A new study has appeared that shows once more that lockdowns have no discernible effect on COVID-19 infections or deaths, despite their colossal costs and harms.
Maria Krylova, writing in the Canadian publication C2C Journal, looks in detail at two pairs of similar US states that implemented contrasting measures in response to the pandemic to see if there were significant differences when it came to Covid infections and deaths.
She explains that her research is motivated by a wish to see rational cost-benefit assessments of policies responding to pandemics.
While aimed at fighting the virus’s spread, the interventions imposed a massive toll in areas including global hunger, domestic abuse, mental and physical health problems, suicides and bankruptcies. Despite these grim consequences and, more recently, the accelerating pace of vaccinations and the gratifying reduction in deaths from COVID-19, many North American governments remain reluctant to ease the restrictions. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mused lately that the Canada-US land border would reopen “eventually”, while some public health figures are now calling for a third lockdown.
Before we – again – do anything that drastic, we need to pose an important question: Did the lockdowns actually work? Not merely in the sense of keeping people at home and convinced that their governments were doing something; but in actually altering the course of the virus through the population. This should be a crucial matter of interest to every citizen and politician. It is key to rationally assessing the costs and benefits of imposing similar social and economic policies during the next serious epidemic.
She has gathered a wealth of information on the four states in question.
COVID-19-related state-level regulations and measures were gathered and examined in their temporal relationship to the pandemic’s development, reflected in the case and death statistics (daily and total) in two pairs of U.S. states. Each pair of states is broadly comparable in climate, population, urbanization and economic characteristics, but is contrasted in the degree of severity of its statewide rules.
Two are mid-sized, adjoining Midwest states: Minnesota and Wisconsin. Minnesota had a hard and extended lockdown (many schools are still not open, for example), while Wisconsin had a short lockdown followed by moderate restrictions. The other two are southerly coastal states – California and Florida. California has had a hard and ongoing lockdown, while Florida has sought every opportunity to ease restrictions and reopen. Two other seemingly suitable cases were omitted: New York, a hard-lockdown state, because of its unique circumstances (including heavy mass-transit use in its largest city, and its deadly nursing home scandal), and South Dakota, North America’s only jurisdiction to remain fully open throughout the pandemic, because of its small and non-urbanized population.
There is an array of uncontrollable or unmeasurable variables related to the pandemic’s course, the public health response, the political response and the nature of the studied states that further complicates state-by-state comparison, increases uncertainty and, hence, lowers the confidence of conclusions. The process requires making a number of important assumptions. Among these are the accuracy of COVID-19 testing, the accuracy of case and fatality counts, and the state-to-state and temporal consistency of lockdown enforcement. The key assumptions are discussed in the Appendix.
Because the pandemic is ongoing, the observed trends are accurate to mid-March 2021. There is no intention to forecast the pandemic’s future course.
Here’s her comparison of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
She gives a detailed timeline of the measures each state implemented, before summarising them, noting Minnesota imposed much stronger restrictions than Wisconsin.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Minnesota imposed stay-at-home orders for 54 days, social gathering restrictions for nearly 300 days, severe social and business restrictions for 29 days and school closure from March 15th, 2020 through the end of that academic year, with only kindergarten through grade 2 reopening in September. A complete return to in-person learning was not authorised by the state until mid-January.
In contrast, at a state level Wisconsin implemented a stay-at-home order for 28 days and social and business restrictions to various degrees for 61 days. The strictest order on social gatherings (akin to stay-at-home rules) lasted for 31 days. Similar to Minnesota, Wisconsin’s schools were closed from March 13th until the end of the academic year. Since September, local authorities have been authorised to choose between virtual and in-person learning for all grades; the Legislature’s state budget committee plan of February 10th intends to penalise schools that continue to stay closed by limiting funding.
Altogether, throughout the past year Walz has issued 112 executive orders related to COVID-19, while Evers’ cabinet issued 46 orders. As noted above, Evers’ authority to impose statewide measures was limited by the Republican Legislature majority following the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling of May 2020.
She also compares California and Florida.
California, she explains, has had much stricter measures than Florida.
Overall, California experienced the severest statewide restrictions, staying in lockdown for 51 days, in near-lockdown for over 120 days and under nighttime curfew for approximately 75 days. Less restrictive rules lasted for about 50 days in total. Schools have not been open consistently in the new year given the state’s shift to the strictest restrictions in November and December.
Florida’s state-at-home rules lasted for less than one month, its definition of “essential” activities was the broadest, and the state has been continuously opening up since late April 2020, although some cities and counties have resisted state policies.
Altogether, Newsom issued 92 COVID-19-related executive orders, in contrast to DeSantis who signed 42 orders. By mid-March 2021, a drive to trigger a recall election of Newsom had generated 2.1 million signatures.
She takes a detailed look at the relationship between a state’s restrictions and its COVID-19 cases and deaths data. Summarising, she notes the lack of obvious impact from any of the measures.
1. The stay-at-home orders, which varied greatly in intensity and duration (and, anecdotally, in enforcement severity) seem to have made no observable tangible impact on the daily COVID-19 cases and deaths. Further, the most severe restrictions, such as a prolonged lockdown and nighttime curfew implemented in California in November, did not prevent the subsequent December-January spike in cases or fatalities.
2. Following imposition of statewide mask mandates, there was no observable change in the daily infections or deaths in Minnesota, California or Wisconsin, nor in Florida, which never imposed this regulation statewide.
3. In contrast to the three other states, Florida experienced two distinct COVID-19 waves, while its daily COVID-19 cases and deaths grew less sharply during its cooler season and were distributed more evenly throughout the year. But does this trajectory translate into greater infection and/or death rates in Florida than in California or the other states? A review of the general statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths might help answer this question.
Here’s her table summarising the four states’ Covid statistics, with no obvious benefits from strict lockdowns.
In conclusion, she notes that the two states with the least restrictions had the lowest death rates for the over-65s, among other things.
– Despite restrictions of differing severity and duration, there is little difference in the total number of COVID-19 infections and deaths across the four states, respectively, averaging around 9.22% and 0.14% of each state’s total population. The fatality rate is also comparable, although it is somewhat greater in California and Florida than in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This difference does not seem to be related to the regulations that were imposed.
– Regardless of the state-by-state restrictions, the percentage of deaths of people 65 and older is under 1% in each of the four states, with Florida having the lowest rate. As well, the two least-restricted states had the two lowest death rates in this category.
– Regarding the original rationale for imposing lockdowns – to “flatten the curve” – the least restricted state, Florida, experienced an overall rate of cases and deaths comparable to the other three states. Paradoxically, Florida’s double-hump pandemic also forms the flattest trajectory of the four states. Whatever policy choices Florida’s government made, or whatever luck the state benefited from, the least-restricted state, with the highest proportion of elderly, had arguably the greatest success in preventing the overwhelming of its hospitals as well as limiting deaths among its most vulnerable age group.
Unfortunately, towards the end she hypothesises that voluntary social distancing (as opposed to enforced lockdowns) is what really makes the difference in terms of reducing Covid infection rates and deaths. This claim is contradicted by a number of studies, including a recent one in Nature, reported in Lockdown Sceptics, which did a pairwise analysis of 87 regions around the world and found only 1.6% of pairwise comparisons showed an association between reduced mobility (staying at home) and lower Covid mortality. The problem for sceptics in affirming the effectiveness of voluntary social distancing is that it suggests that there may be a flood of Covid deaths only being held back by keeping social distancing in place. This won’t help arguments for reopening (though the vaccines may help overcome that problem).
The C2C Journal study is definitely worth reading in full.
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Whether or not white Americans feel guilty about slavery, they certainly wish they’d picked their own damn cotton (h/t the great Kathy Shaidle).
Good article highlighting the one-sided hatred and violence coming from the radical, mentally deranged ‘Trans’ extremists, being all the while enabled and supported by the authorities;
”If Clive or Sadiq or the Trans+ Pride crew could point me in the direction of any counter examples, of prominent gender-critical women calling for transgender activists to be physically assaulted, or getting stuck in themselves, or refusing to condemn those who do, I’d be keen to see them. But we all know they don’t exist. For all the allegations of transphobia hurled at gender-critical campaigners over the years, they are not the extremists and haters in this debate – and they never have been.
Putting to one side the thorny issue of incitement in this case, and the thin line between venting one’s rage and directly inciting violence, there is simply no comparison to be drawn between the so-called TERFs and the trans activists. One side is robustly defending their rights against a tide of bigotry and routine harassment by the police. The other are the trans activists – who not only have genuine extremism among their ranks, but also get a free pass for it from Labourites, universities and even the police.
Violent woman-hating has made a comeback in politically correct form. Men are being cheered on at rallies for calling for women’s rights activists to be punched in the face. Meanwhile, politicians and activists, who on any other day might fancy themselves as valiant warriors against ‘the patriarchy’, are either staring at their shoe laces or making excuses for them.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/10/punch-a-terf-the-violent-misogyny-of-the-trans-movement/
Probably sharing this is just giving this absolute certifiable POS even more exposure but I do feel we need a reality check on just what kind of nasty mentalists are in our midst. I actually hope this ‘person’ gets everything they deserve off the back of sharing this video and he is condemned from all sides. Just vile.
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1678892214682890241
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1678892214682890241
That is one specimen that does not belong on the planet. Seriously that is one of the most corrupted, evil, anti-human things I have seen. Mengele territory.
I know, hux. It’s bad enough to even have those thoughts or record those thoughts ( everybody is entitled to the privacy within their mind, after all, and as far as I’m aware actual ‘thought police’ do not exist ) but to actually post those seriously f*cked up, offensive thoughts and opinions onto the web so that everybody becomes aware….well, I just hope his video backfires and Karma pays him a visit. I’m not going to shed a tear if there’s one less sicko inhabiting the planet alongside decent folk. I hope his parents are proud of what they produced!!
America’s guilt about slavery is understandable? Really? None of them were alive at the time FFS! What cobblers. Nonsense like this is partly why we’re in the mess we’re in.
“Parochial xenophobia” is a useful, but incredibly shortsighted, way of defending your own country. By failing to distinguish the real issues, you leave yourself defenceless against them when they are in fact shared by the other nations. We should be building bridges with those of like mind abroad, not crowing about our supposed superiority.
So apart from the “we abolished slavery quicker than the Yanks did” thing, consider how we cover up our own involvement in recent war crimes by pointing the finger at the US and Guantanamo Bay; how we are blind to our leadership in State tyranny by talking about “Chinese style social credit” when they appear to have less of it than we do; saying the French are prone to rioting when they’re just further down the slippery slop than we are, etc.
I’m well aware of my own country’s (England) shortcomings. I tend to think it’s superior to many other places (for which I take no personal credit, just put it down to good fortune) and a lot of people from many places seem to agree with me as people seem very keen on coming here. But I am not overly interested in cultural pissing competitions – other people might feel their countries and culture are superior and if so, good luck to them. England suits me – probably because I grew up here and I am used to it, and know what to expect. Change is inevitable but can be managed in a way that gives people time to get used to it.
I agree we should build bridges with those of like mind abroad, though goodness knows there seem to be very people of like mind to me anywhere, at home and abroad. There’s an argument that we need new countries, some of which would be places where the vast majority of the population had a strong belief in individual responsibility and freedom, small government, rule of law. Would I like to live in such a country? Yes, probably – but would I like to live there if the people there mainly of a completely different culture to me, with different social mores and ways of behaving? I don’t know. Covidian sheeple who know how to queue vs. anarchists who don’t know how to queue. I don’t know and won’t ever have the choice, though I think it might depend on how bad things get here.
Exactly! When is the cut off date for reparations?
How about modern day Italy having to pay reparations to the thousands of persecuted Christian slaves killed in the gladiator games for entertainment!.. their later generations have a claim,.. and through human history, where does this list end?
“Secret blacklists have no place in a modern democracy.”
On the contrary they appear to be an indispensable feature of modern democracy.
Now, if you were talking about the old, unenlightened and primitive form of democracy (you know, the kind where Christian views are not beyond the pale and where voting meant something), then I’d agree.
Dr McCullough’s opinion on this whole ”chest-feeding” nonsense ( 1min clip ) and I did think this bit on his substack was funny. He’s right though.
”Instead of fantasizing about being a women, men can focus on helping the mother who just delivered with work around the house, cooking, supervising other kids in the home, and keeping their appointments for psychotherapy.”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/cdc-becomes-public-laughing-stock
About Chicago paying reparations to black residents – I thought this definition of reparations was perfect, apologies if youv’e read it before;
“Where people who aren’t guilty are forced to give money to people who aren’t victims”.
In the HART article “The inversion of the ‘precautionary principle’” listed above, there is a link to another of their publications, which is quite instructive: https://www.hartgroup.org/fact-check/ “Government funded take-down looks increasingly ridiculous”. Changing the definition of things so as to manipulate public understanding of something is pretty close to fraud, Languages are flexible enough to accommodate new terms to correctly describe, or label, the functionality of anything new.
“Pupils struggle more with three Rs than before pandemic” – Barely three in five children in England are meeting standards in reading, writing and maths
It’s all that white privilege they’re having to mug up on…..
“How Bill Gates wants to hack the weather to
savelead usfromto extinction”There, sorted.
Well done.. and for those that don’t know they’ve been hacking it since 1946, and in full blown technological earnest since the mid 90s.
Geoengineering’s the name.. weather warfare’s the game..
https://usawatchdog.com/biden-blocking-sun-destroying-earth-dane-wigington/
George! You came back!!
OK you can stop messing with our minds now. 
Yes I’m back.. well rested.. and have my alter-ego back under lock and key.. haha..
Absolutely – you can see & hear the on/off con trail planes overhead here (South West) almost all the time, following which the sky often looks like complex tartan before shading into that sickly milk white. (Didn’t do it during Glastonbury Festival I noticed as it would look bad on the telly, but got back with a vengeance after.)
Yes.. its pretty damn despicable isn’t it. When I’m back in UK I spend a lot of time in the SW and have witnessed the massive amount of spraying going on down there..
Transgenderism can be seen as a politically correct ideology along with feminism, anti-racism and the others. The main things it has in common with them are a hatred and denial of nature and an impertinent urge to overcome it.
https://www.unz.com/article/transgenderism-as-a-pc-ideology/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-much-longer-can-this-junk-money-charade-go-on/
A brief why and how our monetary system must collapse. It’s all about debt and value.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-wrong-sort-of-fools-running-our-lives/
“If this is the case, then the drive to combine Artificial Intelligence with humanity in the form of transhumanism is redundant, not only in its evil intent, but in the possibility of humanity’s own natural development. Perhaps, as that brilliant and humane historian Neil Oliver says, ‘We are not a finished piece – we are a work in progress’.
It seems to me that the court jester would be infinitely preferable to the fools in charge at present.”
A worthy short read.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/excluded-for-the-crime-of-whiteness/
A cracking essay by the wonderful Frank Haviland laying bare the crap and lies of “diversity.”
Anyone else think the BBC might have sat on the presenter scandal throughout June in order to stop the story emerging during Pride Month?
We deserve more than the woeful response to Sarah Jane Baker’s ‘punch TERFs’ rant
Even the author of this piece has failed to understand that Baker’s rant was an incitement to violence and not just hatred. The clue is in the word ‘punch.’