The Verdict Is In: Freedom Wins

We had already noted that Sweden was thoroughly vindicated for eschewing lockdowns, masks, and overall stringency during the pandemic.  Just like Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and even Brazil did similar to or better than their stricter neighbors in terms of cumulative all cause deaths as well.  

"But America is different!" the lockdown zealots speciously claim.  We are somehow too affluent, too spoiled, too poor, too unequal, too racist, too diverse, too multicultural, too fractured, too lazy, too workaholic, too unhealthy, too coddled, too independent, too dependent, too immature, too precocious, too low-trust, too credulous, too individualistic, too herd mentality, too smart for our own good, too stupid, too educated, too uneducated, too fragile, too many problems already, too (insert favorite adjective here, the more contradictory the better) to be able to even compare ourselves to other countries, let alone copy even in part what the world's few remaining free countries did without disastrous consequences resulting.  Or something. 

Of course, in this country, twelve US states (nearly a quarter of all states) basically eschewed lockdowns as well, most famously South Dakota, and several additional states were either much less stringent than the national average and/or only locked down briefly before opening up and lifting restrictions fairly quickly, most famously Florida, Georgia, and Texas.

And yet, now a new 50-state study finds that among US states and DC, less stringent states were not significantly different from more stringent ones in terms of health outcomes, but they did do significantly better on economic outcomes and education outcomes as well as overall outcomes.  For example, when adjusted for age and pre-existing conditions, Florida and California (with polar opposite policies) ended up being within error bounds of each other and the national average in terms of death rates.  And as we have noted earlier, this was not the only American study that arrived at similar (if not even more damning) conclusions either, namely that lockdowns and related restrictions were essentially all pain and no gain.  Thus it looks like freedom wins hands down, both in the USA as well as abroad. 

Let America be America again!

UPDATE:  Yet another international study found that not only were lockdowns, overall stringency, and jabs associated with higher death rates, but also HCQ and IVM were associated with lower death rates, just as the late Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko famously predicted back in 2020.  In a world of Lysenkos, be a Zelenko.