Enough conspiracy, let’s stick to data and science to end the lockdowns, Part 2

A Procession of Flagellants – Francisco De Goya 1819

In part 1 I talked about two COVID-19 / Great Reset themed conspiracy theories that were spreading in Canada and why embracing or amplifying them made lockdown skeptics look like lunatics who could more easily be dismissed.

There is no shortage of science and data to challenge the flawed policies of the governments whose basic playbook has been: lockdown, close economy, print money, ignore data, and double down.

This may be a good time to quickly outline my arc of how my views on the pandemic shifted over time.

My journey from Zombie Apocalypse to lockdown skeptic

I began monitoring the reports of a new virus emerging out of China in January. On January 23rd I emailed a friend advising him to go out the next day and pick up some N95 masks. By the first week of February I was stocking up on food, medical supplies, cash, and weapons while advising friends and family to do the same. I was bracing for a full breakdown of the global supply chain and a collapse of the global economy.

Based on early reported numbers of an R0 around 3.1 with an IFR of 5%, it looked like we’d see doubling times of 15 days. By March all three levels of government, city, province and national were reporting case rates and fatalities daily. I put together a spreadsheet and using those numbers as a model I forecasted Toronto to have 1.7M cases by the end of June. If the IFR really was 5%, or even 3%, it would mean between 51,000 and 136,000 fatalities.

This was terrifying, so as the world started locking down, it seemed to make sense. In fact I was wondering why we were still allowing inbound flights from hotspots like China? There were rumblings from The Clerisy like the New York Times that blocking flights from China would be racist. This was the early innings of the politicization that was to follow.

But then, a curious thing happened. The rate of change in infections and fatalities started coming down, drastically.

By June it was clear to anybody following the data that this was, at least for now, largely in the rearview mirror. I had been in touch with an old friend who now ran IT for several hospitals. In January he was trying to get administrators to take COVID seriously. By May, they had built 4 additional ICU wards across their hospitals and they were sitting empty. Worse, resources were being denied to other medical uses. He was beginning to wonder if maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as we both originally thought.

Then, over the summer despite the clear slowdown in the severity of the pandemic, the policy response to it intensified. And then it all became political. Questioning the efficacy of continuing the lockdowns became associated with being alt-right. Pro-Trump. Or worse. A Narrative War ensued. If you questioned official policy, you got deplatformed. I documented numerous instances of this over on AxisOfEasy.

Click on the link for the rest.