<\/p>\n
By Tom Woods<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve heard it again and again:<\/p>\n
The spread of the virus is\u00a0your fault<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to our opinion molders, any movements in the COVID-19 numbers are a reflection of the compliance, or otherwise, of the public with the usual array of the state\u2019s so-called mitigation measures.<\/p>\n Now if we had any actual journalists, some of them would observe the absurdity of all this. After all, societies with little in common and remote from each other have seen exactly the same curves; we\u2019re supposed to believe that this is because their peoples all complied, and then didn\u2019t comply, and then complied again on exactly the same timetable?<\/p>\n Can people really be this thick?\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Thus Elaine Godfrey at\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0just wrote, \u201cIn November I wrote a story about how COVID-19 was overwhelming Iowa\u2019s hospitals. Back then, public-health experts predicted another big surge after the holidays, but it never came. I went back to those experts to find out why.\u201d<\/p>\n Those \u201cexperts\u201d have been wrong over and over again, yet Godfrey still considers this mysterious.<\/p>\n She\u2019d better follow up with these people who were totally wrong, ask them why they were totally wrong, and then uncritically repeat their answers to her audience.<\/p>\n Now she could have consulted people who have been right, and who have been critical of the public-health apparatus, to see if maybe these folks have some insight into why the always-wrong people were wrong yet again, but that would be journalism, and that is not Elaine Godfrey\u2019s field.<\/p>\n No, instead she wrote a follow-up article called, \u201cIowans Were Scared into Taking the Virus Seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, this is the best she can do: public-health officials did such a good job panicking about a \u201csurge\u201d that they persuaded people to change their behavior!<\/p>\n Know what the trouble with this is?<\/p>\n Iowan public-health officials must have scared people so much that the scariness spread into North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas, too, which had identical curves and declines in their numbers with no change in public-health messaging and no change in the public\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n Oops!<\/p>\n Note, too, that this decline occurs during the holidays, when we were told there\u2019d be a major spike. Yet in these states the numbers fell. Is that because people in these states got together and coordinated a gigantic decision to follow \u201cpublic health\u201d guidelines at precisely the same moment, or might climate zones and seasonality have more to do with it?<\/p>\n Naturally, Iowa\u2019s relatively more laissez-faire approach had the usual suspects screaming and predicting doom. \u201cIowans can expect to see nothing less than a tsunami,\u201d said Dr. Eli Perencevich. \u201cIn a lot of ways, Iowa is serving as the control group of what not to do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIowa Is What Happens When Government Does Nothing,\u201d warned the\u00a0Atlantic<\/em>.<\/p>\n And then hospitalizations plummeted.<\/p>\n In late 2020 the authorities in Minnesota tried to claim that their most recent wave of ruining people\u2019s lives had helped get their state\u2019s case numbers down faster than neighboring states.<\/p>\n But in fact the numbers showed neighboring states doing as well or better than Minnesota.<\/p>\n Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana adopted completely different policies and implemented them at different times. And yet their hospitalization curves look strikingly similar.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as if none of this makes any difference, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n Well, a member of the mainstream media \u2014 on MSNBC, no less \u2014 finally, after months and months, asked The Question.<\/p>\n Her guest: White House COVID adviser and crazed doomer Andy\u00a0Slavitt.<\/p>\n She asked him:<\/p>\n \u201cContrast states like Florida and California, California basically in lockdown and their numbers aren\u2019t that different from Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n Slavitt\u00a0proceeded to do everything but answer the question.<\/p>\n He began with this:<\/p>\n \u201cLook, there\u2019s so much of this virus that we think we understand,\u00a0that we think we can predict, that\u2019s just a little bit beyond our explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n This is all I\u2019ve been asking them to say for the past year. Admit that they don\u2019t fully understand it, and that it doesn\u2019t behave the way their mitigation guidance seems to suggest it does. Finally someone admits it.<\/p>\n And then, on to the evasion of the question:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we do know is that the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads, but we have got to get better visibility into variants, we don\u2019t know what role they play, large events, etc.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we all have learned by this time,\u00a0this is a virus that continues to surprise us. It\u2019s very hard to predict. And all around the country, we\u2019ve got to continue to do a better job, and I think we are, but we\u2019re done yet.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. That\u2019s all he had to say.<\/p>\n Sorry we decimated your savings, took away your sources of joy, destroyed your business, and stole a year of your children\u2019s lives.\u00a0We\u2019re just learning, you see.<\/p>\n And we \u201cknow,\u201d said\u00a0Slavitt, that the more people \u201cmask and social distance,\u201d the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads.<\/p>\n In fact, we \u201cknow\u201d no such thing. Graph the results any way you like: lockdown stringency, people\u2019s mobility patterns, mask mandate dates, whatever. The results are completely random. They absolutely do not show a clear pattern whereby ruining your life solves the problem.<\/p>\n Not to mention: the very California\/Florida comparison the anchor is asking him about clearly contradicts this claim, but\u00a0Slavitt\u00a0just repeats it robotically anyway.<\/p>\n Slavitt\u00a0also mentions \u201clarge events,\u201d of which there have been precious few in California over the past year. But there have been a ton in Florida, where I live. Shouldn\u2019t our state be marked by piles of corpses at the side of the road, and California be a paradise \u2013 especially since our state has a much higher elderly population?<\/p>\n Well, I\u2019ve taken phenomena like this and assembled it in the form of charts that tell the story better than any essay can.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a free eBook called\u00a0COVID Charts CNN Forgot<\/em>.<\/p>\n Enjoy:<\/p>\n