When I posted "lock them up" or whatever I wrote, that was obviously meant to be hyperbolic. Although I would try Fauci for fraud, among other crimes he has clearly been implicated in.
I assume based on how literally you interpreted what I wrote, and just based generally on how you seem to write and communicate, that you're about 14-16 years old. And that's fine. I'm going to go easy on you, for that reason.
But you should know some background on me, though. The methods behind the modeling used to justify these lockdowns were the bread and butter of my academic background. You should assume that when I am speaking on this subject, I am doing so from the position of someone who (1) has expertise that Anthony Fauci does not (he has no background in statistical modeling whatsoever); and (2) someone who has familiarized themselves with essentially all of the relevant literature behind each of the competing models used by state-level and international COVID forecasts.
I had this dialogue with another user who has, I think, now come to see things my way. He's a little older than I think you are, though, and he's pretty smart. If you think you want to dive into the deep end, however, that's ok too. But if you're going to debate with me about the merits of what I'm saying, you're going to have to do better than "the media said [x]."
There is hard data out there which obviates every aspect of the initial model used to justify all of the lockdowns and every copycat model to follow. The original model was designed by Neil Ferguson. It's called the Imperial Model. You can google "Ferguson Imperial Model" to locate the publication he submitted to the British Government in March 2020. While the original source code he used (in a language that is about as practically useful as ancient aramaic, and is equivalent to that by current standards) he has failed to release, you can find the revised and corrected code which is still disastrously incompetent on GitHub. The story behind that fiasco is a scandal in itself.
You must read, carefully, what Ferguson claimed would happen in the world without lockdowns as he recommended (to either mitigate or suppress, they're different and you need to understand why and how). In the absence of any lockdown, Ferguson set a timeframe for how quickly COVID would spread and what impact that would have on medical resources as they existed in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Most of the world locked down, but some places did not. Among them are Sweden and Belarus. Likewise, other states like Florida also never 'really' locked down; and only imposed minimal restrictions for a limited period of time that in no way come close to what Ferguson advised. This means you have at least three data-sets against which to test Ferguson's model's assumptions; i.e., did he predict correctly? Turns out he did not. To just chart a few of his egregious errors, Ferguson assumed R-0 factors (i.e., how contagious is this thing, based on how many people any one person with COVID is likely to infect) which had no basis in reality, he failed to distinguish susceptibility to infection by age group (even though it was amply known before he published that he needed to) and assumed universal susceptibility where data were already published sufficient to falsify that claim.
Any academic who was not out to engage in fraud would have at least endeavored to recalibrate his model based on improved training data derived from the actual virus. He never did. He ignored data-sets that were inconsistent with his fantastically absurd predictions and misrepresented the significance of data he had. Ferguson published end of Q1 2020. He made predictions for Q2-Q4, and beyond through the end of the pandemic. By the middle of Q2 (so, end of May 2020) it was clear the exponential growth he predicted was not going to happen. The cases just weren't rising fast enough, and they never would.
So, why did the United States (in democrat-ran states), Canada, England, New Zealand and Australia maintain their lockdowns? I have my theories. But evidence in the form of data to support their efficacy does not exist, unless you gerrymander the data by arbitrary criteria. But even if you did do that, there exists no data that actually supports that lockdowns worked. Why, you might ask? Because the virus spread in the exact same way, no matter whether there was a lockdown or not. Said another way, there is no evidence that lockdowns had any effect on either (a) rate of community spread or (b) fatality rates (based on either the case-fatality rate or the infection fatality rate).
If Ferguson was right, then the rate of case growth in Sweden should have been not just a little ... but precipitously higher than the case growth rate in a country like the United Kingdom. Except the opposite happened. Likewise, if Ferguson was right, then at least some metric of fatality rates from COVID in Sweden should have been greater than in the United Kingdom. There too, just the opposite happened.
Why might this be? How could Ferguson have been so profoundly wrong? The answer is simple: he's a complete fucking fraud. Which is why no one in his field took him seriously before this. He was laughed out of the Obama administration in a "thanks but no thanks; don't call us we'll call you" type situation when he tried to pitch his model for Obama's pandemic prep measures. So what was different between then and now? One answer comes to mind. Trump was against lockdowns. A scientist with a fringe theory said otherwise. Behold, the "follow-the-science" opposition. To this end, anyone who disagreed got their career ended because the media and left took this as an "us versus them" type battle. Science, evidence and data had nothing whatsoever to do with any of their "safety measures," for if they did they'd have changed course by May 2020.
But Coal, you're the only person I've heard saying that! You can't possibly be right!
It pains me tho know that that's probably true, because you likely have only heard what has been reported to you in the media --- which have silenced those who disagree, and who published at the same time as Ferguson --- as steadfast voices of reason amid alarmist paranoia from idiots in media and the political left who were hell-bent on hanging every single COVID death around Tump's neck. Of course, they called Trump a racist for even talking about COVID in January and February 2020, when it was beyond obvious this was going to be a global pandemic. Videos still exist on YouTube, by some miracle, of Nancy Pelosi encouraging all in February 2020 to go celebrate Chinese New Year.
There are thousands of others (find their names in the Great Barrington Declaration), but two names you should know are John Ionidis and Jay Battacharya. Both are at Stanford's Department of Public Health. Ionidis is not just "a" but the expert in this area. He has all but vitiated everything Ferguson ever wrote. And when you read and understand the actual evidence behind any of these lockdowns, and comprehend how lacking it is or ever was, only then will you appreciate how even proposing them was sheer and complete insanity.
no, I explained why it was sheer insanity.
You did no such thing. Though you may think you have. You have not.
Anyone who wants to save lives should imprisoned. And we should protect freedom by taking away people's freedom. Do you think that this isn't crazy?
When you expand the power of the state to ruin people's lives, livelihoods and steal their liberty based on a self-evident lie; you are a criminal and must be imprisoned.
And I mean, none of the covid restrictions are new powers of the government.
Every word of this sentence is false. There is not now, nor has there ever been, precedent for the lockdowns. And do not conflate masks and lockdowns. They are not the same thing and do not involve the same issues.
