2021-01-13

Reefer Lockdown Madness continues


Alberta is (senselessly) remaining in lockdown for (at least) two weeks longer than the three weeks promised back in December. You know, the ones that were supposed to expire earlier this week.

Which itself is curious: as the meme above says, if lockdowns worked and reduced the cases then why do we need to lockdown longer because cases aren't really going down? And if the lockdowns aren't effective at reducing the cases then why are we still bothering with them?

It's the second question at this point that will need to be asked, because it's clear now that the lockdowns flat out aren't working. And don't take piddling examples like the lockdowns in Ontario or New York, look at the real serious lockdowns in places like the United Kingdom, Belgium, or Bolivia.

Bolivia? Yes. As of September 2nd they had the second-strictest lockdowns in the world, and they still had almost 5000 Wuhan Flu deaths. 

Over in Europe, Austria had an extremely tight lockdowns (slightly relaxed over Christmas, take that Jason Kenney) and yet their deaths per million double Canada's. Belgium (partly due to too many Muslims) was hit early and hard by the Wuhan Flu with a big increase in deaths starting around October 11th and peaking November 10th. Viro Fascists will point to the lockdown being eased in September, apparently forgetting that the "eased" lockdown was still stricter than anything in Canada or the United States: while facemasks were no longer mandatory outdoors (!?) you were still allowed contact only with 5 people, with gatherings of 10 or more indoor or outdoor all banned. 

Back down to South America, Columbia has another one of the region's strictest lockdowns, and to what effect? From early June to early September their deaths continued to climb, then dropping slightly to a plateau from mid-September to mid-December, only to be climbing again. Yet again, their COVID restrictions make Alberta's look like a nothingburger, and an early September relaxing of their restrictions coincided with a levelling of their caseload and death count.

Which brings us, natch, to the UK. I wrote over Christmas about the Calgary Police cunts who won Mark Steyn's "Brit Wanker Copper of the Day" awards, but the very name of the award speaks to the UK constabulary who took their newfound powers over the citizenry to heart from the earliest days of "two weeks to flatten the curve". To wit, the British have been under severe lockdown since late March. Indeed, back in May:

It's worth noting that England far more than Canada or even most (if not all!) U.S. States has extreme lockdown rules.

And how has that worked out for them? Yeah, kind of poorly. New cases levelled off in April, but then by early October skyrocketed, with deaths recently returning to their April levels. And yet their strict lockdowns apparently did no good. The relaxed lockdown (still relatively strict!) that started on July 4th of all days was basically the start of a 4 month Wuhan Flu vacation: cases didn't climb until early October with deaths a week or so behind (note: not three weeks as the Viro Fascists always call for). By October 31st the UK was back into insanely strict lockdown territory and the end result has been...wait this can't be right: cases and deaths keep climbing (yet still -- still -- far below what the "models" were suggesting: Boris was told "thousands of deaths a day" but the UK seems to be peaking this week with 1300 daily deaths). The four week lockdown from October 31st by the way is still on to this very day, with apparently middling results.

So this, as it always does, swings back to Sweden. Sweden of course has been locked down, just less so than (almost) everybody else: even in May of 2020 there were limits on the size of gatherings and capacity restrictions for businesses. In late November Sweden instituted stricter lockdowns, a month later even stricter stricter lockdowns, and now even crazier lockdowns. Yet starting in early November cases and deaths started to spike (despite, one notes, no policy changes related to lockdowns), and neither the November 24th lockdowns nor the December 24th lockdowns (remember: even Viro Fascists claim that 3 weeks later you should see benefits) have stemmed the tide in Sweden. Yet their September and October numbers were the envy of the world. Again the key point is no correlation between lockdown measures and cases/deaths.

(As a brief aside, isn't it weird that Sweden counts aren't updated daily, which causes the fancy graphs to all show false spikes? Going 3 days with counts of zero make the "254 cases today" more like 85 cases per day. Just another way that the data is manipulated to impact how you think a country is doing)


As Alberta continues into a costly and harmful lockdown, the question remains: why are we bothering? It's a purely political gesture: lockdowns have no impact on cases or deaths, but cases and deaths do cause far-left media outlets and bleating liberals to demand further and further restrictions (just look at Doug Ford's new curfew that isn't called a curfew, an entirely manufactured media outrage that now has determined public policy). Just like how Calgary and Edmonton had mask bylaws since August which had no impact on Wuhan Flu transmission, lockdowns are just another example of Politician's Logic.