Branch COVIDIANS

Branch COVIDIANS

Branch COVIDians (aka COVIDIOTS), are the enthusiastic Karen Enforcers of policies that they've been told work by the DNC or their media, but demonstrate no actual domain knowledge of the problems or skepticism (critical thinking skills) to back it up. They are the Dunning-Kruger's who believe the evidence against masks or shutdowns are conclusive: "the science is settled" when in reality, both are still hotly debated in scientific circles and there's as much evidence against both as effective as for. When cornered, instead of discussing the topic, they usually attack people, or post links to their favorite non-scientific source, or rarely, to a junk study that's easy to debunk.

While I sometimes argue with these people, the point is not to change their mind (their views demonstrate that they're not open to the nuances of reality), it's to get them to show to others that their consensus demanding tantrums are not based on nuance or reality, but based on a desire to conform to what they've been told to think (usually by the far left).

Shutdowns

If the COVID Shutdown worked, there would be cases where states or countries that didn't shutdown would outperform those that did. But the facts are there are many examples to the contrary:

• California shut down earlier and harder than Texas. California has more cases, more deaths, and a worse curve than Texas.
• In fact seven states never issues shut down orders at all: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. All of them outperformed California or New York which had shutdowns.
• There are many countries that never did lockdowns: Belarus, Brazil (Roraima, Rondonia), Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Malawi, Tanzania, Nicaragua, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Timor-Leste, Uruguay. Many of those countries well outperformed countries that did full lockdowns.
• There's even more evidence that some that did late lockdowns, or didn't lock down as hard, did NOT always under-perform those that did it earlier or harder.

Masks

Masks for stopping COVID defies science. Some bad studies claim to show through inference that masks work, because a few place had lower case loads and wore masks -- but they ignore other better reasons for fewer cases and ignore outliers that prove them wrong. Other better studies/papers contradict the efficacy (especially before the politics of COVID), and credible places call them more placebos or "talisman's" -- good for politics or confidence but little else. If the cloth masks worked against COVID, then cities, states or countries with masks mandates would outperform those that didn't. You can cherry pick places that had fewer cases and mask mandates (but it's nearly impossible to isolate it to masks as the cause and not other things), and other places that were disastrous despite mask mandates (like Belgium) which proves that they are not a prime contributor to slowing the disease. We know that most people that got COVID were mask wearers. (The CDC says >85%, but other studies show U.S. compliance is closer to 93% and we still had a second outbreak). There is a lot of evidence that masks may actually exacerbate issues: touching, talking louder, getting closer and repeating yourself, false security, moist place for virus to survive, all contribute to increased risk, not decreases. more...

Conclusion

So I’m not saying that masks or shutdowns don’t work. I’m saying that evidence is they don’t work enough to make a difference over other factors.

Science doesn't get to cherry pick examples that fit their agenda: that's politics. If any state/country didn't shut down or mask mandate, and has lower case loads then scientists don't pretend that Shutdowns/Masks alone cure the problem (or are even that effective). Maybe it helps, maybe not. But it certainly doesn't help more than other factors or there would be no cases where places without would be even close to those that did. Yet the opposite is true.

These are unproven tools (superstitions until the hard evidence is in), and not a very effective one -- with HUGE costs to the economy or culture. And that's before you start factoring in other deaths that were caused or contributed to by the lockdown or masks.

So lockdowns and masks are debated for good reasons: we don't have clear evidence that they work. Those screaming that if you don't follow the lockdown, but ignore essential workers, or protestors, Politicians, and others that ignored the lockdown, then you can write them off as ignorant, polemics, or just idiots.

📚 References COVID The Coronavirus is named after the fact that under a microscope it looks like the surface of the sun, with lots of little protrusions and bumps. These are series of diseases, but the one everyone is talking about for now, is the Chinese (Wuhan COVID-19 for COrona VIrus Disease circa 2019, or SARS-CoV-2) that's going pandemic. While the CDC, WHO and FDA all blew their response, we've never seen a more effective response to a pandemic, and the U.S. outperformed most of the world in objective metrics. But as to be expected, partisan Democrats and their media never let an opportunity go to waste: to politicize, polarize, divide and undermine the American economy and people. COVID Shutdown The shutdown was enacted under the guise that we needed to "bend the curve" and prevent a caseload surge that would overwhelm our healthcare and have millions die waiting for ventilators. What we got was the stock market to drop 30%, GDP to drop 40%, Trillions in debt , and 30%+ unemployment (including healthcare worker laid off for lack of work). The COVID Models were off by 4-10x or more, and we never neared capacity, even in the worst hit places. We had at least twice the ventilators per capita as Germany at the start and was surging manufacturing to have many times that in months. Oh, and ventilators turned out to be the worst way to treat it (with 80% dying anyways). As long as the economy was still alive and Trump might get re-elected, they are prepared to burn the whole economy down for their political ends: creating a dependency class of unemployed dependents is what they wanted all along. The most effective mitigation is the one that does the least harm, but keeps from destroying lives: the Swedish Model. The Shutdown does the most harm possible. Despite experts from top Universities saying End the Shutdown the anti-liberty left, doesn't care about the lives they're ruining.