Grim news emerges every few days about some aspect of how horribly the government imposed lockdowns have damaged people’s health. It is difficult to keep up with all the bad news.
My guess is it will take a decade or more for researchers to full understand the destruction willfully caused by politicians and so-called public health leaders.
A few recent articles:
- Lockdowns are killing young Canadians.
- Somewhere around 30,000 excess deaths from diabetes during the lockdown. “Excess deaths” means more people died that would have otherwise.
- Study calculates lockdowns reduced number of reported infections but did not reduce hospitalizations and did not reduce deaths. One thing lockdowns achieved was to push poor people into the unemployment line. No lives saved. No hospitalizations avoided.
(Hint for future reference: Combine the first and second articles with the third and we have the hypothesis that lockdowns caused deaths while not preventing any deaths.)
National Post – 12/30/21 – Sabrina Maddeaux: Lockdowns are killing young Canadians – In yet another of what will be an inevitable flood of such reports, official stats from Canada identify excess deaths in the country are not just from Covid with the unexplained increase falling disproportionately on younger people.
In other words, the lockdown itself killed people.
Here is a recap of the stats:
- 19,884 “excess deaths” from March 2020 through May 2021 – these are deaths beyond what would otherwise be expected.
- 7,200 excess deaths for people between age 45 and 64 – this group constitutes 35% of the excess deaths and 7% of Covid deaths.
- 3,100 excess deaths among people under age 44 – this group constitutes 15.6% of the excess deaths while they are a mere 0.7% of Covid deaths.
The shutdown, the government imposed lockdown, is killing young people in Canada.
Report indicates the excess deaths are disproportionately falling on poor, indigenous, less educated, and otherwise marginalized people. (Why are we doing this to people who are already hurting?)
Report also indicates the damages are undercounted because it does not include suicide attempts and self-harm attempts. Also excluded is increased drug abuse which doesn’t result in death.
PJ Media – 2/1/22 – Diabetes Deaths Hit 100K Two Years in a Row: Wonder Why? – In 2019 87,000 people died from diabetes. That is the seventh biggest killer in the US.
In 2020 the death toll from diabetes rose 17% to about 102,000. In 2021 it was just over 100,000, up 15% from 2019.
What, oh what could have possibly been different in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019 that could maybe, perhaps have affected the number of people taken out by diabetes?
Do you suppose it could have been gyms being closed, parks being closed, people locked in their homes? Do you suppose giving away bunches of free donuts, free beer, and free pot as inducements to get vaccinations might have, maybe, possibly affected blood sugar of diabetes-afflicted people locked in their home?
Article links to reports on a federal study desperately wondering what could have possibly caused this increase.
What could have been done differently? Article concludes:
“I think it’s obvious. Maybe liberals shouldn’t have made things worse by locking people down, closing the parks and playgrounds, and giving people weed and junk food to get the “vaccine” instead of letting them exercise and recommending healthy food.”
While we are fantasizing about possibilities and maybes, perhaps someday there will be accountability for our political and medical elites consciously made decisions that directly caused more suffering and death.
Hey, I can dream.
One thing I do know for certain – the 15,000 excess deaths in 2020 and 13,000 excess deaths in 2021 will not be directly attributed to the lockdowns imposed by our political overlords.
The College Fix – 1/24/22 – Covid lockdowns did not reduce deaths, but did reduce employment: University researchers – One of the beautiful things about the United States is there are 50 states. That means there are 50 approaches to education. There are 50 approaches to any issue.
That also means there are 50 approaches to dealing with the Covid pandemic.
Two college professors looked at the strength or severity of state restrictions in response to the pandemic. They then correlated that to the number of Covid cases, the amount of hospitalizations, the number of deaths, level of unemployment, and who was most or least affected by changes in unemployment.
The results will be no surprise to anyone who has been reading this blog – – the results are exactly as you would expect.
The only good result they found is states with harsher restrictions had lower case counts of reported infections.
In terms of hospitalizations, states with strong restrictions had no better results of keeping people out of the hospital than states with limited restrictions.
Same thing in terms of deaths. States with strong restrictions, such as California and New York, had no better results in keeping people from dying in states like North Dakota or Oklahoma who had non-draconian restrictions.
Skyrocketing unemployment is one result states were able to create with more extreme lockdown restrictions. Unemployment rate went up more in states with stronger restrictions.
Furthermore, the increase in people who are out of work and not able to provide for their families was concentrated in the lower level of earnings. In other words, strong restrictions put poor people out of work.
Good job. Kudos to all those governors who threw poor people into the unemployment lines.
To recap, strong Covid restrictions reduced reported case count and increased unemployment of poor people. Strong restrictions did not reduce level of hospitalization or number of deaths.
No lives saved.
No hospitalizations avoided.
One hypothesis I have not fully articulated is we will eventually learn government policies caused more harm than what little good they achieved.