Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Biden advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm wants a US nationwide lockdown of 4-6 weeks, to achieve the same level of control over Covid-19 as Australia and New Zealand achieved. But this faith in lockdowns ignores a few natural advantages which helped Australia and New Zealand gain control of the virus.
Joe Biden Coronavirus Adviser Urges National Lockdown for ‘4 to 6 Weeks’
KYLE OLSON
11 Nov 2020An adviser to Joe Biden on coronavirus has floated the idea of a nationwide lockdown for “four to six weeks.”
Dr. Michael Osterholm was appointed to Biden’s 12-person Covid advisory board on Monday.
On Wednesday, he appeared on CNBC and attempted to rationalize a national lockdown order.
“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” he said.
“If we did that, then we could lock down for four-to-six weeks.”
Osterholm claimed that would help get the virus under control, “like they did in New Zealand and Australia.”
…
Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/11/11/joe-biden-coronavirus-adviser-urges-national-lockdown-for-4-to-6-weeks/
The problem with this idea is it implies the USA’s Covid rate is America’s fault; it ignores a few natural advantages which worked very strongly in Australia and New Zealand’s favour.
The biggest advantage we had is when Covid first struck, it was the middle of our Summer. Covid-19 is a winter disease, it thrives best in cold dry conditions. Even a small increase in heat and humidity severely retards the transmission of Covid.
Australian Summers are extremely hot and, especially in the tropical North, are also very humid.
The second advantage Australia and New Zealand enjoyed is low population density. We got off very lightly in most of Australia. Apart from Victoria, with its relatively high population density and cold climate, and a premier whose apparent mismanagement of the outbreak has left a lot of questions, the risk throughout most of Australia and New Zealand has been low since the start of the pandemic, even before the lockdowns.
The third advantage is our politicians didn’t abuse the lockdowns, at least not to the extent some politicians in the USA apparently did. From what I can see some politicians in the USA shattered social trust by only applying lockdown rules to their political opponents, giving their own supporters free license to breach the rules, while imposing dire sanctions against their political opponents and persecuting religious groups. There was some comparable political misbehaviour in Australia in the early stages of the lockdowns, but it attracted so much negative attention our politicians mostly started behaving themselves, before the idea of a lockdown in Australia was completed discredited.
Would a lockdown imposed right now work in the USA? Possibly – but the economic cost would be horrendous, because infection is widespread, because the timing is bad, and because political misbehaviour has created a lot of hostility towards the idea of a lockdown. Fall to winter is likely the worst possible time to attempt to contain Covid-19 with a lockdown, because this is the time the virus is at its most infectious.
I think the USA’s best chance for immediate relief is something like the Pfizer vaccine, which was miraculously announced just after the Presidential election.
The unconstitutional lockdown would be to allow the government to completely gain control of the country. Little to nothing to do about controlling the CCP virus.
Lord Buckethead who stood for a parliamentary seat in our last U.K. election had the right idea, although sadly he didn’t win the seat. Wear a big plastic bucket over your head with two eyeholes and a heavy cape.
Clearly he was ahead of his time – Biden should tell everyone to wear plastic buckets over their head when they venture out . Fortunately buckets are available in a tasteful range of colours, including heavy duty black or bright metal for those likely to be exposed to nasal spray and other dubious human fluids.
No more problem with social distancing and a welcome boost to hardware stores and the plastics industry. Driving will become an interesting experience.
As the French say, mercie buckets. And, bonus, buckets already have a handy dandy chin strap, and would be ever so much easier to keep clean.
Notice how the Belief in masks has morphed over time to now say that masks protect the wearer as well as other people. Start with a lie, then continually ramp it up to a bigger and bigger lie.
This is all very much moot and academic, since Biden won’t actually be President until Jan. 20. By then, from the sound of things, the vaccine(s) will have been out for a month or more. And what these little would-be Covid dictators seem to forget is that we are a nation of states, which have rights. No matter what, I don’t believe Biden is going to employ the National Guard to enforce whatever mandates his team comes up with. Not going to happen.
“And what these little would-be Covid dictators seem to forget is that we are a nation of states, which have rights.”
A very important point to make. State and local governments will have the last word on lockdowns and mandates.
Tom Abbott November 12, 2020 at 8:42 am
“And what these little would-be Covid dictators seem to forget is that we are a nation of states, which have rights.”
————–
I assume you ignore the government rules about traffic lights/speed limits/what side of the road to drive etc.
Team Lockdown wishes they could control Americans the way totalitarian China control the Chinese people. They would have the police or military lock us in their our homes, restrict (forbid) travel and turn citizens into serfs.
They already control what we can see or post on the internet. Dissent from the official narrative is not allowed. No free exchange of ideas between different points of viewed permitted.
It would be interesting watching the MSM cheer leading while the government welded Americans into their apartments, something I hope to never see in my life time. Finding replacements for FB (Yubo, MeWe, Friendica, Ello, Vero and many more), Twitter (Parler/Gab), YouTube (?), Google (FireFox/DuckDuck), Amazon (WalMart?) and News (KlowdTV) has taken awhile, so many chooses, so little time.
The economic cost of protecting these people would be a fraction of the cost of a nationwide lockdown. Mobilize and do it. Perhaps political laziness is the problem or the purpose is to destroy the american economy.
Where is the “lock the virus not the country”?
Was that also a lie?
And just like the “two weeks”, this “4-6 weeks” will turn into months. It’s not about the virus anymore, it’s about control.
The biggest advantage Oz and NZ have is geographical. Both are islands “at the bottom of the world” with large ocean distances to neighbours and thus are not international trading or flight hubs. This means there are fewer vectors for the disease.
As for Dr. Michael Osterholm, he’s an imbecile. Spain and Italy had very draconian lockdowns for similar periods and this did not reduce the disease to Antipodean levels so it’s obviously not going to work in the US which has a far higher populous including many more areas of high density living.
The only thing such a lockdown will do is to cause extra economic destruction. May be that’s the aim.
I don’t see how a 4-6 week shutdown will be anything but destructive. The orders of officials around here make no difference at all, and the plans they come up with, after much input and discussion, are just derivatives of other plans and are ineffectual.
I have smoothed our stats on the WDH (state) site using a Kalman filter and the result is pretty revealing. Early we had the case numbers jump quickly but absolutely leveled and began declining on about March 20. This was too fast for the rather mild shutdown ordered by the governor on Mar 19 to have any effect. There is no data at all about how people were responding to the pandemic, so we don’t know why COVID-19 was kept at bay. Weather was cold and miserable at the time. Should have been perfect for spread. Then on or about May 31 the epidemic grew very slowly until July 21. Tourists all over, town busy, mask usage perhaps 30%. As the epidemic now declined until about Sept 1, into the 20 cases per day range, people began to exhibit more hysteria.
Mask usage grew to perhaps 80%, University plans demanded 100% masks on UW property or in cars, and there were detailed commands for riding in cars and in elevators, walking around campus, a snitch line, threats of being fired, etc. The big problem seemed to appear from the twice per week testing of everyone — sick or not. False postives caused wheel spinning, false negatives got through, soon we have growing case numbers, but without knowing who or how many were truly infectious. The most common story I overhear around town is that so-and-so tested positive, never had symptoms, never gave it to roomates — “no rhyme or reason” is our most common phrase. Mask usage is probably 85% or more.
Students were warned not to go home, but the conversations I overhear suggest they knew this but did so anyway, and soon we had growing numbers around the state. The Governor offered free Vault test to everyone around the state with the usual troubles with false positives and negatives. Last week our health official promulgated rules making not wearing masks a criminal offense, but has so many exemptions that mask usage may actually decline. I wrote to her suggesting the orders are heavy handed, probably won’t be effective if observations have any value, the masks the evidence is based on are actually N95 respirators which no one uses, and the epidemic will only stop once all the students go home permanently or get herd immunity. University announced yesterday that we are going 100% online as of Monday and will send students home “safely”.
The are many more stories about how students outwit administartors, but suffice it to say, it’s is a parody. I am guessing the Biden administration will be able to scale this example up nationally.
“I don’t see how a 4-6 week shutdown will be anything but destructive. ”
That, of course, is the intention. No sane person would be talking about lockdowns for a disease that 99.7% of people survive, when lockdowns have failed to prevent the spread of that disease anyway and merely cause economic devastation.
Fortunately enough people are aware of this that they’ll just give Biden the finger if he does get into the White House and does push for something so insane.
Tell me Mr. MarkG, how many of the 99.7% that survive the infection suffer long term consequences of damage done by the infection?
Get locked down, or get locked up.
Your choice!
That’s pretty much what we were told by the NZ police before the first lockdown.
Mike Bush: “The way I put it is, you’re better to stay on the comfort of your own couch of your own home than be cooling yourself on a very cool bench in a police cell,”
you’re better to stay on the comfort of your own couch of your own home than be cooling yourself on a very cool bench in a police cell,
Which is just more evidence that this is about control, not about health.
Tell me Bruce, shall we lock down all the appliance repair people? What will people do if their refrigerator breaks or their washing machine or stove goes down? What about other repairs such as electrical systems, heating systems, roofing and windows? What are people supposed to do then?
A once size fits all approach is nonsense. What is needed in NYC is not needed in Venice FL.
And as soon as the lock down ends, the virus will rear its ugly head again. It does not simply go away because people hide from it.
There’s no sane reason to push a poorly-tested vaccine for a disease with a 99.7% survival rate.
If we simply ignore this disease and go back to normal, it will quickly go away.
Very well-said, MarkG! Popularise your comment!!
Well assuming everyone in US is possibly going to be susceptible to the virus then 0.3% of population would be an acceptable 1million deaths. Then there would be all the long covid sufferers who may never work again and may also require hospitalisation.
I suppose this could be acceptable
Also not sure where your 99.7 comes from the John Hopkins says case fatality rate is 2.3%
The current rate is lower it was higher at start as medico had to learn the lessons of how to treat it.
You might stop to consider
Total US lost in WW2 was 1Million or if you prefer lost causes 200,000 in Vietnam and 120,00 Korea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war)
So are you going to argue it’s okay to lose that many young people so long as you give them a medal and the thanks of the nation but you can’t do it with old people?
It’s a very vexxing argument and can’t be dumbed down to the simplicity on here ultimately it comes down to the needs of the many versus the lives of a few.
Didn’t work in Europe.
There’s going to be a lot of buyer’s remorse after about 6 months of a Biden-harris Admin on the part of duped voters.
It may not ever get there. Media are retracting their calls for Biden in certain states, such that Trump and Biden are now about evenly matched in projected electoral votes. Biden is on defense, and the Trump offense is looking to be a steamroller.
And it looks like the Trump team is just getting started.
If this is an advisor, who is the court jester?
yes
UK media reports: “Donald Trump raged that the ‘medical deep state’ cost him the election by holding up the Pfizer vaccine and ordered HHS secretary Alex Azar to ‘get to the bottom’ of why breakthrough was revealed after election.”
Inventors of the vaccine, would have had a veto on the timing of the announcement. Both husband and wife although they live and work in Germany are of Turkish origin and possibly Turkish citizens.
President Trump had a run-in with Turkish president on number of issues mainly over Russian missile defence system purchase by president Erdogan as well as the Turkey’s attacks on the Kurdish fighters, the USA’s allies in the middle east.
“Trump’s new sanctions on Turkey over Russian missiles”
“Trump threatens to ‘destroy’ Turkey’s economy with sanctions”
Erdogan who is islamist and not exactly a democrat, with his secret service has strong control of of large Turkish diaspora in Germany.
“Turks in Germany praise ‘our leader’ after two-thirds vote for Erdogan”
“Turkish diaspora in Germany celebrates Erdogan victory”
“Despite his authoritarian style, many German-Turks continue to cheer him on”
It appears that the Erdogan may have had his revenge.
Go for it. The mid term elections are in two years.
The US is a republic of states, each with its own (mostly) independent government. The US President is the head of the Executive branch, not a dictator, and can’t make laws. Even when the federal government does pass laws, it has limited authority over the semi-sovereign states. A complete shut-down of the entire country can’t be effectuated by the President, even with the help of Congress, which is unlikely anyways. The best the President can to is to cajole the states into doing what he wants, but it’s a bit like trying to herd cats. This is an intentional feature of our system, not a defect; it helps reduce government overreach and prevent tyranny.
The problem is Governors like Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert: Two week emergency order, masks, expanded testing. Last week there was 2,987 ‘cases’ today 3,919 – ‘Expanded Testing?’ The health department reported an increase of 13,926 tests conducted as of Thursday. Interesting charts https://bit.ly/2JX9w7E
Gov. Gary Herbert order does not ‘lock’ anything, yet.
1st, The Federal Government doesn’t have authority to lock down the entire country.
2nd, By the time Biden takes office (assuming the election results stand), the vaccine will have been available for a month. By Jan 20 2021, the pandemic will be over.
“The Federal Government doesn’t have authority”
Doesn’t seem to have stopped them in the past – it’s just been a matter of degree.
Now the SCOTUS has a constitutionalist bias, so a State would likely win in any sort of challange.
We just witnessed state officers in PA blatantly ignoring a court order, I wouldn’t expect to see any less.
Maybe I’m overly cynical, but I’ve just seen too much go bad to hold out a lot of hope at this point.
Democracy is aborted in darkness. A constitutional Republic is not a viable sociopolitical construct with leftists.
The pandemic will be over when the Democrats have no use for it.
There are at least three other major vaccines in the pipeline, due to announce results soon:
AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.
There are also Russian and Chinese vaccines, but I don’t think there might be many takers for these two.
Another “expert” heard from.
A gaggle of geese…
A murder of crows…
A pride of lions…
A plague of experts.
A tyranny of governments
A gaggle of politicians
A fabrication of news
Four other facts have assisted Australia greatly, which also need to be considered.
1- Early action by Federal Government on closing international borders. Flights from Wuhan were banned within days of the 1st case. Flights from China banned the following week, then ALL international flights banned about 2 weeks after that, and mandatory 14 day hotel quarantine introduced. Australia and NZ were the quickest in the world at closing their international borders.
2 – The bushfires in Eastern Australia. International tourist numbers were well down over Jan-Feb, and forecast international tourist arrivals for March were well down.
3 – Despite the portrayal of us Aussies being ‘easy going’ and ‘casual’ (which we are), the level of compliance to control measures has been very high. As much as we hate it, we’ve gritted our teeth and whinged through clenched lips – but we’ve complied. Trust in Government and emergency services and the defence force is very high here compared to most countries.
4 – The Jobkeeper initiative introduced very early on (end March) by the Australian Government which allowed people to safely stay at home, knowing their jobs were protected by paying their base salary/wage on behalf of their employer – which gave people more comfort in staying at home under lockdown.
If you really want to know how to do it, check out how Taiwan handled it. Or S Korea
Victoria’s very hard lockdown worked. So did the one before the outbreak, until one single cock up. Lockdowns work to stave off another wave. No doubt about it, but a cure they ain’t.
No, the evidence does not support that conclusion. In America, there were recurring spikes accompanying mandate enforcement after a population had already reached peak exponential spread and was declining. In Japan, they did not have lockdowns, they have a high infection rate, and low disease progression and mortality. The only lockdown, or rather special consideration in time and space, necessary, is for individuals at high risk, including older men and women with comorbidities, and that is only in the company of others who do not already have preexisting or acquired immunity.
Seven studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses: in a unified hospital system,38 a German city,39 a U.S. state,40 a panel of 15 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.,41,42 as well as both Canada43 and the U.S.44 nationally. Each analysis demonstrated that, following directives from organizational and political leadership for universal masking, new infections fell significantly. Two of these studies42,44 and an additional analysis of data from 200 countries that included the U.S.45 also demonstrated reductions in mortality. An economic analysis using U.S. data found that, given these effects, increasing universal masking by 15% could prevent the need for lockdowns and reduce associated losses of up to $1 trillion or about 5% of gross domestic product.42
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html
Anecdotal evidence. No, they haven’t. A clinical study from the early 80s in surgical centers across the country, demonstrated an elevated rate of patient infection when the doctors, nurses, and staff were with masks. Masks have limited utility in short spans, and in the general population. Droplets evaporate and the material is either ingested or blown out. Aerosols bypass most mask filters altogether. In a controlled environment (medical center), they discovered non-viable viral fragments in the patients’ and viable viruses on surfaces near sanitation facilities. In a military recruitment center, they instituted an enforced lockdown, with masks, and the virus spread to previously uninfected individuals.
Grandma Killers: Government, Both Left And Right
Planned Parent was a leading cause of excess deaths.
Actually masks don’t work for the general population and are not recommended for routine even in medical environment :
Mask don’t work, meta analysis by the WHO (results p. 100) :
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329439/WHO-WHE-IHM-GIP-2019.1-eng.pdf?ua=1
At the opposite of surgery masks, masks are “not routinely recommended” even for medical staff :
– how could they be of any effect for the general population ?
See last page of this french presentation by professor Elisabeth Bouvet, an infectious disease specialist at CHU Bichat Claude-Bernard, Paris. This document also presents SRAS-COV1 and the Hongkong flu transmision modes :
https://www.srlf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/20071123_Bouvet_E_Mecanismes_transmission_aerienne_agents_infectieux.pdf
A study of an outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an environment notable for congregate living quarters and close working environments, found that use of face coverings on-board was associated with a 70% reduced risk.35
What they likely discovered is that a large minority, and perhaps a majority, have preexisting immunity, and are not viable spreaders, thus a community (“herd”) immunity effect.