{"id":114205,"date":"2021-02-05T10:52:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T18:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=114205"},"modified":"2021-02-05T10:52:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T18:52:21","slug":"lockdowns-are-killing-us-congressman-tom-mcclintock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=114205","title":{"rendered":"Lockdowns are Killing Us ~ Congressman Tom McClintock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington, DC…We are now nearly a year into the most self-destructive social experiment in the recorded history of human civilization. On this day a year ago, we enjoyed the greatest economic expansion in our lifetimes.\u00a0 The\u00a0poverty rate<\/a>\u00a0was the lowest in 60 years.\u00a0 The\u00a0unemployment<\/a>\u00a0rate was the lowest in 50 years.\u00a0\u00a0Wage growth<\/a>\u00a0was the strongest in 40 years.\u00a0 The\u00a0wage gap<\/a>\u00a0was narrowing, with blue collar wages growing the fastest.\u00a0 Unemployment rates for\u00a0minority groups and women<\/a>\u00a0was the lowest ever recorded.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And then, over a course of just a few catastrophic weeks, our government took a wrecking ball to it all.\u00a0 In the second quarter,\u00a0GDP<\/a>\u00a0plunged by a third \u2013 the worst decline in productivity ever recorded.\u00a0\u00a0Unemployment<\/a>\u00a0exploded to its highest levels since the great depression.\u00a0 Tens of millions of Americans\u00a0lost their jobs<\/a>.\u00a0 Trillions of dollars of the nation\u2019s wealth were squandered.<\/p>\n

In the months since, our children have been robbed of a year of their educations.\u00a0 Millions of Americans have been forbidden from earning a living by their own government. Shopkeepers have seen their life\u2019s work destroyed and when in desperation they try to hold on, they are led away in handcuffs.\u00a0 Our most cherished rights to worship freely, to peaceably assemble, and not to be deprived of our lives, liberty, or property without due process of law have been destroyed.<\/p>\n

Covid didn\u2019t cause this damage. Public officials did.\u00a0 They promised us it was for our own good \u2013 that it would save lives.<\/p>\n

But mounting evidence in multiple scientific studies is putting the lie to these sophistries.\u00a0 It is becoming increasingly, tragically, and bitterly clear that the lockdowns have not only failed to save lives \u2013 but are costing lives.<\/p>\n

Last month, the\u00a0University of Denmark<\/a>\u00a0released the results of a study comparing Danish municipalities that locked down and those that did not.\u00a0 Their conclusion: the lockdowns \u201chad limited and statistically insignificant effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their conclusion mirrored a similar study out of\u00a0Stanford University<\/a>\u00a0that compared eight lockdown nations and two non-lockdown nations.\u00a0 They concluded: \u201cWe fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders or business closures.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are studies based not on assumptions and predictions, but on actual real-life hard-core data.\u00a0 This is what the science is telling us, and it\u2019s telling us the same thing from multiple studies: the lockdowns have not saved lives \u2013 certainly not to any statistically significant level.<\/p>\n

But it gets worse \u2013 much worse.\u00a0 We are now seeing mounting evidence that lockdowns are costing lives on a staggering scale.<\/p>\n

Last month, the\u00a0National Bureau of Economic Research<\/a>\u00a0warned that increases in poverty caused by the lockdowns will cost more than 800,000 American lives over the next 15 years due to higher poverty levels \u2013 with the deaths disproportionally affecting African Americans and women.\u00a0 That comports with a\u00a0UN warning<\/a>\u00a0that tens of millions of people worldwide will be pushed to the brink of starvation.<\/p>\n

Suicide rates<\/a>\u00a0have jumped dramatically over the past year.\u00a0\u00a0Dementia deaths<\/a>\u00a0between March and September jumped 13,000 as patients were left with little means of social interaction.\u00a0\u00a0San Francisco<\/a>\u00a0reported that additional deaths from drug overdoses exceeded Covid deaths in 2020.<\/p>\n

According to the Wall Street Journal,<\/a>\u00a0the CDC reported 475,000 excess deaths in the United States at a time when it was reporting 281,000 Covid-related fatalities.\u00a0 The difference is 194,000 additional deaths unexplained by normal mortality and Covid combined.\u00a0 Could this be the butcher\u2019s bill from a folly that has produced skyrocketing suicides, drug and alcohol deaths, domestic homicides, isolation-related deaths, delayed health screenings and delayed health treatments and poverty related deaths?<\/p>\n

Unlike Covid, which is a curse brought us by nature, lockdown deaths are the fault of specific individuals in positions of public trust who imposed Draconian restrictions out of panic, ignorance, or egotism.\u00a0 They preened and virtue-signaled and boasted how much they cared for the lives of others while they have pursued a folly \u2013 never attempted in recorded history — that is needlessly taking an appalling toll of lives and livelihoods.<\/p>\n

Some of those responsible hold power by virtue of appointments by elected officials.\u00a0 Others hold power directly from the voters.\u00a0 The American people ultimately must decide how much longer they will put up with this dystopian and authoritarian world. I fear this nightmare will not end until the officials who are responsible for it are removed from the offices they hold.<\/p>\n

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

Washington, DC…We are now nearly a year into the most self-destructive social experiment in the recorded history of human civilization. On this day a year ago, we enjoyed the greatest economic expansion in our lifetimes.\u00a0 The\u00a0poverty rate\u00a0was the lowest in 60 years.\u00a0 The\u00a0unemployment\u00a0rate was the lowest in 50 years.\u00a0\u00a0Wage growth\u00a0was the strongest in 40 years.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","category-opinion","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Tom_McClintock_Official_Portrait.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}