David Catron
The most prominent physicians on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, have generally managed to outmaneuver members of the media who have attempted to inveigle them into undercutting the president by endorsing a nationwide lockdown. Birx insists that Trump trusts the American people to follow current mitigation strategies, and Fauci has maintained a similarly diplomatic position. The latter, however, was finally duped into saying something stupid last Thursday during a Today Show interview when asked if he agreed with Surgeon General Jerome Adams that recently released White House coronavirus guidelines should be interpreted as a national stay-at-home order:

Well yeah, if you look at what’s in those 30-day recommendations of the guidelines, that’s essentially what it is. I mean I know it’s difficult, but we’re having a lot of suffering, a lot of death, this is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.

The good doctor’s deployment of the term “inconvenient” betrays an almost childlike naïveté concerning the profoundly negative effect a nationwide lockdown would have on the day-to-day lives of most Americans. The devastation wrought by the statewide lockdowns that have already been imposed across most of the country will take years to recover from if they are maintained until the end of April. Moreover, the damage will not be limited to an economic contraction resulting in bankruptcy and high unemployment. It will have a profound effect on public health. It will quite literally kill people pursuant to increased incidences of suicide, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer.  …


Read more here: https://spectator.org/a-mitigation-disaster/