Heather MacDonald hits the nail on the head, as she always
does. Her column at Spectator USA (“Where
are the deaths?: The drum beat to halt the re-openings gets louder by the day.
It should be resisted”) begins:
The coronavirus doomsayers could
not even wait until the fall for the apocalyptic announcements of the dreaded
second wave. Because the red states recklessly loosened their lockdowns, we are
now told, the US is seeing a dangerous spike in coronavirus cases. ‘EXPERTS
SKETCH GLOOMY PICTURE OF VIRUS SPREAD: FAUCI TELLS OF “DISTURBING” WAVE, WITH A
VACCINE MONTHS AWAY,’ read the front-page
lead headline in the New York Times on Wednesday. ‘VIRUS
SPREAD AKIN TO “FOREST FIRE”’ read another front
page headline in the Los Angeles Times on Monday, quoting Michael
Osterholm, one of the media’s favorite public health experts. Osterholm had
told NBC’s Meet the Press: ‘I’m actually of the mind right now — I think
this is more like a forest fire. I don’t think that this is going to slow
down.’
The ‘this’ is an uptick in daily
new cases from 19,002 on June 9 to 38,386 on June 24. The high to date in new
daily cases was on April 24 — 39,072. Since April 24, the daily case count
started declining, then began rising again after around June 9. What virtually
every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves
out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of
2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York
City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they
have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be
good news. Instead, it is no news.
. . .
There are no crises in hospital
capacity anywhere in the country. Nursing homes, meat-packing plants, and
prisons remain the main sources of new infections. Half the states are seeing
cases decline or hold steady. Case counts are affected by more testing; the
positive infection rate captured by testing is declining. The current caseload
is younger, which is a good thing. The more people who have been infected and
who recover, the more herd immunity is created. Meanwhile, daily deaths from
heart disease and cancer — about 3,400 a day combined — go ignored in the
press.
But the drum beat to halt the still
far too tentative reopenings gets louder by the day. It should be resisted. The
lockdowns were a mistake the first time around; to reimpose them would be
disastrous for any remaining hope of restoring our economy. The damage that has
been done to people’s livelihoods and future prosperity will continue to outweigh
the damage done by the coronavirus. The only vaccine against poverty and
resulting despair is a robust economy.
Read the full column here.
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