The worst lies about COVID

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The Spectator has a round-up of the top ten, which include vastly overstating the potential death toll, exaggerating the pandemic’s effect on hospitals, spreading fear over lifting lockdowns/exaggerating the benefits of locking down the economy, among others.

The worst lie of all, though, has been the lie that lockdowns are relatively painless, rather than a colossal human rights crime.

British military being deployed to enforce COVID restrictions

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Pseudo-pandemic martial law. This might have appeared more reasonable if COVID-19 had a 4% mortality rate, and if it had been killing the young and healthy this entire time. But it hasn’t. Only the morbidly obese, severely unhealthy, feeble, and already-sick are in any danger from it. Children are not. The mortality rate for 70 and under is 0.05%. This does not justify a police state. It doesn’t justify anything, really. A proper government response would be to plainly tell the public that they need to eat better, get exercise, and assume personal responsibility. But the public wants a magic bullet, instant gratification, not the truth.

Cell phone data shows that Swedish citizens socially-distanced far less than other countries

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From the Mises Institute:

“Using the Google Community Mobility Trends data, we find that the Sweden practiced social distancing far less than countries that had strict lockdowns in place.

For example, the amount of time spent at home surged 30 percent in the UK, Spain, and Italy during the harshest lockdown period. Yet during this same period, the Swedes’s amount of time spent at home never exceeded 15 percent.“