Covid-19 destroyed millions of peoples lives with little or zero consequence whatsoever

[Cameroni]

6 hours ago, Patong2021 said:

 

Yours are false claims. Because you imagine things does not mean they occurred. The Swedish results you   say support  your position do not exist. On the contrary the Swedish data, shows that the initial Swedish open policy failed.

There was no incarceration of people in the USA. Free movement as individuals was never stopped.  Again you blame the failures of business on "politicians" and not on the businesses themselves. Businesses that were in poor financial shape prior to Covid suffered their inevitable fate. What part of 60% of US restaurants failing in their first year did you not understand?  The historical record number of bankruptcies  in the USA certainly do not support your claim.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/bankruptcies#

 

What are these results in Sweden that are so good that you refer to?  You  compare Sweden to the USA and UK, which is an unacceptable comparison since their characteristics are not similar.  Compare Sweden to its peer group of nations like Denmark and Norway and the Swedish results are worse. Both Denmark and Norway initially had had  greater restrictions in place, until Sweden also imposed restrictions. The Danish and Norwegian economies did no worse, but their loss of life results were significantly better. Sweden based its strategy on the disproven "herd immunity theory". It didn't work for Covid until there was a vaccine.

 

The claim that Sweden did so much better was offered as an excuse in the  initial period of Covid, but the actual data shows that was not a correct conclusion.  "The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that in terms of pandemic-driven economic contraction, Sweden did markedly worse than its Nordic neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland, “despite the adoption of softer distancing measures, especially during the first COVID wave.” The OECD review concluded that , “Covid hit the (Swedish) economy hard.”  As the death toll mounted, Sweden also imposed public gathering caps and encouraged distance learning for students.

 

Nature's review showed that Swedish government authorities denied or downplayed scientific findings about COVID that should have guided them to more reasoned and appropriate policies. These included scientific findings that infected but asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people could spread the virus, that it was airborne, that the virus was a greater health threat than the flu and that children were not immune.  The Swedish policymakers “denied or downgraded the fact that children could be infectious, develop severe disease, or drive the spread of the infection in the population”. At the same time, they found, the authorities’ “internal emails indicate their aim to use children to spread the infection in society.”  Once the failure of  Sweden's initial approach  became evident, Sweden reversed course and implemented restrictions.   Multiple reviews support the  Nature authors conclusions. examples are 

Comparing the responses of the UK, Sweden and Denmark to COVID-19 using counterfactual modelling, Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 16342 (2021)  

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/04/06/Sweden-Deadly-COVID-Failure/

 

You state that wages are not catching up. Ok. Do you realize then that you  have just unwound your  own claims?  One of the largest  factors in current inflation were wage increases. Your saying that wages have not  "kept up" means that  inflation is  lower than it is.  You are all over the place throwing anything that you can in hopes that it will stick.

 

Accusing  "politicians" of criminal negligence is pure idiocy.  Almost all of the  governments did their best under  catastrophic circumstances. They had difficult decisions to make and their first obligation was to keep their  nations  up and running. That's what they did. Under the circumstances,  few could have done better, particularly when there were so many competing  interest groups all screaming for different  things.  If there were problems, it was  because of people like you, always complaining and criticizing and contributing nothing but negativity and false information.

 

 

 

It is a bit rich, after the claims you have made, to think you know what is right or wrong, when you don't appear to have even the semblance of a  clue of what happened.

 

You seriously persist in going on how restaurant businesses are to blame themselves when they failed in the pandemic? And how do you suggest businesses like restaurants are supposed to make profits in a situation when the government deprives everyone of their liberty and stops them from going out of the house? How are e-commerce operators mean to keep their business going when container prices went up by 1000% during the pandemic? You do not appear to have even the slightest clue of what happened during this time.

 

Restaurants are to blame. Sure. Noooo! There is somebody else to blame! And those people were all the politcians, and all the hysterics who supported them shutting down the entire country for extended periods. Those are the people to blame. Not small business owners, who had no chance without customers. Or when container shipping went up 1000% in price. Even a 12 year old can understand that.

 

Sweden's policy did not "fail". Sweden had among the LOWEST excess deaths of any OECD nation, considerably lower than the UK, US, Italy, Spain and  France. Sweden's policy was a spectacular success, they resisted death threats and pressure by others and stuck to their guns and trusted individuals to make their own choices. And they were vindicated and their results were better than most other nations. Your claims are false. And how.

 

One of the largest factors in inflation were wage increases? WHAT??????? Have you followed the news at all? Pandemic, Ukraine war and rising energy prices as a result of idiotic western politicians curtailing Russian oil and gas imports, this did not cause inflation then? I mean, seriously. What you are spouting is just beyond the pale.

 

The governments did their best? It was their job to evaluate if the Cassandra cries by people like Neil Ferguson should be heeded and if lockdowns would be worth it or not, and they failed miserably to do their job. They put in place lockdowns that ruined people and caused massive problems for the economies of the world, which we still, today, all have to shoulder. They kept the nation up and running? They shut the nation down. If we are still up and running, it was DESPITE politicians. Not because of them.

 

And these problems were because of people like you, who want security at all cost and beg government to provide it, no matter what the cost to anyone else. Because you do not understand the implications. You can read them here:

 

"Most despotisms come into being not because a despot has seized power, but because people willingly surrender their freedoms in return for security. 

 

Until March 2020, it was unthinkable that liberal democracies should confine healthy people in their homes indefinitely, with limited exceptions at the discretion of government ministers. It was unthinkable that a whole population should be subject to criminal penalties for associating with other human beings and answerable to the police for all the ordinary activities of daily life. When in early February 2020, the European Centre for Disease Control published the pandemic plans of all 28 then members of the EU, inc. the UK, not one of these plans envisaged a general lockdown. Not one. The two principal plans were those prepared by the UK Department of Health and the Robert Koch Institute, the official epidemiological institute of Germany. They came to remarkably similar conclusions. The great object should be to enable ordinary life to continue as far as possible. The two main lessons were, first, to avoid indiscriminate measures and concentrate state interventions on the vulnerable categories; and, secondly, to treat people as grown-ups, go with the grain of human nature and avoid coercion. The published minutes of the committee of scientists advising the UK government show that their advice was on the same lines right up to the announcement of the first lockdown.

In the UK, the man mainly responsible for persuading the government to impose a lockdown was Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiological modeler based at Imperial College London. His work was influential both in the UK and elsewhere. In a press interview in February 2021, Professor Neil Ferguson explained what changed. It was the lockdown in China. “It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.” It is worth pausing to reflect on what this means. It means that because a lockdown of the entire population appeared to work in a country which was notoriously indifferent to individual rights and traditionally treats human beings as mere instruments of state policy, they could “get away with” doing the same thing here. Entirely absent from Professor Ferguson’s analysis was any conception of the principled reasons why it had hitherto been unthinkable for western countries to do such a thing. It was unthinkable because it was based on a conception of the state’s relationship with its citizens which was morally repellent even if it worked."

 

https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/institute-news/lord-sumption-a-state-of-fear

 

This article is about you, Patong. And what you don't understand, apart from the fact that all your claims are false and that it is you providing the false information, is that there are limits to what government can do. And we saw that in the pandemic.  They will never be able to keep you safe. Look at the global death toll of 7 million souls, do you think it is better than most flu pandemics before, when there was no lockdown? No, it is not. Your total safety, and the competence of your politicians are an illusion.

 

But none so blind than those who cannot see.

 

And the worst part of all this is, that this surrender to government despotism is here to stay, because governments never give up the powers they once acquire. And the next pandemic will come. And when, again, the politicians incarcerate everyone and fine people for associating with each other, achieving nothing, you can thank people like Patong  for entering into the bargain of giving up civil liberties for illusory security. Which will not be provided.

 

Edited August 15 by stats
baiting comments removed

[VBF]

14 hours ago, Cameroni said:

 

Sorry, but this is intolerable bs. What happened was the wholesale incarceration of people, dying elderly people deprived of seeing their relatives before they die, the greatest deprivation of liberty we have seen in our lifetime. And when businesses failed they failed because of the totally overdone and unnecessay lockdowns which prevented people going out at all. No matter how good, how profitable a business was, without customers it was doomed to fail because of the decisions of our politicians. Which again, were completely unnecessary as the results in Sweden showed, where they did not impose the same lockdowns but came out far better than the UK, US, Germany, Italy, France and Spain.

 

Wages are catching up? Not even in your dreams, when you factor in inflation.

 

If we are going back to a semblance of normality now it is DESPITE the criminal negligence of our politicians and not because of it.

Your replies to @Patong2021 are just what I was thinking when I read his/her posts - you saved me from typing them 👍

Edited August 15 by VBF

[Patong2021]

22 hours ago, Cameroni said:

 

It is a bit rich, after the claims you have made, to think you know what is right or wrong, when you don't appear to have even the semblance of a  clue of what happened.

 

You seriously persist in going on how restaurant businesses are to blame themselves when they failed in the pandemic? And how do you suggest businesses like restaurants are supposed to make profits in a situation when the government deprives everyone of their liberty and stops them from going out of the house? How are e-commerce operators mean to keep their business going when container prices went up by 1000% during the pandemic? You do not appear to have even the slightest clue of what happened during this time.

 

Restaurants are to blame. Sure. Noooo! There is somebody else to blame! And those people were all the politcians, and all the hysterics who supported them shutting down the entire country for extended periods. Those are the people to blame. Not small business owners, who had no chance without customers. Or when container shipping went up 1000% in price. Even a 12 year old can understand that.

 

Sweden's policy did not "fail". Sweden had among the LOWEST excess deaths of any OECD nation, considerably lower than the UK, US, Italy, Spain and  France. Sweden's policy was a spectacular success, they resisted death threats and pressure by others and stuck to their guns and trusted individuals to make their own choices. And they were vindicated and their results were better than most other nations. Your claims are false. And how.

 

One of the largest factors in inflation were wage increases? WHAT??????? Have you followed the news at all? Pandemic, Ukraine war and rising energy prices as a result of idiotic western politicians curtailing Russian oil and gas imports, this did not cause inflation then? I mean, seriously. What you are spouting is just beyond the pale.

 

The governments did their best? It was their job to evaluate if the Cassandra cries by people like Neil Ferguson should be heeded and if lockdowns would be worth it or not, and they failed miserably to do their job. They put in place lockdowns that ruined people and caused massive problems for the economies of the world, which we still, today, all have to shoulder. They kept the nation up and running? They shut the nation down. If we are still up and running, it was DESPITE politicians. Not because of them.

 

And these problems were because of people like you, who want security at all cost and beg government to provide it, no matter what the cost to anyone else. Because you do not understand the implications. You can read them here:

 

"Most despotisms come into being not because a despot has seized power, but because people willingly surrender their freedoms in return for security. 

 

Until March 2020, it was unthinkable that liberal democracies should confine healthy people in their homes indefinitely, with limited exceptions at the discretion of government ministers. It was unthinkable that a whole population should be subject to criminal penalties for associating with other human beings and answerable to the police for all the ordinary activities of daily life. When in early February 2020, the European Centre for Disease Control published the pandemic plans of all 28 then members of the EU, inc. the UK, not one of these plans envisaged a general lockdown. Not one. The two principal plans were those prepared by the UK Department of Health and the Robert Koch Institute, the official epidemiological institute of Germany. They came to remarkably similar conclusions. The great object should be to enable ordinary life to continue as far as possible. The two main lessons were, first, to avoid indiscriminate measures and concentrate state interventions on the vulnerable categories; and, secondly, to treat people as grown-ups, go with the grain of human nature and avoid coercion. The published minutes of the committee of scientists advising the UK government show that their advice was on the same lines right up to the announcement of the first lockdown.

In the UK, the man mainly responsible for persuading the government to impose a lockdown was Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiological modeler based at Imperial College London. His work was influential both in the UK and elsewhere. In a press interview in February 2021, Professor Neil Ferguson explained what changed. It was the lockdown in China. “It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.” It is worth pausing to reflect on what this means. It means that because a lockdown of the entire population appeared to work in a country which was notoriously indifferent to individual rights and traditionally treats human beings as mere instruments of state policy, they could “get away with” doing the same thing here. Entirely absent from Professor Ferguson’s analysis was any conception of the principled reasons why it had hitherto been unthinkable for western countries to do such a thing. It was unthinkable because it was based on a conception of the state’s relationship with its citizens which was morally repellent even if it worked."

 

https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/institute-news/lord-sumption-a-state-of-fear

 

This article is about you, Patong. And what you don't understand, apart from the fact that all your claims are false and that it is you providing the false information, is that there are limits to what government can do. And we saw that in the pandemic.  They will never be able to keep you safe. Look at the global death toll of 7 million souls, do you think it is better than most flu pandemics before, when there was no lockdown? No, it is not. Your total safety, and the competence of your politicians are an illusion.

 

But none so blind than those who cannot see.

 

And the worst part of all this is, that this surrender to government despotism is here to stay, because governments never give up the powers they once acquire. And the next pandemic will come. And when, again, the politicians incarcerate everyone and fine people for associating with each other, achieving nothing, you can thank people like Patong  for entering into the bargain of giving up civil liberties for illusory security. Which will not be provided.

 

 

Your argument is built upon your dismissive defensive response in respect to the example I provided on restaurants. You initially started off with the claim that business failed because of the response to Covid. It was an attempt to blame business failures on the protective public health strategies. Restaurant failure rates were used to illustrate that businesses failed because of bad business decisions, either in location, menu, management and/or operation.  60% of US restaurants  typically fail in year 1. That is not because of Covid.  You then tried to intimate that the economy was destroyed when it was not. The  historical bankruptcy rates do not support your argument.  The historical data shows a temporary disruption that is being corrected now.  Economies go through periodic economic recessions. These correct the excessive highs when economies expand too fast. In the USA recessions occurred in 1960, 1970, 1973-1975, 1980-1982,  1990, 2001, 2007-2009,  and 2020.  The 2020  did not fully correct the excess of the prior decade so it is expected that there will be a mild correction to come. You see these cycles of evidence of conspiracies and government negligence. Responsible educated rational people see them for what they are: market cycles.

 

You then go off on a disjointed  polemic that makes no sense except to someone who is so certain that their veiw point is correct. "Facts" are fabricated to support nonsensical claims. (Trump does this too.)  Of course we all suffered, some more than others because of Covid. And of course there were financial losses incurred. However, when put into the historical context,  national governments for the most part did a pretty good job of keeping their nations up and running.

 

[Cameroni]

1 hour ago, Patong2021 said:

 

Your argument is built upon your dismissive defensive response in respect to the example I provided on restaurants. You initially started off with the claim that business failed because of the response to Covid. It was an attempt to blame business failures on the protective public health strategies. Restaurant failure rates were used to illustrate that businesses failed because of bad business decisions, either in location, menu, management and/or operation.  60% of US restaurants  typically fail in year 1. That is not because of Covid.  You then tried to intimate that the economy was destroyed when it was not. The  historical bankruptcy rates do not support your argument.  The historical data shows a temporary disruption that is being corrected now.  Economies go through periodic economic recessions. These correct the excessive highs when economies expand too fast. In the USA recessions occurred in 1960, 1970, 1973-1975, 1980-1982,  1990, 2001, 2007-2009,  and 2020.  The 2020  did not fully correct the excess of the prior decade so it is expected that there will be a mild correction to come. You see these cycles of evidence of conspiracies and government negligence. Responsible educated rational people see them for what they are: market cycles.

 

You then go off on a disjointed  polemic that makes no sense except to someone who is so certain that their veiw point is correct. "Facts" are fabricated to support nonsensical claims. (Trump does this too.)  Of course we all suffered, some more than others because of Covid. And of course there were financial losses incurred. However, when put into the historical context,  national governments for the most part did a pretty good job of keeping their nations up and running.

 

Yes, I defend the restaurants Patong, and I dismiss your claim that they are to blame for the shrinking of the restaurant industry. Simply, because it is self evident that our politicians did not keep "their nation up and running".

 

"In 2020, Covid restrictions ground the nation’s bustling restaurant industry to a halt."

 

"But there are fewer US restaurants today than in 2019. It’s not clear when —if ever — they’re coming back.

Last year, there were about 631,000 restaurants in the United States, according to data from Technomic, a restaurant research firm. That’s roughly 72,000 fewer than in 2019, when there were 703,000 restaurants in the country.

That number could fall even further this year, to about 630,000 locations, according to Technomic, which doesn’t foresee the number of restaurants in the US returning to pre-Covid levels even by 2026.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/25/business/restaurant-closures/index.html

 

You see, Patong, politicians around the world locked people up at home and prevented them from going out. Imposed financial fines on them if the did go out. So, if a restaurant did not have customers and had to close, and as you can see above, tens of thousands did, the fault is not the restaurant's. It is the fault of the politicians who locked people up. Needlessly, as Sweden showed. 

 

If our countries are now up and running, it is because of the blood, sweat and tears of small businesses and their employees. Not because of politicians. Despite politicians.

 

I understand restaurant failure rates, and I appreciate that running a restaurant is hard at the best of times, but if your government locks people up and you do not have customers, then, this has somewhat of an effect on business.

 

But it is not just restaurants. Far from it. The same with e-commerce people. The Covid restrictions led to ten-fold increase in container prices, shipping goods became possible only for the very largest businesses. And it goes on and on and on, Patong. Indeed, the very inflation you mentioned, was caused by the supply chain shocks and disruptions which our politicians caused with their covid restrictions. Not rising wages.

 

Of course I never said our economies were destroyed entirely. But sizeable segments of our economies were destroyed. Millions of small businesses around the world lost eveything because of the covid restrictions. And they are lost forever. 

 

According to the World bank " Studies based on precrisis data suggest, for example, that more than 50 percent of households in emerging and advanced economies were not able to sustain basic consumption for more than three months in the event of income losses. Similarly, the average business could cover fewer than 55 days of expenses with cash reserves."

 

https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2022/brief/chapter-1-introduction-the-economic-impacts-of-the-covid-19-crisis

 

During 2020, the world's collective gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 3.4 percent. To put this number in perspective, global GDP reached 84.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020 – meaning that a 3.4 percent drop in economic growth results in over two trillion U.S. dollars of lost economic output. 

 

https://www.statista.com/topics/6139/covid-19-impact-on-the-global-economy/#topicOverview

 

Those are not statistics only, Patong, those are people. The people of the world lost 2 trillion US dollars because of covid restrictions. And it was the poorest and smallest businesses that were the worst affected. People lost everything. 2 trillion US Dollars.

 

And this was not a typical "cycle" recession, it was not a recession at all. It was a man made wholesale economic destruction which was completely unnecessary. This was not a "market cycle". The politicians made sure that no market was allowed during Covid. You can't just relabel it as a normal economic cycle, a "market cycle". It was not.

 

If you want historical context, why don't you look at this;

 

"Human beings have lived with epidemic disease from the beginning of time. Covid-19 is a relatively serious epidemic, but historically it is well within the range of health risks which are inseparable from ordinary existence, risks which human beings have always had to live with. In Europe, bubonic plague, smallpox, cholera and tuberculosis were all worse in their time. Worldwide, the list of comparable or worse epidemics is substantially longer, even if they did not happen to strike Europe or North America."

 

https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/institute-news/lord-sumption-a-state-of-fear

 

So again. The covid restrictions were unnecessary. They caused 2 trillion Dollars of losses for people around the world. And if things have rebounded to some degree, then because of the hard work of businesses and their employees, not because of politicians. Despite politicians.

 

And for you to seriously claim "governments did a pretty good job"...."they kept their nations running" just flies in the face of very obvious evidence. Politicians ground their nations to a halt. They recklessly and incompetently caused 2 trillion USD of losses for people. Their job was, when faced with scientists in throes of panic like Neil Ferguson, to evaluate correctly if a lockdown's benefits would justify the loss. And the politicians failed the test. Miserably.  They took the easy way out and saved their own skin, letting the rest of the world burn. Now, that we all put out the fires, you applaud and tells us what a great job they did. 

Edited August 15 by Cameroni

[john donson]

spanish flu... war was over, chemical gas was used in warfare, soldier went home, from many places in the world... spread... no need to go look too far...

[GinBoy2]

On 8/13/2024 at 12:30 AM, Purdey said:

If I remember correctly, the Spanish Flu killed 50 million and no one punished the Spanish. No consequences at all.

 

Actually 'Spanish' flu originated in Kansas! 

 

The Spanish got an unfair rap for that

 

The only reason it's called Spanish flu was that during WW1 Spain being neutral had an uncensored press and were reporting the epidemic, whereas other countries wartime press censorship suppressed the news

Edited August 17 by GinBoy2