{"id":11571,"date":"2025-05-18T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=11571"},"modified":"2025-04-04T13:09:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T17:09:19","slug":"the-covid-experts-chose-the-unscientific-tyranny-of-lockdowns-mandates-and-petty-ineffective-legalistic-rules-and-they-didnt-have-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=11571","title":{"rendered":"The Covid \u2018experts\u2019 chose the unscientific tyranny of lockdowns, mandates, and petty, ineffective, legalistic rules, and they didn\u2019t have to."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Joshua Monnington, The Federalist<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is no shortage of analysis personifying the virus as the villain. In a sense, it\u2019s understandable: SARS-CoV-2 was the catalyst and the killer that drove much of the pandemic destruction. But painting public health leaders as innocent bystanders and Covid as the boogeyman who made people sick and <\/em>locked down the economy, destroyed businesses, shuttered schools, censored speech, masked children, and suspended constitutional rights and sacred rituals is deceitful historical revisionism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, a Washington Post headline asserted<\/a> that \u201cCovid shut schools five years ago. Anxiety, learning loss and more linger.\u201d On Monday, a PBS FRONTLINE headline heralded<\/a> \u201cA Look Back at How the COVID-19 Pandemic Disrupted the World.\u201d Last week David Wallace-Wells wrote<\/a> about \u201cHow Covid Remade America\u201d in The New York Times. According to Wallace-Wells, \u201cIt\u201d \u2014 that is, Covid \u2014 \u201cbroke our faith in public health,\u201d \u201cshackled the U.S. with debt,\u201d \u201cscarred children,\u201d and \u201cturned us into hyperindividualists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, when the media, public health \u201cexperts,\u201d and government officials aren\u2019t blaming the woes of the pandemic on Trump\u2019s \u201cunscientific\u201d response, the unmasked, or vaccine skeptics, they\u2019re blaming Covid, as if the virus were the only entity with any real agency during the pandemic years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Covid didn\u2019t order lockdowns and issue stay-at-home orders. Covid didn\u2019t mandate masks and vaccines. Covid didn\u2019t close schools. Government officials did that, and, yes, they actually had agency and alternatives to Covid tyranny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean noted<\/a> in Intelligencer, \u201cthere was never any science behind lockdowns \u2014 not a single study had ever been undertaken to measure their efficacy in stopping a pandemic.\u201d They went on to cite 50 studies indicating that the lockdowns did little to reduce Covid mortality. An examination<\/a> of state Covid orders by two Princeton professors does not show a correlation between stay-at-home order duration and Covid deaths. Sweden\u2019s no-lockdown approach led to an excess mortality<\/a> rate of 4.4 percent during peak pandemic years, data shows \u2014 the rate in the United States was more than double that number. As Nocera and McLean observe, \u201cIt is not unreasonable to conclude from the available data that the lockdowns led to more overall deaths in the U.S. than a policy that resembled Sweden\u2019s would have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, the decision leaders made to put the nation under house arrest wasn\u2019t just ineffective and anti-constitutional; \u201cshelter-in-place\u201d orders had devastating societal consequences. To summarize briefly, lockdowns \u201cincreased poverty and wealth disparities, spurred a dramatic rise in adolescent anxiety and depression, contributed to a surge in fatal drug overdoses, and led to devastating learning losses in schoolchildren, who have yet to recover, according to scientific studies,\u201d according to reporting<\/a> by the Boston Globe. \u201cAs of last spring, the average American student remained half a grade behind pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the lockdowns\u2019 disastrous consequences, it\u2019s common for the media to bemoan Americans\u2019 diminishing trust in \u201cscience\u201d and public health guidance \u2014 as if the virus itself is responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Covid didn\u2019t break \u201cour faith in public health;\u201d public officials did that. Covid just helped them do it by giving them an opportunity to display their narcissistic megalomania. They could have respected and upheld the constitutional freedoms and principles that have long served as the backbone of our republic, but they did the opposite. In addition to instituting indefinite lockdowns, the \u201cexperts\u201d descended monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily with new pronouncements from on high. Cosplaying as Moses on Mount Sinai, they proclaimed their health commandments: masking between bites<\/a>, arrows<\/a> on grocery store floors, the made-up six feet<\/a> of \u201csocial\u201d distancing<\/a>. Unlike Moses, they mustered no signs of divine origin for their edicts \u2014 no thunder, no fiery mountain, no inscribed tablets of stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government officials, particularly those on the left, melded Covid guidelines into a new, legalistic morality. Those who followed (or virtue-signaled their attempt at following) the rules were deemed \u201cloving.\u201d They kept their masks on as they walked to the restaurant table, avoided \u201clarge\u201d gatherings, and got vaccinated \u2014 and then boosted, again, and again, and again. Political and institutional leaders, along with the media, vilified anyone who failed to abide by their ever-changing guidelines and essentially accused those who opposed the guidelines of murdering elderly people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lacking the willpower and the ability to enforce social-distancing, shelter-in-place, and masking requirements in all places at all times, Covid tyrants manipulated and intimidated businesses, schools, and churches into cramming down compliance on their fellow citizens. Legacy media outlets faithfully fanned the flames<\/a> of fear and hysteria while scanning the horizon for minor Covid infractions, eager to pounce<\/a> and destroy the reputations of those who violated the new morality. Unsurprisingly, Americans have not responded by expressing credulous faith<\/a> in the public health \u201cexpert\u201d class (or the corporate media<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to Americans and \u201cscience,\u201d a Wall Street Journal headline<\/a> from November of last year is representative of the media narrative: \u201cHow Science Lost America\u2019s Trust and Surrendered Health Policy to Skeptics.\u201d The subhead warns that \u201cofficials worry they won\u2019t have ample clout for the next crisis.\u201d Given how badly they failed during the last pandemic, that shouldn\u2019t be a surprise. But the bigger issue with the framing is that Americans\u2019 lack of confidence in public health officials \u2014 or even in scientists \u2014 does not equal lack of confidence in science. The \u201cexperts\u201d are not \u201cthe science,\u201d contrary to Anthony Fauci\u2019s infamously ridiculous claim<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScience\u201d can refer to a body of established knowledge, but the \u201cknowledge\u201d Fauci and his followers were peddling wasn\u2019t based on a systematic study of physical reality guided by scientific principles. Instead, all too often, they just made it up<\/a><\/em> \u2014 on lockdowns, masking<\/a>, and vaccines stopping<\/a> transmission of the virus, to give a few examples. Yet politicians and officials at the national and local level became instant celebrities, appearing behind podiums and on nightly television, unmasked and uncensored, because they had something significant to say: no weddings, no funerals, no saying goodbye<\/a> to loved ones who would soon be gone forever. What they had to say was significant, however, because of how much damage it would cause, not because it was true, and Americans are still paying the price five years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Covid \u201cexperts\u201d \u2014 whether politicians, public health officials, scientists, or local leaders \u2014 weren\u2019t victims of the virus. They chose the unscientific tyranny of lockdowns, mandates, and petty, ineffective, legalistic rules, and they didn\u2019t have to. If these tyrants really want to regain the trust of the American people, they should start by refusing to embrace totalitarianism the next time anti-liberty constituents and the media clamor for them to turn the republic into a police state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua Monnington, The Federalist Five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is no shortage of analysis personifying the virus as the villain. In a sense, it\u2019s understandable: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[863,445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mandates","category-policies-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11572,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11571\/revisions\/11572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}