrong, either through intentional subterfuge, human error, or other circumstances. This is largely why I hold the scandalous view that all voting should take place in person, on election day. Voting should end when that day ends, and begin when it begins. Exceptions could be made for active duty military and perhaps a few other very limited and carefully selected groups. But the vast majority of people should be expected to show up, in person, on the day of voting to vote.”
All voting should take place in person on Election Day.
No one knows where Election 2020 will take us, but the coming weeks promise to be some of the most bitter we’ve ever experienced as Americans. When we lose faith in our most sacred institutions, we lose faith in the things that sustain us. And we end up in a very bad place.
We’re in a heck of a mess. And we have the Democrats to thank for it.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/74697-our-fatally-flawed-voting-system-2020-11-05
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Trump campaign releases initial list of dead Georgia residents that "voted" in 2020 election (Just the News)
Texas social worker charged with 134 counts involving election fraud (CBS DFW)
Belly laugh of the week: Top officials claim 2020 Election most secure in U.S. history (AP)
Biden under pressure from the Left to erase student debt (Washington Examiner)
Biden likely to scrap parts of Trump decision to pull troops from Germany (Washington Examiner)
Seven deleterious things Biden could do with a Democrat-controlled Senate (Daily Wire)
2020 election results set Republicans up for success in 2022 and beyond (Washington Examiner)
"The message wasn't right": Election losses leave stunned Democrats rethinking path forward (Washington Examiner)
Spendthrifts Pelosi and Schumer see $3.4 trillion as "starting point" for next COVID stimulus (Disrn)
Justice Samuel Alito rips Supreme Court for not considering church coronavirus lawsuits (Washington Examiner) | Alito warns of dangers to free speech and religious liberty (Fox News)
Trump eyes digital media empire to take on Fox News (Axios)
Parler adds five million users as conservatives grow tired of censorship (LifeNews.com)
Feds strike deal to make vaccine free at major pharmacies (NY Post)
"Cancel traditional Thanksgiving": Chicago issues stay-at-home advisory (Washington Examiner)
Sweden imposes partial lockdown for first time (Daily Caller)
Great timing: Georgia secretary of state to quarantine, wife tests positive for coronavirus (Fox 5)
Massachusetts prepared to legalize abortion up to moment of birth (Disrn)
California set to reopen strip clubs before churches (Free Beacon)
Appeals court rules Harvard doesn't discriminate against Asian American applicants (NPR)
Excerpt: "Proponents of ending race-based considerations at U.S. universities were unfazed by Thursday's decision and plan to bring the case to the Supreme Court."
Michael Cohen's bogus book about Trump is being made into Hollywood movie (Daily Mail)
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http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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1 comment:
Here in the United States, meanwhile, cases have nearly doubled over the past month
To which I say, so what? "Cases" are not deaths, or even symptomatic disease. Pay attention to official death counts. They aren't budging. The massive increase in cases, even if real and not an artifact of increased PCR amplification or increased testing in general, is disease theater.
Meanwhile, CDC has suspiciously announced it will not collect flu statistics for the remainder of 2020 and 2021, leading me to conclude that flu cases are being included in covid case counts.
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