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| Image by Helena Jankovičová Kováčová from Pixabay |
As many observers have noted, staying safe has become a religion. “Safetyism,” as it is sometimes called, like all religions, places what it values — in this case, being safe — above other values. Safetyism explains the willingness of Americans to give up their most cherished values — including liberty — in the name of safety for the last year and a half.
Millions of Americans not only gave up their right to go to work, earn a living, attend church or synagogue, and visit friends and relatives, but they even gave up their right to visit dying relatives and friends. One can assume that nearly every person recorded as having died of COVID-19 died without having a single loved one at their bedside from the moment they entered a hospital until their death. The acceptance of such cruelty — irrational and unscientific cruelty, one might add — can only be explained by the failure of generations of schools and parents to teach liberty, while successfully teaching the worship of safety. If your father had to die alone, it was worth it for the sake of safety; if your mother had to be in what amounted to solitary confinement in a nursing home for more than a year, that, too, was worth it for the sake of safety. And, of course, if political leaders and leaders in science and medicine have to lie for the sake of safety, so be it; truth, too, is less important than safety.
None of this is new. Twenty-five years ago, I wrote and broadcast about the willingness of Americans to watch individual rights crushed in the war against smoking, and especially in accepting the absurdity of the allegedly lethal dangers of secondhand smoke. No one denies that intense exposure to secondhand smoke can exacerbate preexisting illnesses such as asthma. But the anti-smoking zealots’ claim that 50,000 Americans die each year from exposure to secondhand smoke is nonsense. For example, in 2013, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reported that there was no statistically significant relationship between lung cancer and exposure to passive smoke. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Andrew Milligan/PA via AP |
A little-noticed study says government orders to “shelter in place” during the COVID-19 fight did not save lives and spurred an uptick in excess deaths in some places, especially overseas.
Researchers from the RAND Corporation and the University of Southern California studied excess mortality from all causes, the virus or otherwise, in 43 countries and the 50 U.S. states that imposed shelter-in-place, or “SIP,” policies.
In short, the orders didn’t work.
“We fail to find that SIP policies saved lives. To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP policies and excess deaths. We find that following the implementation of SIP policies, excess mortality increases,” the researchers said in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
The increase was statistically significant in other countries in the weeks following the imposition of shelter-in-place orders. In the U.S., excess deaths rose in the weeks following the order before subsiding 20 weeks later under the orders.
The findings undercut blue states that relied on stay-at-home methods as the treatment of choice throughout the pandemic, while providing a measure of vindication for GOP leaders who said they were harmful and that constituents could protect themselves. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories and resources:
The COVID Cult Has Been Slowly Killing America's Economy And There's Not Much Time Left
Fraction of Covid-19 Rental Assistance Reaches Tenants and Landlords
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
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