In the second week of March 2020, the Trump administration announced “15 days to flatten the curve” based on the misguided notion that shutting the economy down temporarily would reduce hospital admissions and thus lower the Covid death toll over the medium and long term. As you know, in some places the lockdowns of schools and businesses lasted for up to 18 months and destroyed the U.S. economy and hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the process.
At the time, I was battling against SB163 in Colorado — a bill that required parents to be tracked in a Government database and go through an online re-education program if they wanted their children to attend public school but declined any childhood vaccines. But the legislature suddenly shut down with no reopen date in sight.
So I pivoted to working on Covid and the Covid lockdowns. I recalled that there is an extensive literature on “social determinants of health” and “deaths of despair” going back to the 1970s. The idea is relatively straightforward — if the unemployment rate goes up, lots of bad things happen including increases in murder, domestic violence, child abuse, incarceration, mental illness, suicide and deaths from drug and alcohol poisoning.
So I did a deep dive into the subject and located the foundational document. Harvey Brenner (then at Johns Hopkins University) on behalf of the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress in the mid 1970s found that:
A 1% increase in the unemployment rate sustained over a period of six years has been associated (during the past three decades) with increases of 36,887 total deaths, including 20,240 cardiovascular deaths, 920 suicides, 648 homicides, 495 deaths from cirrhosis of the liver, 4,227 state mental hospital admissions, and 3,340 state prison admissions.
In a strange twist of fate, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton was published on March 17th 2020 and was heavily promoted across the mainstream media. It updates the work of Brenner and makes the case that economic crises produce adverse health outcomes including disability and death.
It struck me that the Covid lockdowns were producing an economic crisis that would have severe health outcomes, possibly worse than Covid itself. So I set out to model the health impacts of the lockdowns for the first time.
The population in the U.S. was smaller in the 1970s (when Brenner conducted his research) so I updated his figures to fit the current population in the U.S. and estimated the number of deaths that would be caused by the skyrocketing unemployment rate as a result of the Covid lockdowns.
My lower-bound estimate was 294,170 additional lives lost from deaths of despair and my upper bound estimate was 1,853,271 additional lives lost from deaths of despair if elevated unemployment persisted for six years.
Children’s Health Defence published my article on March 23rd 2020 with the title, ‘Will ‘Deaths of Despair’ Outpace Deaths From Coronavirus?‘
It quickly garnered 40,000 views. Later that day President Trump picked up this argument when he predicted “tremendous death” and “suicide by the thousands” if the country isn’t “opened for business” in a matter of weeks.
Various think tanks apparently also noticed my article and built their own models of how many people would die from the lockdowns. On May 8th 2020 the Well Being Trust published ‘Projected Deaths of Despair from COVID-19‘. Its study got a ton of press and its estimates were in line with the lower-bound estimates from my model (its model estimated a lower increase in unemployment and only looked at the impact of one year of elevated unemployment).
On May 21st 2020 the Brookings Institution published ‘Protecting our economy and our health in a pandemic‘ that covered the same territory that I had mapped out two months before.
Also on May 21st 2020 an article by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar titled ‘We have to reopen — for our health‘ was published in the Washington Post. He argued that “the economic crisis brought on by the virus is a silent killer” that “will likely cause tens of thousands of excess deaths” from suicides and opioid overdoses. (Thanks to WaPo for reminding me of this article.)
Even though all of these pieces hewed closely to my published model of Covid-lockdown-deaths-of-despair, none of them credited my original work because apparently the mainstream sees anyone who questions vaccines as untermensch (so I guess they think it’s okay to steal our ideas) and Children’s Health Defence is the nonprofit that shall not be named. Or maybe we all just had the same idea about the same time, who knows?
This surge in scrutiny of the lockdowns was all too much for the mainstream to handle — how could anyone possibly suggest that the lockdowns would cost lives, we have a pandemic to run! So on June 1st 2020, Anne Case and Angus Deaton trashed their own work publicly in an article titled, ‘There’s little to no evidence that “deaths of despair” track unemployment rates‘ published in the Washington Post. Later WaPo changed the title in the online edition to blame it on Trump (and the original title was moved to a subtitle).
Case and Deaton are an extremely big deal. Case won the Kenneth Arrow Award in health economics in 2003 and was an academic rock star at Princeton throughout her illustrious career. Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016. But they were part of the elite that was pushing the lockdowns (in spite of zero evidence supporting this approach) and now their original work on deaths of despair was problematic for the official narrative.
So in the op-ed they jettisoned the theory they had just published in their book by arguing that “yes, deaths of despair happen in poor white communities but no they won’t happen as a result of Covid lockdowns because, well, um, this is different”.
They wrote:
In short, we can safely dismiss confident predictions that the forthcoming recession will cause 75,000 or more new deaths of despair…
A wave of deaths of despair is highly unlikely. Recessions are immensely costly because they disrupt people’s lives, deprive them of work and income, and inhibit many of the activities that make life worth living. We need to find safe ways of getting back to work. But we should not scare ourselves with nightmares about tens of thousands of additional suicides or drug overdoses.
Reading that again now fills me with rage.
That was four years ago. Now the data are in and I was right and the top two health economists in the U.S. were catastrophically wrong.
An article this week in the Economist shows that deaths of despair from drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning and suicide skyrocketed over the last four years.
The Economist article points out that deaths of despair now impact nearly every demographic group (not just the poor whites studied by Case and Deaton). But it never mentions Covid nor the Covid lockdowns that the Economist championed in 2020. As I noted previously, the ‘flatten the curve’ graph that led to the lockdowns came from the Economist on February 29th 2020. Rather than acknowledging its monumental error, the Economist simply recommended that Case and Deaton update their model to include people of colour.
The quant genius Ethical Skeptic has been tracking the excess deaths as a result of the various failures of the Covid response for four years. His research shows that the missteps in the Covid response (including deaths of despair) not only killed more Americans than Covid, they also killed more Americans than all foreign wars combined.
Reasonable people can disagree about the number of deaths of despair from the Covid lockdowns. We know the number is higher than zero and so then the question becomes how much higher? Some factors to think about include:
- Generous unemployment benefits during Covid and a robust economic recovery after the lockdowns were lifted probably reduced the death toll somewhat (the Brenner model that I used in my projections was based on increased societal unemployment for a period of six years — so the shorter Covid recession should have fewer deaths as a result).
- But the severe isolation of Covid was new, opioids got stronger during Covid (with widespread availability of fentanyl) and disposable income from generous unemployment benefits could have increased alcohol and recreational drug purchases which likely expanded the death toll. Remember that liquor stores were deemed “essential businesses” that were kept open during the lockdowns while the churches that often hold Alcoholics Anonymous meetings were closed.
- Also, murderous hospital protocols, blocked access to safe and effective medicines including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, missed diagnostic and treatment appointments for disease such as cancer and the introduction of the deadliest vaccines in history massively increased the death toll (those are not directly categorised as deaths of despair but they increased all-cause mortality nonetheless).
That’s the conversation that reasonable people could and should be having. But that’s not what happened in the spring of 2020 (and it’s not the conversation that the mainstream is capable of having even now). Instead the ruling class had a plan and a narrative and it used the éminences grises in the field of health economics, Anne Case and Angus Deaton, to say “nothing to see here, don’t ask any questions, we can shut down the economy with no associated loss of life”.
Their argument was self-evidently absurd. Yet, Case and Deaton got their way. The lockdowns lasted for a year and half, not the initially-promised 15 days. And hundreds of thousands of Americans died from Covid-lockdown-deaths-of-despair as a result.
Thus far Case and Deaton have paid no price for their catastrophic miscalculation in defense of junk science lockdowns. In 2021 Case was named a Distinguished Fellow by the American Economic Association (AEA) and given an award by the NIH for her contribution to behavioural and social sciences. The regime rewards its own. If either of them had told the truth about the iatrogenocide they would have been permanently banished from polite society.
So what can we learn from this sordid affair?
- Lockdowns kill lots of people.
- Many academic elites don’t care about the truth. When push comes to shove they will always act in ways consistent with their class position even if that contradicts their entire body of work.
- Covid represented a unique form of hypnosis or psychosis whereby the bourgeoisie lost access to logic and reason as they rushed to actions that killed far too many people in the name of public health.
- Being right early carries no rewards (at least in the short term) and usually results in significant personal harm.
I’m tired of making excuses for the people who got everything wrong during Covid. It wasn’t a mistake, they were willing participants in the ‘plan’. Anne Case and Angus Deaton are an embarrassment. I don’t care how much good work they did earlier in their careers, when the fate of society was on the line they became cowardly trolls. At a minimum, they owe me and all of society a massive apology. In a just world, the debt they would repay to society would be much greater.
Toby Rogers has a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. This article was first published by the Brownstone Institute.
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Remember this folks. Covid Lockdowns caused excess deaths. ———-How many deaths will Climate Lockdowns cause? ——–The obsession with CO2 and pretending to save the planet, and with reorganising the global economy away from capitalism to a more centrally planned technocracy with climate change as the excuse will cause untold misery. Not just the removal of cheap abundant energy that is causing fuel poverty, and the removal of our best ever central heating system (gas) to be replaced with silly heat pumps, but the desire from the climate junkies that we will lockdown. ——That we don’t drive, we don’t fly, we don’t eat red meat, we turn down our heating or have it done for us via new smart thermostats etc etc. ——-The establishment can see how easily we succumbed to their covid tyranny and the climate lockdowns are next. Especially since we have forced ourselves in law to achieve Net Zero.
The aim of all measures proposed by the Davos Deviants and being slavishly enacted by all governments is depopulation. This has been the number one aim since the C1984 Scamdemic began. Furthermore, the Scamdemic was the trial run – how far can populations be pushed, what works, how easy it is to jab them, what degree of fightback is likely etc?
Massive Depopulation.
For the survivors life will be lived in servitude and when the slaves are deemed surplus to requirements they will be disposed of like trash.
Under an utterly ridiculous scenario that a trace gas is going to kill the planet the DD’s are intent on destroying European farms and farming. There can only be one outcome if they succeed – millions of us dying of cold, hunger and disease.
I was one of the first here on DS to bang the Depopulation drum, I hope more on here can now appreciate where this is all headed. Everything happening now is linked.
The end goal is Depopulation. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Khmer Rouge, Rhodesia and the rest all understood that starving the opposition was the route to success.
It’s Grim.
The US has been encouraging depopulation for quite some time and not just through war:
“the problem must be resolved by the countries threatened by excessive population growth…most importantly, the improved status of women”
That’s not about equality, that’s getting women employed so they don’t have time for children.
“we should avoid the language of ‘birth-control’ in favor of ‘family planning’ or ‘responsible parenthood'”
How to sell self-extermination. We now also now have LGBTQ+ to assist with birth control and the push for euthanasia.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79M00467A002500120004-8.pdf
Those Muslims didn’t het the birth control memo….We are being replaced.
👍👍👍
Thanks DHJ, useful additional points particularly motherhood and the alphabet mob.
Yes I agree, hux. Or at least, depopulation of the indigenous populace, hence our replacements are necessary, who just so happen to be ‘good breeders’ and very likely a lot less jabbed to the hilt compared with your average native, Covid shots or otherwise, which may or may not have something to do with their ability to conceive, although I see quite the correlation with number of babies and being on benefits, but there you go…
Mind, if the authorities can’t even establish the immigrant men’s ages, let alone do a criminal background check, good luck trying to confirm any accurate medical information.
Please check out the work of Julian Simon. He went against the Malthusian trend of seeing humans as a problem that would eat up all the resources, and instead saw human beings as the ultimate resource that would solve all problems. He saw human beings as the solution rather than the problem. Malthusians which includes the current crop of environmental climate change junkies, which today is almost the entire left of politics all over the western world see human beings as a menace that threatens the very survival of the planet. ——-This is why GREEN policies are all so anti-human. Simon was an expert in Population Economics and took the very opposite view that humans are the ultimate resource. —–Scientific facts contradict everything the Eco Socialist phony planet savers who see human beings as the enemy say. ——–Remember the words “In finding a new enemy to unite us…………………..the enemy then is humanity itself” The Club of Rome——-Something you regularly mention on here.
Many thanks for the detailed reply Varmint.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/julian-simons-theory-of-population-growth-biography-comparisons.html#:~:text=Julian%20Simon%20was%20a%20professor,and%20lead%20to%20new%20resources.
Cheers Varmint. I will have a read.
If you havent already read the indoctrinated brain, its very interesting focuses on how the psyops guys have through constant propaganda causing fear and anxiety as a constant has effectively damaged the brains of millions, and how the Spike has affected cognitive abilities.
Many thanks Hester.
A related question is how many people are currently dying in developing countries due to lack of access to cheap fossil fuels and how many deaths could be prevented if the World Bank IMF etc. provided these countries with funding/loans to develop fossil fuels and coal/gas fired power stations?
Yes energy poverty is spreading all over the wealthy west. The most important commodity is energy and we are being priced out of using it. Prosperity is directly tied to price and availability of energy.
““15 days to flatten the curve” based on the misguided notion”
just a cock-up then. For a moment I had a bad dream about Globalists playing all sorts of dirty tricks and psyops.
Funny I keep having that same dream myself.
Could they acknowledge the hundreds and thousands of deaths when there are many many more to come.
If anyone saw the Post office scandal the behaviour of the Post office from the CEO, the Minister responsible to the Management below and down aptly demonstrates what is going on in Western Governments with regards to the deaths and injuries caused by their response to a cold/flu like virus. The Government and its advisors and the opposition were so bought into the the Global Governments response, that they were right to enforce through tyranny solitary confinement for months for many, forced injections of an experimental drug that had never been properly trialled or tested to proper safety standards, that this was their opportunity to “reset” the world and to gain greater control over people to make what constituted a better world.
Like the Post office there was no trial run, there was no looking into what could be the downsides of their policies, they just went full steam ahead, disregarding as false information anyone who questioned, slandering and libelling anyone who said they had been made ill or had family who died as a result of what the Covid leaders did.
Now like the Post office they are covering up, denying, refusing to accept any responsibility, in fact just as the Post office did they will try and ruin the lives of those who dare to present evidence of the damage they have caused.
Like the Post Masters who were jailed, whose lives were ruined those involved from the top down view the Citizens whose lives they played with as nothing, unimportant, nuisances who need to be eliminated in any way possible.
The reality is they know what they did, they know they are guilty and even if its a teeny micro element of shame and guilt within them it will grow bigger, it will eat away at each and every one of them. But like those at the Post Office they will never openly admit their guilt and they will cover for each other. Such are the people in power, not to be trusted, cowardly, and corrupt, but financially secure and better off than all of us, who says crime doesn’t pay?
“I’m tired of making excuses for the people who got everything wrong during Covid. It wasn’t a mistake, they were willing participants in the ‘plan’. ”
——-
Yes …. and we’re tired of hearing them. It wasn’t a mistake – it was very carefully planned and executed.
They were either fully on-board with the destruction and the objectives, or they were useful idiots.
Being a useful idiot doesn’t make you immune from prosecution when you break the law. And it shouldn’t make them immune now.
Hear, hear.