They Will Never Admit Being Wrong about Lockdowns

Even in the face of data, politicians and bureaucrats will say they were always right, even when they were wrong. The Delusional Beliefs of the Lockdown Fanatics

This is an article from the UK and it covers data from the UK. I doubt the disease acted differently in the UK than it did everywhere.

Let's start by looking at the actual statistics.

Cain’s argument here is interesting mainly because it shows that lockdown proponents are still stuck in March 2020 and no amount of contrary evidence will disturb the serenity of their self-congratulation. Cain repeats the discredited claim that “Covid’s exponential growth meant that for every day that decisive action was delayed, the magnitude of the problem would soar”. The Spectator even kindly printed immediately below Cain’s letter this week a letter from Edinburgh mathematician Professor Simon Wood, which sets out once again (as he has numerous times before, including in the Spectator) the clear evidence that new daily infections in England, far from “rising exponentially”, were already falling before lockdown on March 23rd 2020. This crucial point is shown in Professor Wood’s chart below, taken from his peer-reviewed study on the subject. Yet rather than conceding that his entire argument is built on a falsehood, Cain expanded his letter into a full-length article which the Spectator published Thursday morning and which repeats the demonstrably false assertion that lockdown was necessary to address “exponentially rising” infections. Why the Spectator editors have allowed him to publish the unsubstantiated claim (twice) without addressing the contrary evidence, which they have themselves published beneath it on the letters page, is frankly baffling. At what point does this qualify as spreading misinformation?

As you can see, the lockdown came even as things were getting better on their own. But the government had to be seen to be "doing something!" Even if that something is detrimental.

That was the first outbreak. There were two more and two more lockdowns. If you click thru and scroll down past this first chart, there is another chart which shows the 2nd and 3rd lockdowns were ALSO initiated AFTER the disease had begun to retreat. Lockdowns did nothing but trash freedom and destroy economies. The conspiracy theorists will tell you that is what they were meant to do. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (That is Hanlon's Razor, itself based on a line from a Heinlein novel.) Politicians are stupid, and math is hard.

Professor Wood is far from alone in making these observations. Already in April 2020, Oxford’s Professor Carl Heneghan noted in the Mail that by projecting back from the peak of deaths on April 8th it could be inferred that the peak of infections occurred around a week before the lockdown was imposed. Indeed, Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty himself told MPs in July 2020 that the R rate went “below one well before, or to some extent before, March 23rd”, indicating a declining epidemic. Yet Cain remains blissfully unaware of this evidence, still clinging to the falsified belief that without the “blunt tool” of lockdown, infections would have risen “exponentially” and “overwhelmed” the NHS, causing it to “collapse”.

Whatever problem you have, I promise you that more government is not the answer. (Hat tip to Cafe Hayek.)