OUT ON A LIMB: COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure. A key lesson of the pandemic.

As for President Donald Trump, he never used the word lockdown, but he was worried enough to  call for the country to adopt social distancing as a mitigation strategy. Schools, restaurants, businesses — they all closed. White-collar employees who were able to work from home did so. More than once, Trump mentioned that 2.2 million lives were at stake, referring to Ferguson’s estimate. Trump’s order wound up lasting six weeks.

Most governors issued their own “stay-at-home” orders, usually stricter than Trump’s. Even Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida — who would soon become an outspoken opponent of mainstream mitigation measures — reluctantly went along for a brief period. But there were important questions that no one advocating for lockdowns addressed, maybe because in the urgency of the moment the questions didn’t occur to them. How long would they last? And even if lockdowns did slow the virus’s progression, what would happen when they were lifted?

Regardless, in the space of two months, lockdowns had gone from being unthinkable to being an unquestioned tool in the pandemic toolkit.

* * * * * * * *

Dr. Anthony Fauci was probably the best-known defender of lockdowns as a life-saving measure. But the policy continues to have many defenders within the public health establishment. Howard Markel, a doctor and medical historian at the University of Michigan, believes they succeeded. “The amount of lives saved was just incredible,” he says. Markel pointed to an August 2023 study by the Royal Society of London that concluded that “stay-at-home orders, physical distancing, and restrictions on gathering size were repeatedly found to be associated with significant reduction in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, with more stringent measures having greater effects.”

Still, the weight of the evidence seems to be with those who say that lockdowns did not save many lives. By our count, there are at least 50 studies that come to the same conclusion. After The Big Fail went to press, The Lancet published a study comparing the COVID infection rate and death rate in the 50 states. It concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 deaths disproportionately clustered in U.S. states with lower mean years of education, higher poverty rates, limited access to quality health care, and less interpersonal trust — the trust that people report having in one another.” These sociological factors appear to have made a bigger difference than lockdowns (which were “associated with a statistically significant and meaningfully large reduction in the cumulative infection rate, but not the cumulative death rate”).

In all of this discussion, however, there is a crucial fact that tends to be forgotten: COVID wasn’t the only thing people died from in 2020 and 2021. Cancer victims went undiagnosed because doctors were spending all their time on COVID patients. Critical surgeries were put on hold. There was a dramatic rise in deaths due to alcohol and drug abuse. According to the CDC, one in five high-school students had suicidal thoughts during the pandemic. Domestic violence rose. One New York emergency-room doctor recalls that after the steady stream of COVID patients during March and April of 2020, “our ER was basically empty.” He added, “Nobody was coming in because they were afraid of getting COVID — or they believed we were only handling COVID patients.”

I’m glad to see New York magazine in 2023 finally reach the same conclusion the rest of us arrived at by April of 2020, and certainly by the summer:

● After telling GOP to downsize convention due to COVID-19, N.C. governor marches in crowded protest.

● NJ governor admits COVID-19 double standard, says recent protests are different from business owners’ complaints.

● De Blasio: Large Group Protests Are Acceptable, Religious Observances Are Not.

● NPR: Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.

● ‘Did I miss the memo?’: Hospital workers in full PPE applaud George Floyd protesters as they march past.

Related: ‘We would’ve done everything differently:’ Newsom reflects on Covid approach.

Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.

BLUE ON BLUE: Muslim Group to Biden: ‘Ceasefire by 5PM Tuesday or We Walk.’

“ANTI-RACISM” WAS ALWAYS A SHAM AND A SCAM: The shameful silence of the ‘anti-racists.’ “The oldest hatred is making a grim and dangerous comeback – and yet so many organisations, ostensibly dedicated to equality and racial justice, find it impossible to confront. . . . Thanks to the grim logic of identity politics, anti-Semitism has come to be seen as a lesser form of racism, and Jews as the ‘wrong’ kind of victim. This is a shameful development.”

They’re only against certain varieties of prejudice. They’re all-in in favor of others.

A LAW MEANT TO BE BROKEN: “Everywhere in the west, the radical left is protesting to support Hamas, despite (or perhaps because) of the latter’s calls to completely destroy the Jews. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom and California Democrats are disarming law-abiding Jewish American citizens in their synagogues.”

And consequences visited upon its sponsors.

FROM ANDREW FOX: The End of Daze.

#CommissionEarned

Jacob Zvi has turned his back on everything he was taught to value. His faith, his family, his citizenship, and even his morals. Yet seemingly divine fate introduces Jacob to the struggling members of an Orthodox congregation in the middle of a ghetto in New Orleans while terrorists explode a purloined Soviet nuclear artillery shell atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

But things quickly take a turn for the Biblical, for the worthy dead are returning to life to build a Third Temple atop the now radioactive Temple Mount, scoured empty by the atomic blast. They return not to bodies of flesh and blood, but to cybernetic bodies produced in an advanced robotics lab on the Tulane campus, part of a secret project funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

The End of Days has begun, but unlike anything that has been anticipated by Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim. When Jacob is inexplicably selected to serve as God’s mouthpiece, and he finds he makes for a clownishly awkward prophet of God’s Kingdom on Earth.

But he will have to up his game immeasurably in order to broker peace with all the factions who bitterly reject this version of the End Times—chief among them progressive Jews themselves! THE END OF DAZE is a science fiction eschatological satire fitting for the End Times encroaching on the twenty-first century.

SCHUMER WON’T LISTEN TO THEM. BECAUSE LIKE BIDEN, HE WANTS TO SEE THE WORLD BURN:  Senate Republicans Demand Schumer Not to Accept Biden’s Request for $9 Billion for Gaza.

SURE, BUT THEN THERE WOULD BE NO VICTIMS FOR THE LEFT TO DANCE IN THEIR BLOOD WHILE TRYING TO CONVINCE US TO TO GIVE UP OUR GUNS:  Army Warned That Maine Gunman ‘Should Not Have a Weapon,’ Behaved ‘Erratically’ Months Before Shooting.

This country doesn’t have a gun problem. It has a mental health problem. Particularly on the left.

SO DOES YOU KNOW, REALITY:  Thailand’s tiger turnaround contradicts climate fearmongering.

WELL, AIN’T THAT JUST TOO BAD?  Israel de facto implements the Second Amendment and Joe Biden is reportedly not happy.

RANKED CHOICE VOTING IS A WAY TO DISENFRANCHISE PEOPLE: Ranked-Choice Voting Is The Monster Under The Bed Of American Elections.

It can be trivially manipulated.

MONEY? HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK? Yellen Throws A Fit Over Reducing IRS Expenses To Fund Israel Aid.

I wonder if I threw a fit over the reduction of our eating out fund, such as it is, it would magically increase. My guess is it wouldn’t. But then we don’t have a printing press, nor easy access to theft.

HOW LONG WILL WE TOLERATE THESE ROACHES?  Wray, Mayorkas Squirm Over Censorship Allegations.

AS THEY SHOULD:  House Republicans Subpoena Biden Administration For Afghan Refugee Records Amid Rising Terror Threats.

THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DECLARES ITS INTENTION TO JOIN THE DODO:  University of Colorado Ethnic Studies Dept Scrubs Statement Saying Hamas Did Not Commit Terrorism.

AS HE SHOULD:  Hawley Explodes When Mayorkas Refuses to Say If Hamas-Supporting DHS Employee Has Been Fired.

BECAUSE OF COURSE IT IS:  A New Caravan of Immigrants From These 11 Countries Is Headed Our Way.

IT’S TIME TO STOP INDULGING THE SAVAGES:  Israel’s Pearl Harbor.

This was a bucket of cold “wake up” to the entire Western world. And it should be. Don’t go back to sleep.

COME TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, WHICH ISN’T RUN BY NAZIS AND MORONS: It’s Early Decision Time for College Applicants. What Should a Jew Do?

Seen on Facebook: “Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age, or a Harvard student their grandfather’s SS rank.”

MARK JUDGE: A welcome end to superhero movies.

I recently went to the movies, where I was confronted on the screen by minor miracles: two well-crafted films that are smart, brave, and aimed at adults. And they have nothing to do with superheroes.

The films are The Holdovers and American Fiction. The Holdovers  is about the relationship that develops between three people who are left stranded at an expensive private school for Christmas. The second film, American Fiction, didn’t play, but the trailer did. That was enough to leave the jaws of those seated around me on the floor.

With what looks like brutal satire, American Fiction tackles the phenomenon of white elites in the media, academia, and publishing world who satisfy their own egos by making black authors sound more “street” and “authentic” at the expense of more gifted black writers. It’s a savage takedown of the condescension liberalism holds toward black people.

The best part is neither film felt the need to insert the superficial action and predictable plot that too often accompanies the superhero genre. “Lackluster storytelling and the gatekeeping of interconnected story arcs have led to superhero fatigue,” movie critic Brandon Towns recently wrote.

So it’s possible for Hollywood to make films for grownups that aren’t sequels or part of an enormous franchise? As far back as 2011, Hollywood producer Lynda Obst tracked her industry’s obsession for endless remaking the same product in her book Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business:

UPDATE: The trailer for American Fiction is absolutely brilliant. As Steve Hayward writes, “If this film turns out to be as good as this trailer, I can’t wait to see the liberal film reviewers fall all over themselves denouncing it, even though it was written and directed by a black filmmaker (Cord Jefferson). Takeaway line from the trailer: ‘The dumber I behave the richer I get.’”

(Updated and bumped.)

OPEN THREAD: Boo!

CORNELL HATEWATCH UPDATE: Cornell Junior Arrested and Charged In Threats Against Jewish Students.

Patrick Dai, of Pittsford, posted threats to shoot up a multicultural dining room on campus to an online discussion site, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York said in a news release.

104West, the dining room, serves food that meets Kosher, Halal and other religious guidelines. It is next to the university’s Center for Jewish Living, where several dozen Jewish students live on campus.

Dai, a junior, also called for the deaths of Jewish people and threatened to bring an assault rifle to campus, prosecutors said. He was charged with posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.

Dai faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted. He’s expected to be arraigned Wednesday in federal court in Syracuse.

Don’t let him off.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Scales Have Fallen. Now What?

You may have noticed that the enemies of the West no longer need to hide their animosity or their purpose. In the wake of my 2015 book, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace,  I was often asked what, exactly, did the Frankfurt School and its spawn in academe and its fellow travelers in the media desire in the wake of the collapse of Western civilization? What would follow the triumph of “Critical Theory”? A new communist paradise? The teleological resolution of their imaginary “arc of history”? The sunny uplands of “fairness,” “equality,” and even “equity”? None of those things, I replied. What they want is… nothing.

To assume that our ideological opponents want something is to play the game on their turf. It’s a mistake we make constantly. We imagine that words mean the same thing when they use them as when we use them. We have accepted their protestations that they “only” want a new, post-revolutionary Brotherhood of Man when they speak glowingly of the future, when instead they’re happy to stop with the destruction of the past two thousand years of history, and call it a job well done. We mistakenly assume that they want the same world that we do, only different, when in fact nihilism is their goal. To put it in contemporary terms, they are Jokers, the kind of men who only want to watch the world burn.

Read the whole thing.

Earlier: The Issue Is Not the Issue.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China’s Space Pioneer raises funding for its Falcon 9-class rocket.

CLAUDE RAINS DISCOVERS THERE’S GAMBLING GOING ON INSIDE RICK’S CAFE: Hundreds of Columbia professors sign new letter saying they’re ‘appalled’ and ‘horrified’ about campus antisemitism.

‘NOW AND THEN:’ Film director Peter Jackson tells us how he made The Beatles’ last music video.