Positive tests for the coronavirus are rising across the country and politicians are eager to solve the problem by shutting you up in your house again.
Because it worked so well the first time.
Actually, the question shouldn’t be whether lockdowns help in stopping the spread of the virus. They do. But when other, less draconian, more democratic measures would be just as effective, why give these jokers “emergency powers” to manage our lives when it isn’t necessary?
More lockdowns aren’t needed. More sound considered medical opinion is. Information is the key to managing society during this pandemic. But since politicians know no other way, we’re stuck with mask mandates, social distancing, and a disintegrating economy.
And that’s a problem because the people will not comply.
“People won’t have the same level of buy-in because of the sense of unfairness that has been built up,” behavioral psychologist Nilu Ahmed told the U.K.’s Metro. “There’s only so much the police can do and it relies on trust and people singing from the same hymn sheet. There was a very definite shift when people in authority were seen as not following the rules.”
That echoes advice the British government received directly from its own Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). Renewed restrictions are likely to be met by “silent compliance, critical compliance or visible resistance,” the group cautioned in June. “There has been an increase in resistance to social distancing measures in recent weeks,” SAGE added, with COVID concerns competing with other priorities for people’s attention.
Joe Biden is a fool if he really believes a mask mandate will be universally obeyed. How are you going to enforce it? Cops have been rebelling against enforcing lockdown rules and who can blame them? They should have better things to do than issuing a thousand tickets a day to law-abiding citizens for not wearing a mask or practicing social distancing.
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The cops don’t like it. Most people don’t like it. Besides the politicians, the only people who like it are criminals who probably wonder where all the cops went.
Some states like Florida and Texas are seeing a sharp uptick in positive COVID tests but the governors there have chosen to push forward and reopen their states for business. Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are getting skewered in the media for “risking people’s lives” to re-elect Trump. What DeSantis, Abbott, and a few other state governors are doing is facing reality; the coronavirus is here, it will continue to infect people — maskless or otherwise — and we have a choice; we can live like responsible, adult free people or cower in our homes like scared little children.
It’s interesting that we are presented with only one option to combat the virus. But lockdowns are not the only choice we can make.
In a study published September 22, researchers from Louisiana State University (LSU) analyzed cellphone data to study the how and why of pandemic social distancing. What they found has important implications for health policy going forward.
“Social distancing in the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic was initially voluntary rather than a response to governmental jurisdictional restrictions,” LSU reports of the study’s findings. “The analysis suggests that stay-at-home behavior increased by over nine times from late January through late March, and then decreased by about 50% through mid-June. Findings indicate that demographic factors drove these changes to a substantially greater degree, signifying the importance of individual behavior in social distancing (either due to voluntary distancing or to differential compliance with mandated distancing).”
In other words, treat people like adults and they tend to act like adults.
“An important implication of these outcomes is that encouraging voluntary distancing could be an effective and lower-cost alternative to governmental restrictions. Such encouragement could boost acceptance of restrictions and thus increased compliance with distancing rules, resulting in an even greater degree of distancing,” LSU adds.
In the end, it should be an individual choice in how you keep yourself and your family safe. For those like myself with several deadly risk factors, I will wear a mask and practice social distancing whenever I’m around people. But for the vast majority, it may not be practical or even necessary.
Americans don’t want the government looking over their shoulders to make sure they are obeying the rules — especially when the rules don’t make any sense.
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