Lockdowns Have Been a Disaster
By any sensible calculation, the principal worldwide covid damage has come not from the virus, but from governments’ efforts to suppress it, principally through lockdowns. Dr. Ari Joffe attempts to quantify that disproportion. Joffe is a distinguished Canadian pediatrician, having recently been named one of the ten most influential researchers in the field of pediatric critical care.
Dr. Joffe itemizes some of the adverse consequences of shutdowns:
Public health leaders are medical experts and are necessary advisors in formulating a response to the pandemic. However, their expertise is not sufficient to make policy decisions. There are trade-offs to any decision made, and preventing COVID-19 cases, deaths, and overwhelmed hospital capacity are not the only factors to consider. Unfortunately, the response perspective of controlling a single disease has had devastating, often unequally distributed, collateral effects.