Don’t Be Fooled by Tom Woods
A response to: Death By Lockdown
I definitely do agree that there are significant harmful effects of lockdown, however it seems like the country has got to such a polarized place that most people seem to have a combined position on masks and restrictions on social interactions/lockdowns. There is a reasonable amount of evidence from Taiwan and Japan (and now supported by the CDC) that widespread mask wearing does significantly slow the spread of the disease in a way that could reduce the need for measures that are more restrictive on personal freedom, so that if the two issues could be addressed separately it might yield some positive results. This is happening in some cases where states that were previously ardently on the side of no restrictions are being forced to rethink their position because they are now being hit by levels of cases that they cannot ignore, such as Utah.
This polarization definitely affects both sides of the debate, as it does not make much sense to me when people start getting angry about not wearing masks outdoors with plenty of distance between people, but out of respect for others and due to having very high risk individuals in my quarantine circle, I lean on the side of caution.
Politicization is evident in some of the points Tom Woods makes. I like when he has linked to reputable, fact-checked sources which provide useful insights on the lockdowns that have been put in place, but I disagree with the conclusions he draws on mask wearing and with his statement that “Meanwhile, almost no American hospitals were actually “overwhelmed” during 2020, despite what your Facebook friends told you.” Hospitals have been and still are overwhelmed. This is what I have been told first hand from friends and family working in hospitals in and around Los Angeles, it has also been reported repeatedly by news sources including NPR, which Woods uses to make the opposite argument:
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/934718049/shutdown-order-causes-kerfuffle-in-el-paso
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/us/covid-hospitalizations.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/hospitals-overwhelmed-as-u-s-sees-record-new-coronavirus-cases/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/16/pandemic-states-virus-rebound-429753
Woods focuses on the fact that many of his sources which highlight the negative effects of the lockdown are from the UK. The current conservative government is the party of the newspapers The Telegraph and the Daily Mail that he references. The conservatives would prefer to be on the side of no restrictions, but the country, under their governance, has just begun a more restrictive lockdown than almost anything that has been put in place in the US because they know that their hospitals will be overwhelmed and would lead to thousands of more deaths.
Decency should not be political.
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
