The unintended consequences of a well-intentioned health measure
Swedish physician, Dr Sebastian Rushworth wrote:
"And while almost all the people who have died of covid have died in rich countries and been old, the vast majority of people who have died of lockdown have died in poor countries and been young. This means that the number of years of life lost to lockdown is many times greater than the number of years of life lost to covid-19."
"These unintended consequences of the efforts to fight covid have caused the rate of childhood deaths to increase in 2020 for the first time in decades."
"Lockdowns are inherently racist and elitist, with unclear benefits but proven harms. We all need to stand up and tell our governments that we don’t support what they are doing, and we will not vote for any politician or party promoting continued lockdowns and restrictions as a solution to covid-19, unless they can clearly show that that benefit to society as a whole is greater than the harm."
Read all of what he wrote here (it is a brief article):
Gary:
I was writing about this topic of the unintended consequences of lockdowns for New Zealand, then my friend, Dr Rushworth came along with his article which sums things up nicely!
I realise this is an unpleasant topic to be talking about, but war is never pleasant and, let's face it, we are at war and innocent lives are being lost.
The approach being taken worldwide, other than a few places like Sweden, to combating this virus reminds me of the indiscriminate sledgehammer B52 bombing raids employed during the Vietnam war to destroy the enemy within that could not seen. This horrible war (aren't they all!) was dragging to a painful and miserable ending when I was a young student. By the way, isn't it interesting, today, how politicians and their supporters are using warlike propaganda to rally their troops and civilians to sacrifice themselves, their families and their livelihoods to fight this "tricky" virus?
Today, the enemy within is an unseen and constantly mutating virus. World War Three, the Endless War is upon us. The poor are its victims, they are war's cannon-fodder while the privileged profit. Such is war!
The unintended consequences of well-intentioned measures. Modern medicine/healthcare is littered with examples.
The treatment was a success, however, the patient died
Destroying the village in order to save it
What's the difference? Lest we forget what has happened during my lifetime.
Viruses and other pathogens are everywhere. We can not get rid of them all. We will destroy ourselves trying. We must put an end to this insanity and learn to coexist. This what we learn from the study of history and the study of medicine.
My next article will be about how we make the peace and learn to coexist with this virus. All viruses are "tricky", by the way!
Thank you, Dr Rushworth, and others, for your tireless efforts to bring not just the science to bear on this topic and others, but also common-sense.
I've heard from a Dr Andrew Montgomery in Auckland who has shared what he knows, this fobbing off is a massive problem. It is a problem in numerous areas of "official expertise", obviously the process by which these people get appointed is nothing to do with their competence versus others in their field who stay in frontline practice or research. I have known for years, that for example, all the officials advising governments about "housing affordability" are advising courses of policy that make the problem worse, not better; the evidence accumulating over years and decades, and reasoned arguments, cannot penetrate the wall around these people and their allies and useful idiots.
The "carpet bombing" analogy is the right one. Even more so, because when carpet bombing a target you can't identify accurately enough to use precision munitions, it is quite possible to still not actually take out the intended target. Perhaps it happens to be too deep underground; for example, the actual evil leadership of a movement might be in deep underground bunkers, so you could carpet-bomb an entire capital city and still not kill Saddam, or Osama, or whoever you think you are going after. You KNOW most of the "collateral damage" deaths are innocent, too.
The Covid-19 pandemic is very much like this because a cabal of entrenched incompetent officials globally imposed their own, wrong, judgement about how this…