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Scott Atlas: Lockdowns Not Only a ‘Heinous Abuse’ of Power, They Also Failed to Protect the Elderly
Credit for owning the mistake - genuinely.
But no duh! And no, we didn't all agree with the lockdowns initially. Many of us opposed them from the start. There was nothing in public health's 80 years of disease control history that would make a rational person assume that backwards quarantine would work - heck, we were just plain lucky it didn't throw gas on the fire by bottlenecking everyone into the same few stores. That Walmart didn't become the epicenter for an even more massive outbreak was a huge clue that we didn't really understand how C19 was spreading.
Well, massive civil rights abuses and irrational public policy didn't work with lockdowns - so let's try the same thing with rush job vaccines. What could go wrong?
I mean, we can't just use informed consent and prioritizing the vulnerable - what would people say if they knew that there are rational ways to use public health policy to actually help the public without throwing out the Constitution?
Lockdowns have ultimately failed, Atlas said, as they failed to protect the elderly and high-risk individuals in the early months of the pandemic last year. Meanwhile, countless others have suffered due to diversions of medical resources.
“We saw even in March, April, May [2020], the lockdown policies were number one, failing to protect the high risk people—people were dying, they were elderly. The nursing home deaths made up 40 to 50 percent of all deaths,” Atlas explained. “And it was through many of our states; at one point in Minnesota, 80 percent of the deaths were [in] nursing homes.”
Americans were also skipping chemotherapy treatments, while people who had suffered acute strokes and heart attacks were too afraid to call an ambulance as they didn’t want to be in a medical setting, and the majority of live organ transplants weren’t conducted during the onset of the pandemic, Atlas said.
Meanwhile, child abuse and domestic abuse skyrocketed, opioid deaths and suicides surged, and there has been a dramatic rise in young people suffering from depression and anxiety, he added.
“I think that it is still somehow held by many people that OK, the lockdowns are an economic harm, but we’re saving lives. No, you’re destroying families, you’re destroying lives, and you’re literally killing people with the lockdowns,” Atlas said.
Citing June 2020 data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlas said that one in four young adults contemplated suicide.
“The lockdowns failed, they still failed to protect the people who are high risk, and the lockdowns destroyed and killed,” Atlas said. “Many other people destroyed families, sacrificed our children out of fear for adults—even though the children do not have significant risk. And we didn’t care as a country. We kept them out of school.”
He added: “It’s a disgrace. It’s a heinous abuse of the power of public health experts to do what was done.”
“We saw even in March, April, May [2020], the lockdown policies were number one, failing to protect the high risk people—people were dying, they were elderly. The nursing home deaths made up 40 to 50 percent of all deaths,” Atlas explained. “And it was through many of our states; at one point in Minnesota, 80 percent of the deaths were [in] nursing homes.”
Americans were also skipping chemotherapy treatments, while people who had suffered acute strokes and heart attacks were too afraid to call an ambulance as they didn’t want to be in a medical setting, and the majority of live organ transplants weren’t conducted during the onset of the pandemic, Atlas said.
Meanwhile, child abuse and domestic abuse skyrocketed, opioid deaths and suicides surged, and there has been a dramatic rise in young people suffering from depression and anxiety, he added.
“I think that it is still somehow held by many people that OK, the lockdowns are an economic harm, but we’re saving lives. No, you’re destroying families, you’re destroying lives, and you’re literally killing people with the lockdowns,” Atlas said.
Citing June 2020 data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlas said that one in four young adults contemplated suicide.
“The lockdowns failed, they still failed to protect the people who are high risk, and the lockdowns destroyed and killed,” Atlas said. “Many other people destroyed families, sacrificed our children out of fear for adults—even though the children do not have significant risk. And we didn’t care as a country. We kept them out of school.”
He added: “It’s a disgrace. It’s a heinous abuse of the power of public health experts to do what was done.”
Credit for owning the mistake - genuinely.
But no duh! And no, we didn't all agree with the lockdowns initially. Many of us opposed them from the start. There was nothing in public health's 80 years of disease control history that would make a rational person assume that backwards quarantine would work - heck, we were just plain lucky it didn't throw gas on the fire by bottlenecking everyone into the same few stores. That Walmart didn't become the epicenter for an even more massive outbreak was a huge clue that we didn't really understand how C19 was spreading.
Well, massive civil rights abuses and irrational public policy didn't work with lockdowns - so let's try the same thing with rush job vaccines. What could go wrong?
I mean, we can't just use informed consent and prioritizing the vulnerable - what would people say if they knew that there are rational ways to use public health policy to actually help the public without throwing out the Constitution?
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