It cannot be this easy to strip people of their civil liberties, to cause economic wreckage, to hurt the very humanity of people without ever having to answer for the consequences.
Bastiat said good economics looks at what is seen and what is not seen. Now nutcases like the social authoritarian Rand Paul look at what is seen in regards to the epidemic that killed millions, including friends of mine. The cost was the horrible crime of wearing masks to reduce the spread of this deadly disease. Some restaurants went to take-out only. I stopped eating inside the enclosed spaces. What is not seen in this piece is the cost of millions dying. That inflicts severe economic costs as well.
Here in the US we had 1.2m people lose their lives. South Africa lost over 102,000 lives. Globally we lost 7.1m. For those people the cost of the disease spreading was 100% as they died. They also stopped working, buying goods, helping neighbors, providing services and products. But that is not seen. The bad economist looks at just the cost that is seen and not the heavy costs of what is not seen—all the millions who died and their economic contributions.
Ayn Rand made an important clarification that applies here:
“It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.
An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible—such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).
By 'normal' conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish."
The uninformed also ignore history and pretend the Covid response was new. It wasn't so they didn't have NEW powers. In the 1918 influenza pandemic mandatory masks requirements were used. The conspiracists can't blame that on Dr. Fauci. During the plague jurisdictions locked sick people in their homes, banned travel, no public gatherings, etc. So the mild measures were nothing compared to historic measures and you can't really say this is some sort of first step toward a medical dictatorship as previous measures were far worse. If anything this showed how milder measures worked.
In libertarian terms no one has the right to endanger the lives of non-consenting individuals. That includes people with an easily transmitted deadly disease. Masks did stop people with the virus—including those with no or minor symptoms—from endangering the lives of others. Once the threat was significantly reduced the scales of justice tip towards the removal of such measures, which is precisely what happened.
Being able to debate these matters is so important. My opinion above during covid would have got me banned from facebook or the equivalent and that is one of the problems, we stopped being able to have differing views on these matters. Doctors that disagreed were reported and in some cases lost their jobs. For many people they did not get to weigh different information and make their own choices. There was one set of views that was allowed and that drove a campaign of fear.
Whether you agree with Rand Paul and Ron Johnson at least there are people in government asking questions and producing the information that decisions were made on, this is important.
There are studies that show that masks did not have much effect on preventing the transmission of the virus. If you were a healthy person wearing a mask was helping no one. Having little toddlers in masks was child abuse, part of a child interacting with the world is being able to see faces.
You mentioned above that you stopping eating in enclosed spaces and that was your choice. Others who did not feel it was a risk to themselves should have been able to make their own choice. That was the point. If someone felt that they were at higher risk and more vulnerable they were welcome to stay home and protect themselves, but to expect healthy people to do that was wrong and people should have been able to make the choices for themselves.
Our lockdown went for over two years, it was extreme and we should have access to the information that the Minister used to justify those lockdowns. She did not have to get approval or give reasons. South Africa has an unemployment rate of over 30% the lockdown was devastating to an economy already in deep trouble. Children in the Eastern Cape have died from malnutrition. We do not know if locking down saved any lives, did it reduce the spread? In many of the poor areas people live so close together that isolating was not possible anyway.
It was very sad those that lost their lives to covid, I know people too.
We need to question whether lockdown made any difference because for many people the cost of it was too great. We also need to make sure there is oversight for the future because no Minister should have that much power without being able to be challenged.
You have things backwards. Masks were not directed at the healthy but to stop those with the virus—who may themselves show no real symptoms—from spreading the virus unintentionally. It was to stop the virus from being breathed in by unmasked healthy people including those children you mention.
Now I followed the hard data throughout the pandemic and with 50 states and multiple countries data there was a clear pattern. Jurisdictions that took such measures saw a lower infection rates and death rates. I am not sure if I have the data still as the pandemic is old news from a few years ago.
I do know that the head of health in Sweden was a sceptic and shunned the suggestions by Dr. Fauci and other experts. The infection rates and death rates in Sweden were significantly higher, per 100,000 population, than in neighboring Norway or Finland. Bloomberg reported that Sweden's "strategy coincided with a much higher Covid-19 mortality rate than elsewhere in the Nordic region. Per 100,000, Swedish deaths even exceeded those in the U.S. and Brazil."
We saw the same thing in the US. Republican/sceptical states tended to have the highest infection rates and higher death rates than states that took measures.
Sweden totaled 2.7m infections and 23,851 deaths in a population of 10.7 million thats 2,229 deaths per million. Norway took to wide-spread testing and measures to stop spreading the disease. They are Sweden's closest neighbor almost exclusively bordering one another. They are very similar socially and I know often married one another—I have a whole branch of my family from Sweden and Norway. Norway had 5732 Covid deaths in a population of 5.67m. That's a death rate of 1010 per million. Sweden and Norway were similar in most ways but the death rate in Sweden, with it's lax prevention policy, was more than twice as high than Norway's.
The mild measures recommended worked well in Norway while a lax policy in neighboring Sweden resulted in twice as many deaths.
Sweden is interesting because in the end they did much better than just about everyone else and showed that you did not have to sacrifice your economy or your children to do it.
The initial Swedish numbers were bad but they did not last long. Their biggest problem was the care homes, apparently their elderly care is not as good as their neighbours and they have said that is where they could have done better. Also it is hard to compare like for like, as Sweden is more population dense than Norway as well as having a higher immigrant population. Additionally Norway only counted a death as a covid death if it was the primary cause of death where as Sweden anyone who was positive for covid when they died was regarded as a covid death. With that said Norway was better than Sweden but Sweden still ended up better than many European countries.
However that changes when you look at the excess deaths from 2020 to 2022 - there Sweden did better than every other country, they had the lowest excess death rate.
Even a Norwegian epidemiologist says that Swedens approach was not wrong, that the other countries just delayed the inevitable, that harsh lockdowns delayed the deaths that Sweden dealt with in the first wave. The financial cost of lockdown was huge for Norway.
While most countries economy got smaller during this time, Swedens actually got bigger. Swedish children did not fall behind. Suicides did not increase.
So Sweden, had no mask mandates, no lockdown, had an initial spike in deaths but in the end ended up with one of the lowest excess deaths, children doing well, an economy that did not suffer and a population that mental health did not suffer so they did much better than most. And we had the opposite here!
And this is why we need to look at what happened here, this is why we need to ask the questions because it cannot be that easy to take away our rights when the costs are so high. South Africa was not in a position to take lockdown measures like a first world country. What can be lost from making the data available that was used to make the decisions on lockdown? What can be lost from calculating the costs? Surely interrogating the information is a good idea, so that we can learn from our mistakes and do better.
They sacrificed thousands of lives having a death rate double their neighbours. In addition they didn’t prove their initial policy was good because they abandoned it and then death rates started coming down.
Prime Minister “announced new and tougher restrictions and recommendations including the use of face masks in public transportation and closure of all non-essential public services.In January 2021, a new pandemic law was passed that allows for the use of lockdown measures and legally limited some gatherings.”
The Swedish govt. investigated their early response and the final report they issued was highly critical of their approach. They said the early policies were "insufficient to stop or even substantially limit the spread of the virus in the country," and the Swedish healthcare system would face long-term consequences due to "the price of extreme pressure on staff and of cancelled and postponed care."
They also announced restrictions on the number of people allowed in a restaurant or store at one time, limiting social gatherings to 8 people. The elderly were urged to isolate themselves from family and friends. They pushed remote working and said all secondary and college institutions had to impose distance learning. Large public gatherings were completely banned for a time. Local health officials were giving permission to complete close restaurants and bars that were not following all the new regulations. Private visits to nursing homes were banned.
You argue “it is hard to compare like for like, as Sweden is more population dense than Norway.” My stats were listed per capita taking in account the difference in populations. Also a bit more than one-third of all Norwegians live in the Oslo area and 84% live in urban areas. Most Norwegians lived along the southern coasts and fjord regions, while interior and northern areas remain sparsely populated.
I purposely compared stats between culturally similar nations of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway because it limited the differences and was more in line with comparing like to like. Sweden did better than did some nations in Europe (heavily populated nations, former Soviet controlled nations, poorer nations, etc). But that is truly comparing vastly situations to one another.
As for the claim that Sweden did better economically with a death rate twice as high as the other Nordic nations, the National Institute of Health studied and concluded “Although Sweden had chosen looser COVID-19 health policies to benefit its economy, there is no evidence that this had any short-term economic benefits, while costing disproportionate disease transmission and mortality numbers compared to neighbouring countries.” I wrote various articles on what actual financial differences Sweden saw compare to other Nordic nations and they did not do better.
ScienceNorway did a report and had a nice chart showing how all the Nordic nations did compared to one another economically. I’ll share if if I can figure out how. It shows NO benefit for Sweden over the other Nordic nations. The one outlier was Iceland which heavily relied on tourism and saw massive declines in visitors. Of the mainland Nordic nations Norway did best and was ahead of the others. Denmark followed. Sweden and Finland were similar. Another chart showing real GDP growth by quarters. The trends are similar. They all saw declines when 2020 arrived. Sweden and Finland did worse, Norway best and Denmark 2nd. Denmark saw the best growth from 2020 to 2023. By 2023 the ranking was Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
If I had more time, I would do a deeper dive into all the data for those Nordic countries, because it seems like depending on the report one reads there are different conclusions. Sweden still did better than most countries. But pivoting back to here, we are a world away from the Nordic countries, we are not a first world country.
I still do not think there should have been a lockdown, even looking at the different stats. I stand by what I have said previously. We should have protected the vulnerable but everyone else should have been able to get on with it. There was no justification for the continued two year lockdown here. Also to take into consideration that for large percentage of South Africans they did not live in accommodation that allowed for "social distancing" and so that was not even possible. The poorest just got poorer.
The militarization of those in law enforcement, the children's lost years, the economic devastation all of that should not have happened. But one of the worst for me was the denying people seeing their loved ones that was just cruel.
When my grandfather broke his hip and was in hospital and then a halfway house, all his children and grandchildren visited him everyday for 6 weeks. That was the highlight of his day, that was all that got him through. His face would light up when we walked through that door. We stripped families and people of that basic human touch when they needed it the most. As human beings our connection to our loved ones are the most dear and important, and people were denied that and that was wrong. And death rates do not change that fact.
People should have been allowed to judge their own risk factors, that is a free society. And we especially have to be careful with the laws that allow for our freedoms to be so easily removed because depending on who is in power they will not always be used correctly.
Jodie, getting away with what the government did in those years emboldened them for more excesses in the years that followed. 😩
Bastiat said good economics looks at what is seen and what is not seen. Now nutcases like the social authoritarian Rand Paul look at what is seen in regards to the epidemic that killed millions, including friends of mine. The cost was the horrible crime of wearing masks to reduce the spread of this deadly disease. Some restaurants went to take-out only. I stopped eating inside the enclosed spaces. What is not seen in this piece is the cost of millions dying. That inflicts severe economic costs as well.
Here in the US we had 1.2m people lose their lives. South Africa lost over 102,000 lives. Globally we lost 7.1m. For those people the cost of the disease spreading was 100% as they died. They also stopped working, buying goods, helping neighbors, providing services and products. But that is not seen. The bad economist looks at just the cost that is seen and not the heavy costs of what is not seen—all the millions who died and their economic contributions.
Ayn Rand made an important clarification that applies here:
“It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.
An emergency is an unchosen, unexpected event, limited in time, that creates conditions under which human survival is impossible—such as a flood, an earthquake, a fire, a shipwreck. In an emergency situation, men’s primary goal is to combat the disaster, escape the danger and restore normal conditions (to reach dry land, to put out the fire, etc.).
By 'normal' conditions I mean metaphysically normal, normal in the nature of things, and appropriate to human existence. Men can live on land, but not in water or in a raging fire. Since men are not omnipotent, it is metaphysically possible for unforeseeable disasters to strike them, in which case their only task is to return to those conditions under which their lives can continue. By its nature, an emergency situation is temporary; if it were to last, men would perish."
The uninformed also ignore history and pretend the Covid response was new. It wasn't so they didn't have NEW powers. In the 1918 influenza pandemic mandatory masks requirements were used. The conspiracists can't blame that on Dr. Fauci. During the plague jurisdictions locked sick people in their homes, banned travel, no public gatherings, etc. So the mild measures were nothing compared to historic measures and you can't really say this is some sort of first step toward a medical dictatorship as previous measures were far worse. If anything this showed how milder measures worked.
In libertarian terms no one has the right to endanger the lives of non-consenting individuals. That includes people with an easily transmitted deadly disease. Masks did stop people with the virus—including those with no or minor symptoms—from endangering the lives of others. Once the threat was significantly reduced the scales of justice tip towards the removal of such measures, which is precisely what happened.
Hi James,
Being able to debate these matters is so important. My opinion above during covid would have got me banned from facebook or the equivalent and that is one of the problems, we stopped being able to have differing views on these matters. Doctors that disagreed were reported and in some cases lost their jobs. For many people they did not get to weigh different information and make their own choices. There was one set of views that was allowed and that drove a campaign of fear.
Whether you agree with Rand Paul and Ron Johnson at least there are people in government asking questions and producing the information that decisions were made on, this is important.
There are studies that show that masks did not have much effect on preventing the transmission of the virus. If you were a healthy person wearing a mask was helping no one. Having little toddlers in masks was child abuse, part of a child interacting with the world is being able to see faces.
You mentioned above that you stopping eating in enclosed spaces and that was your choice. Others who did not feel it was a risk to themselves should have been able to make their own choice. That was the point. If someone felt that they were at higher risk and more vulnerable they were welcome to stay home and protect themselves, but to expect healthy people to do that was wrong and people should have been able to make the choices for themselves.
Our lockdown went for over two years, it was extreme and we should have access to the information that the Minister used to justify those lockdowns. She did not have to get approval or give reasons. South Africa has an unemployment rate of over 30% the lockdown was devastating to an economy already in deep trouble. Children in the Eastern Cape have died from malnutrition. We do not know if locking down saved any lives, did it reduce the spread? In many of the poor areas people live so close together that isolating was not possible anyway.
It was very sad those that lost their lives to covid, I know people too.
We need to question whether lockdown made any difference because for many people the cost of it was too great. We also need to make sure there is oversight for the future because no Minister should have that much power without being able to be challenged.
You have things backwards. Masks were not directed at the healthy but to stop those with the virus—who may themselves show no real symptoms—from spreading the virus unintentionally. It was to stop the virus from being breathed in by unmasked healthy people including those children you mention.
Now I followed the hard data throughout the pandemic and with 50 states and multiple countries data there was a clear pattern. Jurisdictions that took such measures saw a lower infection rates and death rates. I am not sure if I have the data still as the pandemic is old news from a few years ago.
I do know that the head of health in Sweden was a sceptic and shunned the suggestions by Dr. Fauci and other experts. The infection rates and death rates in Sweden were significantly higher, per 100,000 population, than in neighboring Norway or Finland. Bloomberg reported that Sweden's "strategy coincided with a much higher Covid-19 mortality rate than elsewhere in the Nordic region. Per 100,000, Swedish deaths even exceeded those in the U.S. and Brazil."
We saw the same thing in the US. Republican/sceptical states tended to have the highest infection rates and higher death rates than states that took measures.
Sweden totaled 2.7m infections and 23,851 deaths in a population of 10.7 million thats 2,229 deaths per million. Norway took to wide-spread testing and measures to stop spreading the disease. They are Sweden's closest neighbor almost exclusively bordering one another. They are very similar socially and I know often married one another—I have a whole branch of my family from Sweden and Norway. Norway had 5732 Covid deaths in a population of 5.67m. That's a death rate of 1010 per million. Sweden and Norway were similar in most ways but the death rate in Sweden, with it's lax prevention policy, was more than twice as high than Norway's.
The mild measures recommended worked well in Norway while a lax policy in neighboring Sweden resulted in twice as many deaths.
Sweden is interesting because in the end they did much better than just about everyone else and showed that you did not have to sacrifice your economy or your children to do it.
The initial Swedish numbers were bad but they did not last long. Their biggest problem was the care homes, apparently their elderly care is not as good as their neighbours and they have said that is where they could have done better. Also it is hard to compare like for like, as Sweden is more population dense than Norway as well as having a higher immigrant population. Additionally Norway only counted a death as a covid death if it was the primary cause of death where as Sweden anyone who was positive for covid when they died was regarded as a covid death. With that said Norway was better than Sweden but Sweden still ended up better than many European countries.
However that changes when you look at the excess deaths from 2020 to 2022 - there Sweden did better than every other country, they had the lowest excess death rate.
Even a Norwegian epidemiologist says that Swedens approach was not wrong, that the other countries just delayed the inevitable, that harsh lockdowns delayed the deaths that Sweden dealt with in the first wave. The financial cost of lockdown was huge for Norway.
While most countries economy got smaller during this time, Swedens actually got bigger. Swedish children did not fall behind. Suicides did not increase.
So Sweden, had no mask mandates, no lockdown, had an initial spike in deaths but in the end ended up with one of the lowest excess deaths, children doing well, an economy that did not suffer and a population that mental health did not suffer so they did much better than most. And we had the opposite here!
And this is why we need to look at what happened here, this is why we need to ask the questions because it cannot be that easy to take away our rights when the costs are so high. South Africa was not in a position to take lockdown measures like a first world country. What can be lost from making the data available that was used to make the decisions on lockdown? What can be lost from calculating the costs? Surely interrogating the information is a good idea, so that we can learn from our mistakes and do better.
They sacrificed thousands of lives having a death rate double their neighbours. In addition they didn’t prove their initial policy was good because they abandoned it and then death rates started coming down.
Prime Minister “announced new and tougher restrictions and recommendations including the use of face masks in public transportation and closure of all non-essential public services.In January 2021, a new pandemic law was passed that allows for the use of lockdown measures and legally limited some gatherings.”
The Swedish govt. investigated their early response and the final report they issued was highly critical of their approach. They said the early policies were "insufficient to stop or even substantially limit the spread of the virus in the country," and the Swedish healthcare system would face long-term consequences due to "the price of extreme pressure on staff and of cancelled and postponed care."
They also announced restrictions on the number of people allowed in a restaurant or store at one time, limiting social gatherings to 8 people. The elderly were urged to isolate themselves from family and friends. They pushed remote working and said all secondary and college institutions had to impose distance learning. Large public gatherings were completely banned for a time. Local health officials were giving permission to complete close restaurants and bars that were not following all the new regulations. Private visits to nursing homes were banned.
You argue “it is hard to compare like for like, as Sweden is more population dense than Norway.” My stats were listed per capita taking in account the difference in populations. Also a bit more than one-third of all Norwegians live in the Oslo area and 84% live in urban areas. Most Norwegians lived along the southern coasts and fjord regions, while interior and northern areas remain sparsely populated.
I purposely compared stats between culturally similar nations of Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway because it limited the differences and was more in line with comparing like to like. Sweden did better than did some nations in Europe (heavily populated nations, former Soviet controlled nations, poorer nations, etc). But that is truly comparing vastly situations to one another.
As for the claim that Sweden did better economically with a death rate twice as high as the other Nordic nations, the National Institute of Health studied and concluded “Although Sweden had chosen looser COVID-19 health policies to benefit its economy, there is no evidence that this had any short-term economic benefits, while costing disproportionate disease transmission and mortality numbers compared to neighbouring countries.” I wrote various articles on what actual financial differences Sweden saw compare to other Nordic nations and they did not do better.
ScienceNorway did a report and had a nice chart showing how all the Nordic nations did compared to one another economically. I’ll share if if I can figure out how. It shows NO benefit for Sweden over the other Nordic nations. The one outlier was Iceland which heavily relied on tourism and saw massive declines in visitors. Of the mainland Nordic nations Norway did best and was ahead of the others. Denmark followed. Sweden and Finland were similar. Another chart showing real GDP growth by quarters. The trends are similar. They all saw declines when 2020 arrived. Sweden and Finland did worse, Norway best and Denmark 2nd. Denmark saw the best growth from 2020 to 2023. By 2023 the ranking was Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
If I had more time, I would do a deeper dive into all the data for those Nordic countries, because it seems like depending on the report one reads there are different conclusions. Sweden still did better than most countries. But pivoting back to here, we are a world away from the Nordic countries, we are not a first world country.
I still do not think there should have been a lockdown, even looking at the different stats. I stand by what I have said previously. We should have protected the vulnerable but everyone else should have been able to get on with it. There was no justification for the continued two year lockdown here. Also to take into consideration that for large percentage of South Africans they did not live in accommodation that allowed for "social distancing" and so that was not even possible. The poorest just got poorer.
The militarization of those in law enforcement, the children's lost years, the economic devastation all of that should not have happened. But one of the worst for me was the denying people seeing their loved ones that was just cruel.
When my grandfather broke his hip and was in hospital and then a halfway house, all his children and grandchildren visited him everyday for 6 weeks. That was the highlight of his day, that was all that got him through. His face would light up when we walked through that door. We stripped families and people of that basic human touch when they needed it the most. As human beings our connection to our loved ones are the most dear and important, and people were denied that and that was wrong. And death rates do not change that fact.
People should have been allowed to judge their own risk factors, that is a free society. And we especially have to be careful with the laws that allow for our freedoms to be so easily removed because depending on who is in power they will not always be used correctly.