Lockdowns don’t work and shouldn’t be reimposed on us
By Lethbridge Herald on September 3, 2022.
Editor:
An Aug. 24 letter to the editor supported COVID lockdowns based on the fact that the state of Florida, which opposed lockdowns, had a per capital COVID death rate three times higher than Canada as a whole. There are numerous examples that show otherwise.
Quebec, which had by far the strictest lockdown rules in Canada, also had the highest per capita death rate of all the provinces, twice as high as Alberta’s.
In the U.S., Florida which he refers to, had a death rate that was lower than 13 other states that did go the lockdown route.
Texas, another state that was against lockdowns and restrictions, went so far as to make it illegal for businesses to require proof of vaccination to enter their businesses had a death rate lower than 28 other states.
Globally, Sweden which was often criticized for not imposing lockdowns, had a death rate that was lower than 53 other countries, including other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and also Britain that did do lockdowns.
Another thing to consider, which the media does not want to talk about, is all of the collateral damage that lockdowns created. Sharp increases in suicides, drug overdoses, family violence, businesses permanently closing or declaring bankruptcy, mental health problems, children falling behind in education and social development.
Lockdowns did not work and should not be reimposed.
Jack Derksen
Coaldale
11-10
Some food for thought “which the media does not want to talk about”, it’s not news media anymore. It’s government sponsored propaganda.
More like antivax propaganda
Typical right-wing and probably religious-based nonsense. Sweden did have some lockdown measures but mostly they strongly recommended self-imposed lockdown measures and having a very literate population, the people did what was right. The people locked themselves down so to speak. It was not wide open and fancy-free at all. The Swedes are also notoriously healthy to begin with so Covid did not do the same harm it does in less healthy populations. If you dig into the information this Sweden story is just not what it sounds like. That matters not to you idiots as you pick and choose one example out of thousands and say see, you were all wrong. There are thousands of evidentiary examples that show the exact opposite, not just one little study.
ha! what a spin! extra hilarious is: “The Swedes are also notoriously healthy to begin with so Covid did not do the same harm it does in less healthy populations.”
And so enters biff🤪. Expert at everythng master of nothing.
the writer supports his position, but is met with mere opinion, rather than present evidence that might contradict the points made.
Biff, so happy to see that you are now advocating for “evidence”.
try speaking to it – all of it.
A study of the evidence which supports Jack Derksen’s conclusion that the lockdowns did not work may be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362427136_COVID-Period_Mass_Vaccination_Campaign_and_Public_Health_Disaster_in_the_USA_From_agestate-resolved_all-cause_mortality_by_time_age-resolved_vaccine_delivery_by_time_and_socio-geo-economic_data.
This study also corroborates the take-away from a peer-reviewed article, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283, I mentioned in a comment on Jill Skriver’s letter in the Herald, here: https://lethbridgeherald.com/commentary/letters-to-the-editor/2022/09/01/liberals-should-never-have-invoked-the-emergencies-act-in-ottawa/#comment. That take-away is that the vaccinations have not reduced all-cause mortality.
Mrs. Kidd may say that these studies are not definitive, and I would agree. However, I really wish someone would take a close look at these studies, and show what is wrong with them – if there is something wrong with them. My own understanding is shallow, but they look right to me. It will not do to simply dismiss them as “ from right-wing sources”. In this context I don’t even know what that means.
The first reference is to the pre-print of an article; that means it’s currently under review and has not yet been accepted for publication. This has become an increasingly common practice in recent years, especially in very competitive areas of science where large numbers of research groups are working on the same general problem, such as COVID-19. It demands an elevated level of scientific literacy to wade through the information.
It can be very difficult for non specialists to make sense of things, especially those who rely heavily on social media for their information. As a case in point, how many people know that two of the key papers reporting the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine were withdrawn (one from The New England Journal of Medicine and the other from Lancet), and that a third article was widely circulated as a pre-print before it was taken down? But before any of those things happened, the notion that hydroxychloroquine was going to save the day was firmly entrenched in the mind of many people, including DJT who promoted the drug’s use.
So, by your own admission — “My own understanding is shallow” — you post links to material that you don’t really understand. That’s not very responsible.
I couldn’t agree more! To pass along information that you don’t understand on a really important matte is obviously irresponsible. And then to admit that publicly, well that’s just a stupid thing to say.
Well, I understand the material I read. What I’m getting at is that I don’t have sufficient understanding to critique it well. So I am acknowledging my own fallibility, and the possibility that I am being misled. I don’t think that’s irresponsible. If you can give a reasonable critique of the articles I mentioned it would be most welcome.
What exactly did you mean when you wrote: “My own understanding is shallow”?
As for providing you with a “reasonable critique”, you can do your own homework. I have not done other peoples’ homework since high school.
As Mrs. Kidd says, “It can be very difficult for non specialists to make sense of things.” I’m not a specialist, but I do work hard at trying to make sense of things. Regarding the first article I mentioned, she says “ It demands an elevated level of scientific literacy to wade through the information.” I don’t quite agree with that. I think almost anyone can understand the claims made in that article, but to follow it all is definitely a slog. However, I think Mrs. Kidd is right that in order to be sure that the evidence adequately supports the claims made does require an elevated level of scientific literacy. I don’t see where the article goes wrong (if it does) and what I meant by my “understanding is shallow” is simply that because of my own lack of elevated scientific literacy maybe I have overlooked some important flaws in it. As the Dude says, this is a really important matter, so I do think that it is worth working at.
I would be glad to get counter-arguments to those articles. But I’m not at all asking you to do my homework.
in a previous letter, someone attempted to show us all that florida, which was “open” throughout covid, had a much higher death rate due to covid than did “closed” canada. that we were in fact closed is another matter of definition, but suffice it to say, int’l travel was a-happening by air a-plenty. so bad was covid, not only did we invite it here via air travel, we also wanted to be certain we had as much access to variants as did everywhere else, and ensured int’l air travel continued. that said, i responded to the claim made in that letter by providing information backed by each of johns hopkins and the cdc, that showed florida actually has a long term average covid related death rate that is in fact discernibly lower than ours. here is a repeat of that information: the following chart shows canada to have a long term average covid death rate of 2.77% (see the stats right side of page) – according to johns hopkins https://ycharts.com/indicators/canada_coronavirus_death_rate
while the same site using the cdc as reference shows the florida long term average to be only 2.02%. https://ycharts.com/indicators/florida_coronavirus_death_rate
the response to that was not a further flow of information, but the usual negs from the usual experts that just knows what they knows…they do not need no good information stuffs to tell thems what they knows.
Mr. Blair, I see I was not clear enough. I was not referencing the substance of the article, I was making reference to the fact — and it is a fact — that the article in question is a preprint. That means that it was under review and had not been published when you highlighted it — it had not been accepted for publication. My reference to “scientific literacy” was relative to the the process by which the results of scientific/scholarly work is adjudicated before dissemination.
So, let’s imagine that you have been diagnosed with high blood pressure. Would you take a medication that had been shown to be effective in many independent drug trials, or one that had been tested in one trial, the results of which had yet to be scrutinized in a double-blind peer-review process?
um, you do know he is asking that people examine the whole, and not just what supports their preferences. your response suggests you are only acknowledging that which supports your desire to believe that lockdowns were worthy.
you acknowledge you can only know so much. that is because you are not actually in the pharm labs, and because you are not sitting in the highest rooms of decision making. that is where the only real information actually resides. that you are able to admit to as much is what we should all be about.
alas, you are trying to speak contrary to the so very many brilliant nobel award winning scientists here in our very own herald forum – that are in fact at the top of the heap in pharma and govt circles. not only do these amazing folk examine and have the expertise to examine, without bias, the select pieces of proprietary data and information fragments that pharma chooses to share, they also sit in and weigh in on all policy deriving from govt think tanks related to covid responses.
yeah. and all the herald forum scientist contributors here, so steeped in post doctoral learning each, echo all they surely know to be unquestionably true.
what andrew and “others” are concerned with is that the examination of the issues is entirely one dimensional. why are so many so closed to examining the whole, rather than their favourite sound bites?
two right!!!! Like you, I just don’t trust them book learnin types. Common sence for me!
opie – you are so excellent at misspelling.
Then there’s the matter of…vaccines, wearing masks, staying away from crowds particularly indoors, isolating oneself when ill, distancing when in contact with others, doing good hand hygiene, not touching any area of your face or any bodily orifices without doing hand hygiene first, staying home as much as possible…of which many of us are still, doing, on our free own. If everyone did these, perhaps the issue of lockdowns would be moot.