Reining In The Lockdowns?

There's a growing consensus, not just in the US but internationally, and including officials of mainstream public health organizations like WHO, that the Covid regime of lockdowns has been a disaster, a public health catastrophe. It has led to widespread very harmful consequences for public health, both physical (illnesses undiagnosed and untreated) and mental. We wrote about this recently in Lock This Down! 

It appears that increasingly there is pushback. Some is coming from lawsuits and courts are beginning to listen. That's a slow process. On the other hand, state legislature's are taking action, too. Here's a story that's getting some play. As so often, I quote from a piece republished at ZeroHedge-- 15 States Are Moving To Curb Public Health Agency Powers Following Lockdown Carnage.

Obviously most of these states are Red states--there are a few exceptions--but states like TX and FL are hardly to be dismissed in the scheme of American politics.

The following excerpt is intended to simply provide an overview of measures under consideration. How much momentum this movement has is difficult to say, but I wouldn't dismiss this lightly:

Lock This Down!

It's almost impossible to believe, but there are apparently still some people under the illusion that the lockdowns have served some positive purpose. We know the negative purpose: to crush the small business and working classes. Steve Watson has a piece at Summit News today that exposes the lack of any rational basis for the lockdowns:

Professor: Historians Will Look Back On Lockdowns As ‘Most Catastrophic Event Of All Human History’

“Every single poor person on the face of the earth has faced some harm, sometimes catastrophic harm, from this lockdown policy.”

The professor in question here is Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya has PhDs in assorted subjects, like epidemiology and economics and teaches at the Stanford medical school. In other words, he actually has some credentials as opposed to career bureaucrats like Fauci. He also was one of the drafters of the Great Barrington Declaration. Watson links to an interview with Bhattacharya at a UK outlet, Planet Normal. The interview has its moments. If you care to listen to it, follow the link and go to the 30:00 minute mark.

For our purposes, I'll embed two brief videos and some text, to give some flavor for the state of debate.

First we have Watson, with his trademark style and accent--is that Estuary English? I don't like it, but he can be entertaining while also being informative and making serious points. The most serious point, halfway through, is that in the UK it has been revealed that public health officials, so-called, colluded to "ramp up the fear" to control the populace and force compliance with their dictates. Thank God that could never happen here:

Trump Prepares For The Campaign Season

It's been announced that President Trump has added Dr. Scott Atlas to the Covid Task Force. Follow that link for Atlas' impressive credentials. These details are telling:

In health policy work at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Atlas has been a leading researcher in health care systems. Atlas's research interests are domestic and global health care policy, particularly the role of government and the free market in pricing, quality, access, and technology innovation. He has written extensively on the evidence about single payer health care compared with the health care system of the United States, and how to reform the United States’ health care system to improve access and quality particularly for lower-income groups using a competition-based system to reduce costs, rather than an expansion of government programs. Most recently, Atlas has been a prominent voice in discussing the scientific issues and policy impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has authored more than 170 policy essays.

And this:

Atlas served as a senior advisor for health care to Republican presidential campaigns in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

It looks like Trump has settled on a heavyweight in the field, and one he can trust. Above all else, perhaps, Scott Atlas is no Anthony Fauci. Trump has, I'm quite sure, known for a long time that he needs to get the Fauci-monkey off his back, free himself from Fauci's dead weight. Atlas just may be the proxy who can accomplish that for Trump going forward on the Presidential campaign trail. Read more about that here: