Left-Wing Lockdown

These public health experts hardly blinked at the economic loss these lockdowns caused. Anyone who even expressed these concerns was denounced for putting dollars ahead of lives.

Now, these same public health experts are doing a 180-degree turn, saying the threat of the virus is less important than big marches against racial injustice. Even though they admit the marches will lead to more infections. Hypocrites.

Public health academics from the University of Washington, which created the virus forecasting model widely used by governors and the President's Task Force, are circulating a public letter declaring the marches a higher priority than containing the virus.

"This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders," the UW health experts add. Translation: No funerals for your loved ones, no congregating for causes of your own choosing. Only theirs.

This isn't science. This is political advocacy.

Similarly, Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, now claims the dangers of "systemic racism" exceed "the harms of the virus." Sorry, professor, but that makes you a political pundit, not someone to call the shots on ending a pandemic.

Remember that most public health experts didn't have to give up their paychecks during the lockdown.             https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/8792/left-wing-lockdown

So it’s ok for thousands to march in the streets and to riot and loot, but it’s not ok for hundreds to go to church or march in the streets to seek to re open the economy.  Covid 19 only comes out when people ask to resume their careers or go to church but not  when huge  protests lead to riots and looting.  Social justice Trumps medical science.

What a crock of opinion soup.

Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths

and the sole proprietor of the 501c3 which she runs from her $5 million dollar residence in CT.

Founded in 2005, an unrated charity by Charity Navigator and Guidestar, which filed IRS 990 forms from 2013 to 2017.

It appears to be a legitimate reason to write off office space in their personal property.

She just as well known for her marriages to Tom McCaughey an investment banker and infamously Wilbur Ross who withdrew campaign funding during her bid to unseat Governor Pataki in 1998,  Ross divorced her and she sued him for 40 million.

Betsy, the  former Lt Gov of New York has a PHD in History and is probably more famous for switching from GOP to Democrat to Liberal party and back to Republican after losing that 1998 election than being a disruptive Lt Gov.

Whatever.

On their advice, states slammed their economies shut, put 40 million people out of work, sent school kids home and pushed businesses into bankruptcy.

The POTUS and Governors could have ignored the scientists or compromised by suggesting distancing where possible and making masks mandatory. Instead Trump waffled, got into a power struggle with the media and Governors, which he lost control of.

 But public health experts prescribed statewide lock downs though they were untried and untested.

Wrong. Lockdowns were common during every American pandemic but they were always limited to cities or a cluster of counties.

Turns out the data in the articles was bogus.

Wrong. Protocol required that the studies be retracted because because Surgisphere Data would not cooperate with peer reviews, citing patient confidentiality.  Surgisphere's recalcitrance caused the 3 researchers to withdraw another study as well.  The conclusions of the research may still be valid.

Betsy's criticism of the Lanclet is ironic, because she used the Lancelet to attack the American Cancer Society, but no one peer reviewed her article.  She did eexactly what these other researchers did, using outside data to come to her own conclusions.The ACS disputed her findings as unprofessional and wrong headed.

She was probably directly responsible for killing Hillary Clinton's Health initiative in 1993.

I am not surprised about how opinionated she continues to be.

An absolute opponent of all things Obama.

Betsy keeps claiming things that are not true.

There are too many statements to list that have been fact checked as wrong, pants on fire or false by the usual group of MSM fact checking orgs.

en.wikipedia

Surprisingly, ( or not ) she is currently married to Paul J Batista an actual legend.

Paul wrote the RICO manual and many good novels. He is a real tv personality and writer for the NY Post, BBC Fox and many others.

Betsy remains a very interesting and still attractive 71 year old who's article/rant in The Hill wasn't worth reading.

IMHO.

Economists from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University have shown how a geographically targeted approach, even within New York City, could have lessened the economic toll by more than one-third and spared areas like Staten Island. If the virus resurges in the fall, that approach could allow 87% of city businesses to stay open.

In the scientific world, a drug is examined in clinical trials before it's prescribed. But public health experts prescribed statewide lockdowns though they were untried and untested.

A study published Monday in the journal Nature purports to show 60 million infections in the U.S. were prevented with these lockdowns. The Washington Post incorrectly calls that proof "the aggressive and unprecedented shutdowns" were the right call. Nonsense. The Nature study never considers how many infections could have been prevented with less draconian measures, including targeting nursing homes.

Sadly, science is losing its luster as the profession puts politics ahead of the truth. Last week, two prestigious medical journals, Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, which until recently set the gold standard for scientific publications, had to retract articles they had published on hydroxychloroquine.

Both had dispensed with rigorous peer review to rush out articles purporting to show that President Trump's favored COVID-19 drug, hydroxychloroquine, endangers patients. They were so eager to ridicule the president that they ended up discrediting themselves. Turns out the data in the articles was bogus.

No surprise. Lancet editors had published their own editorial a week earlier calling on voters to unseat Trump in November. As if a British medical journal should even have a position on the U.S. presidential election.

Americans have learned a powerful lesson. When politicians tell us to follow the science, it's not that simple. Many scientists have lost their legitimacy.

They proposed a draconian lockdown without assessing its side effects on the rest of us. They demanded rigorous adherence to it, until, suddenly, they decided marching against racism was more important than preventing virus deaths. Americans won't forget. https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/8792/left-wing-lockdown#cm1333372

Another crock of you know what . . . 

The article by the former Lt. Governor of the State of New York is exactly right.  The double standard hypocrisy of the political left is legendary.  

"Science is losing it's luster."  Oh, but of course, being replaced by the unfathomable wisdom of Hannicarp, InfoWars and whatever else Putin needs us to believe.

Trumps domestic opposition sells exactly what chairman Zi needs us to believe.  

Americans have learned a powerful lesson. When politicians tell us to follow the science, it's not that simple. Many scientists have lost their legitimacy.

They proposed a draconian lockdown without assessing its side effects on the rest of us. They demanded rigorous adherence to it, until, suddenly, they decided marching against racism was more important than preventing virus deaths. Americans won't forget.

Even guidelines for reopening are arbitrary, reflecting these public health experts' fickle priorities. New York City residents have to wait until late June for sidewalk dining at restaurants. But it's OK, even laudable, for throngs of protesters to march down the street now, many maskless and shouting. https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/8792/left-wing-lockdown?g=37#cm1333381

They proposed a draconian lockdown without assessing its side effects on the rest of us. They demanded rigorous adherence to it, until, suddenly, they decided marching against racism was more important than preventing virus deaths. Americans won't forget.

Scientists research reality and provide the best explanation they can based on the evidence.   Scientists do not make sociological decisions ... that is the role of politicians. 

What is with this recent trend (exclusively by those on the right) to blame scientists for political / sociological decisions?   Have people forgotten who makes those decisions?

Scientists research reality and provide the best explanation they can based on the evidence.

In the Sahara Desert a group of evangelicals is traveling with a group of scientists when they come upon tracks in the sand. The tracks appear to be hundreds of S's in a line traveling up and down the dunes. The scientists examine them and conclude this must be the work of some sort of desert creature perhaps traveling in such a way to avoid the heat of the sand while the group of evangelicals concludes... "It must be Satan! Look at all those S's, it's the mark of the dark lord!"...

This debate has been going on for centuries, but it really comes down to one thing. Science admits it doesn't know everything and is taking the available data to come up with the best likely hypothesis. Science starts with the data, the evidence, then comes up with the best answer whereas religion starts with an answer and works backwards to make the answer fit the data as it gets uncovered.

Religion refuses to even admit it could be wrong, some refer to it as infallibility, so any doubt would be seen as a "weakness of faith". They start with an answer they are determined to prove no matter what. The more evidence coming out against their conclusion the more they feel vindicated because their faith is, in their minds, 'under attack' by facts and science, which they believe was prophesied to occur, so sometimes facts against them can weirdly strengthen their resolve to not believe any facts, especially those coming from people who freely admit it doesn't have all the facts in the universe yet. That integral quality of science, the willingness to admit they don't have all the data or answers and even ask to be disproved, is what allows these religious zealots a tiny little hairline crack in logic and reason which they almost always attempt to squeeze their often insane religious theory through.

They do not have any reason to seek truth, they claim to have already found it and scoff when anyone else claims the truth they claim can't be backed up by any facts or evidence. In fact, the facts and evidence point the other direction which is when they get really agitated and start calling scientists names and claiming atheism is a religion, climate science is a hoax, and those old fossils must have been planted by Satan.

Spot on. 

I suspect many holding religious views recognize that they are starting with their 'truth' and engaging in daily confirmation bias to retain it.   I posit this because of the tactic of trying to portray science as a religion.   That suggests they recognize the flaws of religious thinking and are trying to bring science —a glaring exercise in critical thinking— down to mere religion so as to have a level playing field.

Another failure is to hold that science is at war with religion.   It is very much the opposite.   Scientific findings challenge the flawed claims of ancient men spinning tales of wonder to explain that which they could not explain and to influence (control) others.   Scientific findings make these ancient-invented beliefs a bit awkward.   Over time many religions have slowly (and mostly silently) adapted to the inescapable findings of science (e.g. the Earth is not the center of the universe).   But there remain difficulties that contemporary authorities have chosen to argue against such as  biological evolution.

I remain amazed that in 2020 there are 10s of millions of people in the USA alone who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old, etc.

All of #7 is off topic of the seeded article as to why it’s dangerous for some to be outside in large numbers and safe or ok for others based on their beliefs and motivations for being out there.