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When the COVID virus was identified, health officials had a responsibility to recommend action(s) to protect citizens. Elected representatives, the President and Governors, are tasked with deciding which of the health recommendations they felt were most appropriate for their citizens. One would hope the decisions would be made after reviewing the potential risk versus rewards of each option. The federal government opted for a nationwide lockdown. Their goal was to contain the pandemic. It is clear they made their decision without thought for the suffering their policy decisions would rain down on the American people. I know it has been a while, but do you remember the initial commentary? We were told there would be a 15 day lockdown of the entire country to ensure hospitals wouldn’t be overrun with COVID patients. They said this was necessary to “flatten the curve”. It is certainly understandable why, until we had a better understanding of the virus, the government erred on the side of safety. The curve has been flat for well over a year. Now, as we approach the 2 year anniversary of the pandemic, Americans are still facing draconian threats from our overreaching, controlling, government.

We were repeatedly told by elected representatives, and bureaucrats, that they would follow the science. What they meant was, they would follow the science so long as it agreed with their narrative. They meant they would tell us only that part of the science that was meant to frighten us. The complicit media updated us daily with the number of new cases, and new deaths. Each update was delivered with increasing dread. Their updates continued until the number of deaths began to fall precipitously. Then the media became inexplicably unwilling to report that things were getting better. Each new variant was reported as deadlier than the last. To report things were improving would have reduced some of the population’s anxiety. For that reason they wouldn’t do it. Anxious, frightened, people are easier to control.

We are aware of the total number of deaths caused thus far by the COVID virus in the United States. (The number is almost certainly inflated by those who seek to scare us. But that is a topic for a later article). What is not so obvious is the number of deaths that occurred, not directly from COVID, yet can be attributed to “collateral damage”. The sad truth is we will never be able to quantify the suffering and deaths that resulted from the many terrible, and plotted, decisions made by elected representatives and bureaucrats.

I’ll examine the most obvious one first. Because of obfuscation and corruption in at least four states we will never know how many of our beloved parents and grandparents died needlessly in nursing homes. One of the first things we learned about COVID was that those at greatest risk of dying were the elderly. Still, Governors Whitmer in Michigan, Murphy in New Jersey, Cuomo in New York, and Wolf in Pennsylvania, forced nursing home administrators to admit/readmit residents who had COVID, back into nursing homes. Given what we knew at the time their decisions were despicable. Their decisions were death sentences for our most vulnerable senior citizens. While we will never know how many, it is certain the number of our deceased relatives in these four states alone total in the tens of thousands. For different offenses, Cuomo has resigned. If the other three Governors had any integrity they would do the same.

There were approximately 141,000 deaths due to suicide and drug overdoses in the United States in 2020. That is equal to 140% of the population of Green Bay, Wisconsin! It is a 16% increase over 2019. As of 8/2020 the CDC reported that 1 in 4 young people have had suicidal thoughts since the beginning of the year. Substance abuse reached all time highs. More than 40% of respondents said the crisis prompted mental health and behavioral problems. There are indications that 2021 may break all of the above records. I won’t pretend the increase is solely because of the lockdown. At the same time it would be absurd to suggest it had nothing to do with the increase. The loss of life savings, livelihood, and the long period of isolation, clearly had an impact on the above.

Another area we won’t be able to measure is the cessation of non-urgent elective surgeries, and procedures. Elective procedures included anything that didn’t need to be done to save someone’s life. Such things as breast cancer screenings, colonoscopies, etc. were eliminated. Those, and many other, procedures were banned from March to the end of May 2020 in all hospitals. By the end of May, 30 states had resumed the procedures. That means that 20 states did not. The longer a disease goes undetected, the harder it is to cure. Sometimes it becomes incurable. If cancer is diagnosed as stage 3 or 4 today, it may have been diagnosed as stage 1, 2, or 3, if detected last year. There are a lot of people who believe the government and media scare tactics so deeply they won’t get routine tests done even today. Because of that, one would expect the total number of cancer diagnosis in 2020, for example, will probably be lower than 2019. It is not a question of if people will die, but how many, because they were prevented from potential early detection. The government was, in effect, deciding who would live and who would die.

Another nonquantifiable area of collateral damage is child abuse. Multiple studies have shown a direct correlation between unemployment and child abuse. When unemployment goes up, so does the incidence of child abuse. The National Child Abuse Hotline reported a 31% increase in calls in 2020 over 2019. Calls in April and May of 2020 were up 17% and 43% respectively versus 2019. Pediatricians reported treating more serious injuries, and an increase in fatalities all over the nation. This didn’t need to happen. Had our politicians followed the science, our kids would have been in school. It is estimated that between 20% and 25% of child abuse is detected by teachers and other school employees. For well over a year our children were kept out of their classrooms. The injuries our children suffered went undetected until the severity of the injuries required them to be taken to doctors and ERs. The lack of concern for the most vulnerable among us is detestable!

Follow the science? We have known since last spring that young people are the least likely to get, or die from, COVID. The CDC said the safest place for children was in school. But the teacher’s unions decided to keep their clients away from kids anyway. In that teacher’s unions are the largest donors to the Democratic Party, their demands were met. Another case of politics before public health. The children who are hurt the most are those from poor neighborhoods, and those who were behind to begin with. We will never know how much our children have been harmed by being out of school for a year and a half. We can only hope the damage can be repaired.

It is all about control. Our President promised there would be no vaccine mandates. Then there are. All government employees are required to get the jab to remain employed. Oops wait. Almost all government employees. Members of Congress, their staffs, and members of the USPS were exempted. Control. In the middle of a pandemic he sees fit to fire nurses and doctors who refuse to get vaccinated. He couldn’t care less if they have natural immunity. Forget that the science says that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity. Control. In the middle of a historic rise in crime he fires police officers who refuse to get the jab. He’s not interested if they have natural immunity. Control. He requires vaccination for citizens yet allows illegals, by the hundreds of thousands, to enter the country without any idea if they are vaccinated. Worse, he sends them all over the country to live among we, mostly vaccinated, citizens. Control. The government only puts politics ahead of public health when it is trying to increase its power and control. Only when it wants to convert citizens into subjects.

We are fast approaching the 2 year anniversary of the initial lockdown. Have we learned anything? If you are clear headed you have learned that this whole exercise has way more to do with politics and control than it does with public health. The lockdown closed every nonessential business in the U.S. for a while. We couldn’t get our hair cut or dine in restaurants. Barbers had their licenses revoked if they continued to cut hair. Restaurant owners were arrested if they refused to close. We couldn’t buy garden seeds, or underwear. But lottery outlets and liquor stores were allowed to remain open? We were told to wear masks, then to not wear masks, then to wear masks. As early as last summer/fall, long before there vaccines, a handful of doctors were successfully treating COVID with a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and vitamin D. These doctors, from all over the U.S., reported they had successfully cured hundreds of patients. They were ridiculed by Dr. Fauci, received catcalls from the media, and were banned from social media. Follow the science? Hardly! The teachers union in Los Angeles said it wouldn’t allow teachers back into the classroom until the police were defunded, there was Medicare for all, and a ban on new licenses for charter schools was approved. None of these have anything to do with the health of either teachers or students.

The economic costs of the lockdowns were relatively foreseeable. We knew there would be layoffs, business closings, unemployment, etc. These things were necessary to bring more Americans to their knees. To the government those who were hurt, or will be hurt, are nothing more than collateral damage.

I hope you found this post informative and/or interesting. If you did please tell your friends. Thank you, Bob