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No Words Can Express the Stupidity of the Lockdowns

By June 2, 2020Commentary

I have run out of the adjectives to describe the idiotic responses to the epidemic.  Those responses have contributed greatly to the current civil unrest.  As I have mentioned before, perhaps the most important achievement of economic resurgence of the last few years has been a substantial reduction in unemployment among low-income and minority persons, accompanied by significant increases in real income.  In a flash, the extreme business shutdowns took tens of millions of these jobs away.  As is always the case, the burden of those shutdowns fell very heavily and most heavily upon these low-income and minority workers.  Added to that were stay-at-home orders that have kept young people out of school and everyone cooped up indoors with nothing meaningful to do for weeks.  Our genius leaders in Minneapolis even kept young men from playing basketball or other sports.   That mounting economic and social frustration was substantial fuel for turning protest to rioting and looting.

There never was a reason to shut everything down, there simply was no risk to the general public that warranted that course of action and a competent government would have targeted and protected the obviously vulnerable sub-populations.  The only thing stupider than putting the extreme lockdowns in place, would be retaining them.  There is no, not one shred of data or science that supports them.  Can anyone doubt now that they were a panicked, hysterical over-reaction taken as a result of pathetic public health “expert” advice and incompetent, cowardly politicians unable to engage in good decision-making.

We need to completely open the country’s economy up right now.  The rioting has caused further damage and strains and the lockdowns have deprived the country, and particularly states and local governments, of the revenues that they need to repair infrastructure, housing and business damage.  We must immediately do everything we can to restore low-income persons’ jobs.  We have to give people a sense of hope again.

Join the discussion 2 Comments

  • Harley says:

    I agree with every thought in this post. I understand how you could run out of adjectives to describe all this silliness.

    480 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote “The Prince”, a guide for effective leadership.

    “He who becomes a Prince through the favor of the people should always keep on good terms with them; which it is easy for him to do, since all they ask is not to be oppressed.” Clearly the orders from Walz have moved into the “oppressive” column, and, if he was politically astute, he should be planning a quick retreat from those policies. He should know his people are frustrated, weary, oppressed, and need to be unleashed.

    Walz likes to mention he used to be a HS football coach. With his team down on the scoreboard and less than two minutes in the game, he should know he doesn’t have time to mount an 80-yard, 12 play, ground-attack drive. It’s time for a Hail Mary, a bold play, a long pass down the field, i.e., to bring his orders to an end and get Minnesota back to work.

  • DuluthGuy says:

    I couldn’t agree more.

    Since we haven’t had massive deaths among those that were out protesting a month ago or so ago in places like St Paul and Lansing, I assume the governors, media members, etc will all be apologizing for calling the protesters selfish? And I assume that the “protesters” that are out now in cities around the country are selfish as well? I really hope some good lessons will be learned from the whole COVID-19 fiasco, but let’s just say I’m not optimistic.

    You’d think that Gov Walz would look next door to Wisconsin (a state with similar population and demographics to Minnesota) and see that there is no spike in COVID-19 cases since the State Supreme Court did their job, and realize that it’s time to open everything in Minnesota. But nope, he’d rather be stubborn and never have to admit that he was wrong. And long before Wisconsin opened up, he could have looked to populated areas in South Dakota (Sioux Falls) and Iowa (Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, etc) and seen that there was no spike in COVID-19 cases.

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