RIGHT SPEAK: ‘The Money Doctor’ Slams COVID Lockdowns as the Biggest Policy Mistake in Modern Times; COVID Masks Stopped People from Smiling — They’re Taking Lessons to Relearn, and other C-Virus related stories

‘The Money Doctor’ slams COVID lockdowns as the biggest policy mistake in modern times:

Stringent COVID-19 lockdown measures were a historic failure by lawmakers, according to “the money doctor” Steve Hanke, with the economist insisting the lives that were saved were heavily outweighed by the harsh fallout shutdown measures created.

After researching lockdowns that were imposed in the spring of 2020—around the time the WHO declared the new coronavirus outbreak a pandemic—Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, labeled the pandemic-induced shutdowns “the biggest policy mistake in modern times.”

“When it comes to COVID, epidemiological models have many things in common: dubious assumptions, hair-raising predictions of disaster that miss the mark, and few lessons learned,” he said. “The lives saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.”

‘A global policy failure’

In a research paper published by conservative think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on Monday, Hanke—along with researchers from Lund University in Sweden and Danish think tank the Center for Political Studies—described lockdowns as “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions” after conducting an analysis of thousands of studies on the impact lockdowns had on COVID-19 mortality rates.

Questions about the IEA’s credibility have been raised in recent years thanks to opacity around its donors, claims of it being a hard-right lobby group, and its ties to former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss and her disastrous economic policies—which pushed Britain to the brink of recession in the space of a month. --->READ MORE HERE

COVID masks stopped people from smiling — they’re taking lessons to relearn:

Now you can put a price on a smile.

People in Japan who have become accustomed to wearing a face mask have turned to the help of a professional — to learn to smile again.

After the Japanese government lifted its recommendation to wear masks for COVID prevention in March, many residents seemingly realized they had forgotten how to execute the facial expression.

“People have not been raising their cheeks under a mask or trying to smile much,” said Keiko Kawano, who teaches smiling through her company Egaoiku — which translates to “Smile Education” — told the New York Times last month. “Now, they’re at a loss.”

Lessons to perfect a perfect grin come at a cost: around $55 for a one-on-one session to teach people how to fire up the old cheek muscles and deliver a dazzling Hollywood smile.

“I hadn’t used my facial muscles much during COVID,” Himawari Yoshida, a 20-year-old student of Kawano’s, explained to Reuters, adding that she’s taking the course at the recommendation of her school to prepare for the job market. --->READ MORE HERE