By DAVID REAGOR
Republican Candidate
Los Alamos County Council
On Oct. 8, 2020 the UK envoy to the World Health Organization, Dr. David Nabarro, said that all Coronavirus lockdowns should end. In an interview with The Spectator magazine he said, “Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”
In 9 months, political leaders have erased decades of progress reducing worldwide poverty. In the USA the disease has cost 200,000 lives and a total of 2 million life-years lost.
The lockdown has put almost 20 million people out of work. According to the CDC, a long-term bout of unemployment (>6months), takes a year off your life expectancy. A September article in the Revolver online magazine concludes that all the unemployment will lead to 8 million life-years lost due to the lockdown, far exceeding the public health effect of the disease and making little difference in the disease impact.
The lockdown fear campaigns contained failed predictions of the disease impact that were ten times worse than reality and this led to poor lockdown decisions.
In Great Barrington, MA a group of prominent scientists gathered for a conference on the Coronavirus and issued a declaration that lockdowns are disastrous for the public.
The declaration states:
They also conclude with the following recommendations:
Six thousand scientists and doctors have already signed this declaration. It is just based on standard public health measures, not subjective opinions.
On April 20, 2020 in the Los Alamos Daily Post I wrote:
“The path forward is then clear: We just need to protect high-risk groups with voluntary self-isolation, and the economy can reopen. In fact, that was all we ever needed to do, but the results were not clear until now. Just open everything, stores, recreational facilities, restaurants, and services. Social distancing should still be used, and services that require a personal spacing less than six feet, such as dentists, beauty parlors, and barbers, should require appropriate protective equipment. People with COVID19 should still be quarantined to slow the rate of spread and prevent an overwhelming burden on the health care system. This restart is actually good for the high-risk groups, as ending the shutdown will build up immunity in the lower risk population and speed the end of their self-isolation. The whole shutdown was a mistake and now must be immediately ended. If the governor does not act, then the county council should end it themselves.”
Six months have passed since that opinion and it is clear now that all the experts have issued more eloquent versions of the same policy. The only holdouts are democratic party politicians: school boards that won’t open schools, local governments that won’t protect their local businesses, governors that use fear and emergency powers to confiscate your rights, and bunkered-up presidential candidates that are not as brave as our waitresses. They make no sense and harm workers for political purposes.
The time to act is well past and the state legislature needs leaders who will stand up to this Governor. Elect David Hampton to the State house and Diamante Storment to the State Senate. The only way to end the lockdown is through the ballot box.
Editor’s note: Readers are encouraged to fact check statements made in letters and opinion pieces.
