Three years ago this month, a very small group of highly guarded ruling-class people from the U.K., U.S. and Europe were gathering to figure out how to lock down the country and the world. They held Zoom meetings and went to burner phones and plotted how to convince Trump to betray his own instincts.
And this week three years ago, the World Health Organisation sponsored a trip to Wuhan, China, and other cities to discover how they did it: how they utterly crushed a pathogen by smashing the liberties of the people. The WHO’s report was glowing: it worked and should be repeated the world over.
None of the rest of us knew this was happening. They knew what was coming but we did not.
The great experiment that had never been tried before. They would shut down the world economy in anticipation of a vaccine that was supposed to end the pandemic. And then, some of them figured, the whole world would be in debt to Big Pharma forever and we would be permanently acculturated to depend on them for everything. Then we go for vaccine passports and central-bank digital currencies and Big Tech too would ride high forever.
What a plan!
There were some missteps. It turned out that the vaccine didn’t work like it was supposed to. Whoops. And there was another big failure. The lockdowns didn’t actually stop the virus. Not only that, they utterly crushed everything we call society, leaving not only economic destruction in their wake but also cultural collapse and awful public health.
The U.S. was an interesting case because we have a federal system, meaning that even now, individual states can go their own way. Despite everything, the CDC did not have the power to enforce its edict. The Trump administration declared that “all indoor and outdoor venues where people congregate should be closed,” but there was no means to make that stick, much less script the pace of reopening.
South Dakota, for example, simply defied the federal Government. Georgia opened up after a few weeks even against the objections from Trump personally. Florida came next and then Texas. The rest of the ‘red states’ fell like dominos, each going back to normal over the course of the year, while ‘blue states’ stayed closed as a matter of principle: they would follow the edicts of Anthony Fauci and then the Biden administration no matter what.
This provided a fascinating test of the states. There were 50 states and 50 different plans for mitigation. Some deployed ‘stay-at-home’ orders and some did not. Some forced people indoors, some outdoors, and some not at all. Some kept forced masking in place for a long time and others made it voluntary. Some scrapped pandemic plans early and some held on to the bitter end, even keeping schools closed.
Oxford University had been tracking these mitigation strategies throughout and came up with an index. And we have seemingly endless piles of data on health outcomes, in addition to economic and demographic data on businesses, employment, income and migrations too. We have enough now to make some strong assessments on what works and what does not.
Now we have an extremely robust study that looks at all these variables and sizes up the effect in a range of areas. The study is “Freedom Wins: States with Less Restrictive Covid Policies Outperformed States with More Restrictive Covid Policies” by Joel M. Zinberg, Brian Blase, Eric Sun, and Casey B. Mulligan, as published by the Paragon Health Institute.
It’s hardly the first: Brownstone offers a list of 400 more on every aspect of the pandemic response. But it is enormously valuable because it accumulates so much data and experience and presents them in a clear way.
Here is the summary:
Our results show that more severe Government interventions, as measured by the Oxford index, did not significantly improve health outcomes (age-adjusted and pre-existing-condition adjusted Covid mortality and all-cause excess mortality) in states that imposed them relative to states that imposed less restrictive measures. But the severity of the Government response was strongly correlated with worse economic (increased unemployment and decreased GDP) and educational (days of in-person schooling) outcomes and with a worse overall Covid outcomes score that equally weighted the health, economic and educational outcomes.
We also used Census data on domestic migration to examine whether Government pandemic measures affected state-to-state migration decisions. We compared the net change in migration into or out of states in the pandemic period between July 1st 2020, and June 30th 2022, with the migration patterns over five pre-pandemic years. There was a substantial increase in domestic migration during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic trends. There was also a significant negative correlation between states’ Government response measures and states’ net pandemic migration, suggesting that people fled states with more severe lockdowns and moved to states with less severe measures.
They did a detailed study comparing Florida and California in particular:
Florida relaxed lockdowns after a short time, resulting in a low Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Index score, whereas California imposed strict and prolonged lockdowns and had one of the highest index scores in the nation. Yet the two states had roughly equal health outcomes scores, suggesting little, if any, health benefit from California’s severe approach. But California suffered far worse economic and education outcomes. And both states had substantial increases in their pre-existing domestic migration patterns. California’s severe lockdowns seemed to elicit a jump in its already high out-migration, while Florida experienced a significant in-migration increase during the pandemic as compared with pre-pandemic trends. Florida’s commitment to keeping schools open was likely a significant factor in attracting people from around the country.
In conclusion:
Severe Government measures did little to lower COVID-19 deaths or excess mortality from all causes. Indeed, Government measures appear to have increased excess mortality from non-Covid health conditions. Yet the severity of these measures negatively affected economic performance as measured by unemployment and GDP and education as measured by access to in-person schooling. States such as Florida and countries such as Sweden that took more restrained approaches and focused protection efforts on the most medically vulnerable populations had superior economic and educational outcomes at little or no health cost. The evidence suggests that in future pandemics policymakers should avoid severe, prolonged and generalised restrictions and instead carefully tailor Government responses to specific disease threats, encouraging state and local governments to balance the health benefits against the economic, educational, health, and social costs of specific response measures.
Some interesting charts from the study include this state-by-state comparison, with South Dakota at top left in figures 2 and 3 and New York at the bottom right.
This is the evidence we have based on the data we have. It is sadly not surprising. The lockdowns did not improve health outcomes. They did devastate economic outcomes. And economics is part of health which in turn is a reflection of the quality of life. The same results pertain however we shuffle the data: adjusting by age, adjusting by population, adjusting by population density. The conclusion is completely undeniable. Lockdowns were a disaster and they achieved nothing in terms of their stated purpose.
Does the evidence still matter? We shall see.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, where this article first appeared.
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God bless you Chris. Now the green lobby claim desert good, rain forest bad! Deserts are a sign of co2 stress, IE concentrations are too low to allow plants to grow in non optimum conditions.
Somewhat akin to the Royal Society for Protection of Birds being fervently behind windmills which are murdering tens of thousands of birds every year in our own waters and land alone.
Amazing isn’t it, socialists hate that the main bi product of capitalism is plant food, so they had to invent pseudo science to dismantle it.
The Climate zealots are anti human, they want less of us around, and so anything that causes depopulation in their crazed minds is good, anything that encourages human population growth is bad. When its viewed from that very simple angle it makes everything else we have been witness to in the past 4 plus years fall into place.
Succinct.
The real agenda is Depopulation.
What do the WWF have to say about that considering they’re are a clone of the WEF!
They say that polar bears are having to learn to live in trees!
WWF are right behind it even though it is killing all sorts of wildlife, whales, dolphins, birds
Nature in net zero transition plans | WWF
It seems obvious to me that milder winters at the end of the Mini Ice Age, allied with perfectly normal climate change, is causing CO2 to increase. After all, what is the primary purpose of plants other than to survive? Absorb CO2 and produce Oxygen.
Now, given that CO2 levels are, apparently, rising, despite the fact that temperatures have not risen for nearly 30 years, proves that CO2 does not have a definitive relationship with temperature. Indeed, the evidence that CO2 follows temperature is copiously detailed and reviewed. There is not one document in the entire world that proves the opposite without modelling. Modelling is about as accurate as Labour’s “1.5 million homes by 2029”.
In my layman view the Science is pretty obvious: the end of the Mini Ice Age and the Moon being on a ten year tilt cycle is causing ideal conditions for plants. Increased numbers of plants are, indirectly, producing more CO2, feeding more vegetation. It is exactly the same effect that was seen in humans since the invention of modern energy and better nourishment. There is also, of course, the increase in Oxygen levels, which plants absorb via synthesis causing healthier plants.
Quite agree. Do not forget the Vostok ice cores which lag temperature as pretty by Henry’s law.
Law?
It’s only his opinion!
Who is he, anyway?
Another candidate for decolonisation.
Although all organic life uses oxygen, green plants through photosynthesis give out oxygen whilst metabolising CO2. Quite a useful byproduct for the rest of us who use up oxygen and emit CO2.
Actually, in the UK, a lot of rarer species of plants like poorer less green habitats (not necessarily arid, as plenty of rain the UK, and when we had very dry springs in 2020 and 2021, then seeds did not geminate). But it is no good if there is dense vegetation such as Hogweed, cocksfoot and nettles- the rare plants get outcompeted and are lost. How much an increase of Co2 effects this I don’t know.
“…it is no good if there is dense vegetation such as Hogweed, cocksfoot and nettles- the rare plants get outcompeted and are lost.”
This I believe is now referred to as “re-wilding.” Or leaving the land to return to scrub when it becomes useless to man and beast. Land, all land requires management.
Not always. many nature reserves or wild places need some sort of management, hence conservation volunteers. Even in the mountains, they have to cull the deer as often there or too many, and some times fence areas off.
People often forget that nature reserves are semi-natural in many many cases. The scrub clearance and grazing has been done for thousands of years, so it is hardly surprising.
Scrub that is probably not indigenous to that “re-wilded area”.
They’ve tried shutting off large area in Mid-Wales and the Molinia grass, which is natural, has completely out competed everything else to form a sort of desert that not even the voles like and birds cannot nest in. Birds of prey cannot prey etc, etc. Idiocy.
As you said, rewilding results in scrubland, not pristine forests as they imply.
Plants are often rare and in marginal habitats because they are poor at competing. I was a botanist and remember studying rare plants, like Trinia glauca, a small umbellifer growing in the Avon Gorge. It was interesting to see a relic population, perhaps having migrated in after the last glaciation, but I wouldn’t obsess about its retention at all costs.
Thank you Chris for your continued contributions. They are a ray of light in these dark times.
How is the 4% human CO2 contribution figure calculated?
Professors Will Happer and his collaborator William van Wijngaarden(Tom Nelson Podcasts 56 and 158) attribute the recent modern CO2 rise to fossil fuel burning.I know that Professor Ian Pilmer and others quote 4%. Can anyone help?
Despite the Alarmist Club of Liberal Progressive Governments and Media telling us droughts are getting worse because of climate change, the opposite is true. Even the infamous CRU at East Anglia’s data reveals decline in drought since 1950.
——Incredibly reports that are the opposite of what is really happening are the norm on mainstream media. This means that the public are being thoroughly brainwashed, but why would that be? My friend recently said to me “Why would people say there is global warning if it isn’t true”? To an ordinary person like my friend that is busy with work and family life, who does not have the time to investigate every issue, and who may think mainstream news are doing that on his behalf, it is something he finds difficult to comprehend. So he just assumes what he is hearing will be mostly true. This is the power of propaganda.
—- We will all on this website have been in the company of friends and family and perhaps made statements that are contrary to current orthodoxy, and that the friends and family will not have heard before. The result is often a stare at you as if you are from Mars, and this suspicion that you are one of those conspiracy theorist people like those who think America did not land on the Moon or who think UFO’s are being hidden by the Military etc etc.
——-I have had a friend say to me “What makes you think you know more about this than the scientists”? They cannot see how silly that question is even when I ask them what scientists they are referring to. It is enough for people to just accept that this is all about science and that all the scientists agree and know what they are talking about. I have even had a person say to me with a look of exasperation on his face “David Attenborough says there is a climate crisis and that is good enough for me”. ———-Oh dear.
There are some people, far too many who are not worth talking to they have been so seriously brainwashed. Walk away or ridicule is the only answer.
I could walk away but I would probably be left with no friends. I give the example of my friend as typical of the general population. Apparently politicians today are less trusted than ever before, but somehow when it comes to climate change people seem to believe it all. They think it is all about science. —–No, it is bought and paid for science. Almost all science regarding climate change is funded by government. The same government that no one trusts anymore. —-Getting that message across however is not easy.
I’m experimenting with meeting such people half way by saying “yes you are half right but have you considered ….” I am hoping that they will be more open to further new facts. A work in progress and it is very tricky with close family and friends.
It is interesting isn’t it that the best of such conversations happen with total strangers at the bank or market or garden centre and a throw away remark gets the nod.
And bringing up the Hunga Tonga underwater volcanic eruption and 13% more water vapour in the atmosphere is normally a good move.
Spot on. It takes patience. Don’t try overloading their propaganda-soaked brains too quickly!
Always, first, follow the money.
‘……he just assumes what he is hearing will be mostly true…’
And that’s a big mistake; one should assume that the reverse is the case until proven otherwise. The MSM is a prime propagator of propaganda.
Start with Miliband, and once you realise he is a total charlatan, then you can move on to the rest of the eco socialist parasites.
The Great Climate Hoax – Ideology, Not Science!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3ZcPuVpg5s
My recent climate related chat with exceptional researcher and talent Ben Pile
Godfrey Bloom Official
Godfrey Bloom for PM.
% of CO2 in the atmosphere 0.04
% man made 4
% generated in the UK 1
I’ve asked many people who expressed concern over ‘climate change’ if they knew any of these numbers.
% who did? Zero.
Try it.
Indeed. I’ve had people answer 50% (in a hesitant voice) when asked what proportion of the atmosphere is CO2. The figures you show are never reproduced in any msm promoting AGW, I wonder why?!
And that tells us the state of our edukashun system. As a young child I knew atmosphere was 79% Nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 1% trace gases.
I blame the schools.
That’s 1% of the 4% in the UK, not 25% of total as some might construe from your list.
And 96% of CO2 resides in the oceans and there is a constant exchange between ocean and atmosphere determined by water temperatures, which are dependent on incident solar radiation, but also upwelling, downwelling of warmer/colder waters. This and the CO2 cycle with plants changes air carbon dioxide concentration.
None of this is controlled by Man.
I love doing this. The blank looks are sheer joy
Yes I have tried it many many times. But climate alarmists will say this—–“How is that you think a small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot cause global warming while at the same time you claim it is causing global greening”. ——–I try not to fall into that trap. My way of saying it is this —-“There is no evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate”. This stumps them every time because it puts the ball right back in their court and they are now required to provide evidence, which they cannot do because there is NONE
Tell them a further 2-3 % is made saving data around the world( cat videos!) or bit coin mining
And then the electrical energy requirement of AI…
Wales and Ireland look nice and blue. Speaking of Ireland, seen the protests on GBN with those Police fascists who are the useful idiots of the state spraying pepper spray even at Councillors now. Those pigs make my blood boil, if they piled on me I’d at least want to severely damage one of them. When were the Irish people asked to be dumped on like this.
“When were the Irish people asked to be dumped on like this”
And when the English?
..or the Welsh??
The assumption behind the warmists case is that the world was an ideal place around 1930. All change in the climat and all weather events since then have been the fault of mankind and before that we had millenia of calm, routine (yawn) boring sameness in the climate and weather.
Daft, of course, but that seems to be their starting point.
Perhaps they read “End of History” and believed it. Thought it also applied to science.
Thanks Chris – excellent article as usual.
Environmentalism became the new home for Socialists as their idol the USSR imploded. Socialism is all about planning and control using pseudo-scientism to predict and manage social and economic outcomes.
Spontaneous, emergent order terrifies the Socialist as they lose control particularly when outcomes are more successful than their plans. For them it’s all about process, best outcome is not the priority.
Commercial greenhouse maintain an air concentration of carbon dioxide between 1 000ppm to 1 200ppm which is optimum for plant growth, to speed up growth to produce strong, healthy plants requiring less water and fertiliser. (And, strange to report, none of these greenhouses ‘boil’ or catch fire.)
All that new plant growth around the World is also new habitat for myriad fauna. And food-crop yields have also increased.
Why do people obsessed with ‘rewilding’, ecosystems, biodiversity, etc want to kill off natural ‘rewilding’ and all those plants and animals on a massive scale by reducing CO2 (an absurdity anyway) to meet their ideological fantasies? Why do they want people to go hungry?
“Greening created by agricultural irrigation of fields can “obliterate arid-land ecosystems”.
But clearing vast tracts of natural vegetation – and keeping them clear of regrowth – to accommodate planting of non-native trees as ‘carbon-offset’ for royalty and celebs private-jetting around the World is OK?
You are right about greenhouse management. I think a fair bit of it is done by using the exhaust from gas fired heating; no need to waste it by exporting it into the outside air.
Correct, which is why Eart Day is on Lenin’s birthday
https://thenewconservative.co.uk/dr-green-will-see-you-now/
Roger Watson at thenewconservative with a cracking taking apart of ‘Dr Green’ aka The Royal College of Physicians and their “Green physician tool kit.’
“I leave you with this gem (not made up) which is given as an example of what a physician could say to a patient: ‘When cars burn petrol, they emit toxic air pollutants that can be bad for your health. Remember to carry an inhaler, avoid busy roads where possible and consider wearing a mask outside.’ As I may have mentioned already, who said Covid-19 lockdowns were not softening us up for something?”
I saw an old 1963 film where Sir John Betjeman travelled the long lost Dorset and Somerset railway from Shelton Mallet to Burnham on Sea.
Most notable the landscape was barren and lacked vegetation. I know that area well and today it is like a forest, rich in trees and hedges.
The Net Zero bandwagon is simply a gang of fanatics and business people with vested interests in scaring people to death, it’s Covid Mk2.
No——-The climate scare was there 30 years before covid.
It goes to prove that the planet can quite happily look after itself despite (not because of) our interference. .
‘This recovery of CO2 levels in the atmosphere holds out hope for higher food resources in many parts of the world that suffer from periodic famines.’
Excellent as always from Chris. But I’ve seen the point made that extra bulk greenery doesn’t mean proportional extra nutritional value. A parallel increase in nitrogen is needed for that.
Opinions, please.