Lock Downs Work, Just not Against the Virus
Lock down restrictions are starting to re-appear in various spots throughout Canada. South of the Border Joe Biden has hinted that if he is elected lockdown measures will be re-instated in the US. Countries all over the world chose lockdowns as pandemic control. It is very hard to show that Lockdowns were at all effective at controlling the spread of covid 19. It turns out that viruses don’t obey pandemic restrictions any more than criminals obey gun restrictions. So why are all of these politicians so eager to return to lockdowns? It is because lockdowns work just not for what you think.
New Zealand had some of the harshest lockdown rules on earth. They closed their borders and aggressively quarantined people. New Zealand became an island prison no different than Cuba and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern just won re-election with the highest percentage of the popular vote in New Zealand history. People loved all of the unemployment she caused because she was saving them from a virus so deadly that everyone in New Zealand would be dead right now if she had not stripped them of their dignity and fundamental rights.
Still New Zealand has one of the lowest death totals in the world with only 5 deaths per million so it was worth it right? Yes until you do the math. It is well documented that unemployment leads to higher death for almost all causes. Here is an article out of Canada.
1n 1982 a study was done in the US that showed for every 1% increase in unemployment you can expect 37,000 additional deaths. At the time the US was 231 million people. If I apply the same ratio to New Zealand every 1% increase in unemployment will result in 780 deaths every year. To stop the spread of the virus New Zealand closed its borders which shut down the entire tourism industry. 8.5 % of New Zealanders work in tourism. Lockdowns cause people in other services to be unemployed as well. I tried to get a good number for unemployment in New Zealand but all I could find was an estimate of 13.5%. The official government numbers are below.
Of course the official government numbers are a blatant lie. There is no way to have falling unemployment as you shut your economy down. Since the government is lying I can only use the estimate of 13.5% and again estimate that prior to the lockdown unemployment was around 5%. That means unemployment went up by 8.5 % which agrees very well with the number of people in tourism that lost their jobs. By shutting the country down PM Ardern has caused an additional 6,600 deaths. If New Zealand had done nothing as Sweden did they might have had 100 times as many deaths (Sweden is 585 deaths/ million). For a country the size of New Zealand that would have meant 2,900 deaths. Jacinda Ardern is the most popular politician in New Zealand history for killing 3,700 more people than Covid would have.
If you think this is just a strange quirk of living in an isolated island in the southern hemisphere you are wrong. Look what is happening in Canada. In BC John Horgan called an early election to take advantage of his lockdown popularity. You can see from the Angus Reid polling below the lockdown was great for John Horgan.
Current polling shows John Horgan coasting to a huge majority government.
The same goes for Justin Trudeau. His popularity went up in every province including Alberta as he stoked fear and panic. His popularity fell a little after the WE charity scandal but is still much higher than pre-covid when Canadians were not so convinced that stoking panic saved lives.
Think about that for just a minute. As long as Justin Trudeau keeps us in a panic over the virus most of us are willing to forgive him for shelling out tax dollars to a charity that in turn hires members of his family. When a drug dealer funnels money through a third party back to his own bank account is called money laundering. I don’t know what Justin calls it but when the Liberals were caught doing the same thing in the sponsorship scandal they called it keeping the country together. Apparently liberal corruption is the glue that holds Canada together. To be fair there is a big difference between what the liberals do and what drug dealers do. Drug dealers let the third party keep a percent or 2, liberals let the third party keep most of it. The average kick back in the sponsorship scandal was 15%. Justin tried to Give WE charity 1 billion in return for the ½ million his family received from We Charity. We charity got to keep 99.95%. Math is not Justin’s strong suit, neither is ethics but as long as he keeps Canadians unemployed we love him. Lockdowns mean never having to say you are sorry.
I won’t be surprised to see Justin call a snap election soon also. He can easily coast to a majority after which he will strip us all of any rights and any amount of money he feels we don’t need or deserve.