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At LewRockwell.com, David Stockman explains the illogic among state lockdown measures, writing (abridged):
And folks, even the Virus Patrol hardliners don’t claim their lockdown orders are designed to prevent 3-day hospital stays by people who get an unusually stubborn case of the winter flu. This is about death prevention and that’s why they run the Chyron of Death across the CNN screen day and night.
But there is zero correlation:
- California: Heavy lockdown, 4.6 deaths per 100,000;
- Iowa: No lockdown, 4.3 deaths per 100,000;
- Texas: Light lockdown, 2.4 deaths per 100,000;
- Washington state: Heavy lockdown, 10.0 deaths per 100,000;
- Colorado: Inconsistent lockdown, 12.2 deaths per 100,000;
- Georgia: Late Lockdown now lifted, 10.0 deaths per 100,000;
- Maine: Heavy Lockdown, 3.8 deaths per 100,000;
- Massachusetts: Heavy Lockdown, 45.7 deaths per 100,000.
We call attention to Washington state, Maine and Massachusetts especially because even though they all have severe statewide lockdown regimes and their overall mortality rates very widely, from 3.8 per 100,000 in Maine to 45.7 per 100,000 in Massachusetts, they do share one thing in common. To wit, 40-60% of their Covid-fatalities have been in nursing homes.
In Maine, 53% of Covid deaths were in nursing homes, meaning that the actual Covid-mortality rate for the general population is just 1.8 per 100,000 and in Massachusetts 56% are nursing home fatalities, meaning the general rate is 21 per 100,000.
Ironically, Sweden has one of the least restrictive lockdown regimes in the world – schools, businesses, restaurants and retail remain open–yet its mortality rate of 22 per 100,000 is virtually the same as the lockdown state of Massachusetts.
Self-evidently, what matters is not how economically suicidal the lockdown regime is from one jurisdiction to the next, but the age, health status and general frailty/vulnerability of the populations at issue. In the case of Washington state where the first corona cases occurred, upwards of 40% of the 690 deaths to date have been in nursing homes, meaning that its general population mortality is just 6.0 per 100,000.
