By Tyler O’Neil
Recent studies have shown that the coronavirus has spread much faster than previously thought and that it is far less deadly than previously thought. Antibody tests show rapid spread, while many studies have placed the death toll at less than 1 percent. A Swiss Policy Research study put the rate between 0.1 percent and 0.4 percent. The coronavirus is still a serious pandemic, but these numbers cast grave doubt on the wisdom of temporarily shutting down economies. In fact, they raise the question of why Americans ever thought the virus was deadly enough to enter lockdown.
Dennis Prager has argued that the lockdowns may be the “greatest mistake in history.” He noted that the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that 260 million people will face starvation in 2020, double the number from last year. WFP Director David Beasley warned about “a hunger pandemic caused by the Coronavirus. There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself.”
If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. A Just Facts study found that coronavirus anxiety, exacerbated by the lockdowns, will likely cost more than seven times the years of life that could possibly be saved from the lockdowns in the United States.
Considering all this damage, why did the lockdowns happen in the first place?
To some degree, Americans were rightly concerned that hospitals would be overwhelmed with coronavirus cases — as hospitals in Northern Italy were. U.S. hospitals were not overwhelmed, however, and even in America’s coronavirus epicenter, New York City, the predicted ventilator shortage crisis never took place. The “inclusive” leaders of New York City were able to force the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse to shut down its allegedly hateful emergency field hospital less than two months after it opened.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Dr. Anthony Fauci justified the lockdowns by citing estimated death rates of 3.4 percent and 2 percent. Yet the less than 1 percent death rates have come after funeral home directors blew the whistle on the intentional inflation of coronavirus death counts.
Why were these dire predictions so far off the mark?
The answer, as with so much regarding the coronavirus crisis, has a great deal to do with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party’s malfeasance during the pandemic.
Coronavirus Anxiety Costs More Lives Than the Lockdowns Save From COVID-19, Study Finds
As the British think tank the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) put it, “From the outset, the CCP tried to censor attempts by Chinese citizens to identify and publicise the truth concerning the origins, nature and dangers of the virus. Not all of these censorship efforts succeeded, and a considerable body of independent, corroborative data came to light.”