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COVID-19

COVID Is Over — But Did We Learn Anything From It?

Published

8 months ago

7 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By PETER ROFF

 

The lockdowns instituted during the COVID pandemic were only supposed to last a few days. Remember “14 days to flatten the curve” was all that was needed to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by patients infected with the rapidly spreading novel coronavirus.

Two weeks turned into three, then months. Schools were closed. Businesses were shut down. Commercial activity in the world’s most powerful nation ground almost to a halt, but the virus kept killing, mutating and spreading.

States like California and Kentucky enforced the lockdowns with ruthless efficiency. The free exercise of worship and assembly was crushed on the altar of public health and safety.

Was it worth it? The Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s report, “COVID Lessons Learned: A Retrospective After Four Years,” says no. Its authors, who include the Hoover Institution’s Dr. Scott Atlas (who served as an adviser to the White House Coronavirus Task Force), Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke and the University of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan conclude, by using publicly available data and peer-reviewed studies, that the lockdowns cost more lives than they saved.

Atlas, Hanke, Mulligan and Phil Kerpen, president of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP) and the fourth and final co-author, conclude: “The ordered shutdown of our schools, churches, and businesses brought little health benefits while imposing multi-trillions of dollars of long-term societal costs.”

“We did not focus on theories or models. We looked at cold, hard facts,” Kerpen says. “The evidence is overwhelming. Lockdowns, school closures, and societal panic/disruption resulted in a staggering number of excess non-COVID deaths in the United States versus zero in non-lockdown Sweden.”

Kerpen estimates that the policies implemented during the lockdowns saved approximately 16,000 lives while causing about 400,000 extra deaths and imposing staggering economic costs, including the loss of 49 million jobs.

Other adverse consequences stemming from the lockdowns cited in the report include a $6 trillion increase in government debt, hundreds of thousands of business bankruptcies and hundreds of thousands of excess deaths from loneliness, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and delayed hospital care in part due to the forced social isolation.

In the U.S., catastrophes like COVID are usually followed by the appointment of bi-partisan, blue-ribbon commissions to study everything and issue recommendations we’re told will prevent something similar from happening again.

That hasn’t been done this time, which reinforces the suspicion in some minds that COVID-era policymakers who are still in a position to influence the conversation are hiding something. Having made a hash of things, they just as soon allow it all to slide down the memory hole.

Even in China, where popular opinion doesn’t matter, the investigation into the origins of the virus hit a stonewall thanks to what news reports have called “bureaucratic infighting.”

Too many people think the lockdowns worked. They’re ignoring the data. The CTUP report shows them to be wrong. It’s a call for a further probe that searches for the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. Without it, how can we be sure the public’s health and safety will be protected the next time, not to mention our civil liberties?

The CTUP report offers a few “lessons learned” that should inform policymakers’ decision-making in the next crisis. One is that “Leaders should calm public fears, not stoke them.”

“Conventional wisdom pre-COVID was that communities respond best to pandemics when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted,” the authors conclude. During the pandemic, responsible officials in the public eye “intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational, and health harms on top of the harms of the virus itself.”

As hard as it is to argue against that, it’s easy to suggest the crisis was used as a political club. What of it? Suppose public health officials, the media, and other policymakers deliberately ignored sound science and proven pandemic countermeasures to inflict political damage on a president they wished to see booted from office. Does that matter? The answer is yes, it does.

There’s more to be learned because there’s more to be studied. None of the nations that used lockdowns to prevent COVID from spreading can report that they worked as intended.

“The best-performing major country in the world was Sweden,” Kerpen says, “which did not employ mandatory lockdowns. Yet, to the extent that official and unofficial commissions in many countries have issued reports, they say the principal lesson to be learned from the pandemic is to lockdown harder and faster. The evidence doesn’t support that. It tells us that the lockdown policies must never be imposed again.”

If Kerpen is correct, and the evidence suggests he is, then policymakers are drawing the wrong conclusions. Lockdowns were a failure, not a success.

Other ways must be found to prevent a future outbreak from turning into a pandemic, hopefully, before the next crisis presents itself.

A former U.S. News & World Report columnist and United Press International senior political writer, Peter Roff is an acknowledged expert on U.S. politics and the policy process. His take on politics and policy appears frequently in print and on U.S. and international broadcasting outlets. Email him at RoffColumns AT gmail.com. Follow him on social media AT TheRoffDraft.

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COVID-19

Former Trudeau minister faces censure for ‘deliberately lying’ about Emergencies Act invocation

Published on December 20, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Christina Maas of Reclaim The Net

Trudeau’s former public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, finds himself at the center of controversy as the Canadian Parliament debates whether to formally censure him for ‘deliberately lying’ about the justification for invoking the Emergencies Act.

Trudeau’s former public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, finds himself at the center of controversy as the Canadian Parliament debates whether to formally censure him for “deliberately lying” about the justification for invoking the Emergencies Act and freezing the bank accounts of civil liberties supporters during the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests.

Conservative MP Glen Motz, a vocal critic, emphasized the importance of accountability, stating, “Parliament deserves to receive clear and definitive answers to questions. We must be entitled to the truth.”

The Emergencies Act, invoked on February 14, 2022, granted sweeping powers to law enforcement, enabling them to arrest demonstrators, conduct searches, and freeze the financial assets of those involved in or supported, the trucker-led protests. However, questions surrounding the legality of its invocation have lingered, with opposition parties and legal experts criticizing the move as excessive and unwarranted.

On Thursday, Mendicino faced calls for censure after Blacklock’s Reporter revealed formal accusations of contempt of Parliament against him. The former minister, who was removed from cabinet in 2023, stands accused of misleading both MPs and the public by falsely claiming that the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was based on law enforcement advice. A final report on the matter contradicts his testimony, stating, “The Special Joint Committee was intentionally misled.”

Mendicino’s repeated assertions at the time, including statements like, “We invoked the Emergencies Act after we received advice from law enforcement,” have been flatly contradicted by all other evidence. Despite this, he has yet to publicly challenge the allegations.

The controversy deepened as documents and testimony revealed discrepancies in the government’s handling of the crisis. While Attorney General Arif Virani acknowledged the existence of a written legal opinion regarding the Act’s invocation, he cited solicitor-client privilege to justify its confidentiality. Opposition MPs, including New Democrat Matthew Green, questioned the lack of transparency. “So you are both the client and the solicitor?” Green asked, to which Virani responded, “I wear different hats.”

The invocation of the Act has since been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court, a decision the Trudeau government is appealing. Critics argue that the lack of transparency and apparent misuse of power set a dangerous precedent. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms echoed these concerns, emphasizing that emergency powers must be exercised only under exceptional circumstances and with a clear legal basis.

Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.

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COVID-19

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich calls out Trudeau in EU Parliament address for shunning protesters

Published on December 19, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Speaking as an invited guest, Tamara Lich recounted how during the Freedom Convoy protests in 2022 calling for an end to COVID mandates that authorities treated the protesters like a ‘drug cartel.’

Tamara Lich, leader of Canada’s 2022 Freedom Convoy, was invited to speak before the European Parliament and wasted no time blasting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for “hiding” from protesters instead of engaging in dialogue as he did with other activist groups.

“We have politicians calling us terrorists, domestic terrorists, racists, even accusing us of trying to burn down an apartment building,” she said during her address.

“This is not the Canada I grew up in.”

Lich was a guest at the EU Parliament by the Europe of Sovereign Nations group, which is a right-of-center faction. She was joined alongside MEP Christine Anderson to speak to the parliament located in Strasbourg, France.

Lich recounted how during the Freedom Convoy protests, which took place in January and February 2022 in Ottawa calling for an end to COVID mandates, authorities treated the protesters like a “drug cartel.”

“Our prime minister ran away and hid and refused to even send anyone out to talk to us. … As a matter of fact, he even said that he’s attended protests before but only those that he supports,” she said.

“In my opinion, the leader of a country leads all of their people, not just the ones who believe in the same ideology. That is his job, and he failed us. They all failed us.”

Lich in a later social media post to X noted how it was a “privilege and an honour to speak to the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group this evening about the treatment of hard-working, blue-collar Canadians and the brave truckers who stood up for all of us.”

“I was able to speak about the current political climate in Canada, the censorship of our media, lawfare and political prisoners (our beloved Coutts boys) and the freezing of bank accounts without Parliamentary oversight or court order from a judge among many other concerning and important issues we are facing as Canadians under this current regime,” Lich said. “Thank you to Madam Christine Anderson and the ESN Group for this amazing opportunity. I will never forget it.”

Lich still faces up to 10 years in jail for protesting government COVID mandates

Lich and co-leader Chris Barber’s trial concluded in September, more than a year after it began. It was originally scheduled to last 16 days.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich and Barber’s verdict will be announced on March 12.

Lich and Barber face a possible 10-year prison sentence. LifeSiteNews reported extensively on their trial.

During Lich’s speech, Lich noted how she was thankful for “support” Canadians showed to the Freedom Convoy “in the form of donations which were that we were going to receive.”

“We honestly thought we would just drive there, you know a small group of us,” she said. “But what we saw, as you guys obviously did too, on the sides of the roads and on the overpasses, was an overwhelming number of Canadians out there to support us who finally felt hope for the first time in years. Who finally felt proud to be Canadian for the first time in years.”

The $24 million raised by GoFundMe was frozen on the orders of the government.

“The first GoFundMe campaign that we started was taking in $1 million a day as we travelled across the country. (It) was frozen after the politicians contacted GoFundMe and told them that we were ‘domestic terrorists’ and that they were ‘fighting terrorism,’” Lich said.

She recounted how the problems facing Canada under the Trudeau government are not just an issue at home but around the world.

“This is what they are trying to do,” said Lich, adding, “I see it everywhere, it’s to demoralize and bankrupt you, but I’m here to tell you that they picked on the wrong woman, and we’ll keep fighting.”

In early 2022, thousands of Canadians from coast to coast came to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s government invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.

The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.

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