It’s now been four years since health policy officials declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
What followed was months of lockdowns, school closures, shuttered businesses, banned religious gatherings, and a litany of mask, vaccine, and social distancing mandates.
UNICEF unveiled its "Pandemic Classroom," a model made up of 168 empty desks, each seat representing one million children living in countries where schools were almost entirely closed during the COVID pandemic lockdowns, at the U.N. Headquarters in New York City on March 2, 2021. Chris Farber/UNICEF via Getty Images
Marking that grim anniversary, medical and policy experts recently released a report assessing the government’s response to the pandemic. According to the report, that response included a few notable successes, along with a litany of “catastrophic errors” that have taken a severe toll on the population.
The allegedly short-term early measures quickly turned into a long-term expansion of government power.
“Even though the initial point of temporary lockdowns was to ’slow the spread,' which meant to allow hospitals to function without being overwhelmed, instead it rapidly turned into stopping COVID cases at all costs,” Dr. Scott Atlas, a physician, former White House Coronavirus Task Force member, and one of the authors of the report, said at a Friday press conference.
According to the report, one of the first errors was the unprecedented authority that public officials took upon themselves to enforce health mandates on Americans.
“Granting public health agencies extraordinary powers was a major error,” Steve Hanke, an economist and a co-author of the report, told The Epoch Times. “It, in effect, granted these agencies a license to deceive the public.”
The authors argue that authoritative measures were largely ineffective in fighting the virus, but often proved highly detrimental to public health.
The report quantifies the cost of lockdowns, both in terms of economic costs and the number of non-COVID excess deaths that occurred and continue to occur after the pandemic.
It estimates that the number of non-COVID excess deaths, defined as deaths in excess of normal rates, at about 100,000 per year in the United States.
“Lockdowns, schools closures, and mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels,” the report states.
Still, the authors are pessimistic about the future, and say that the same thing could easily happen again in the face of another pandemic.
“Unfortunately, the public health establishment is in the authoritarian model of the state,” Hanke said. “Their entire edifice is one in which the state, not the individual, should reign supreme.”
The authors are also critical of what they say was a multifaceted campaign in which public officials, the news media, and social media companies cooperated to frighten the population into compliance with COVID mandates.
They criticize the censorship that was rampant during the pandemic, and say that officials largely used it as “a pretext to enhance their power.”
Still, despite their pessimism that their recommendations will be followed, the authors made several proposals for future pandemics at the close of the report, in the hope that humanity won’t have to bear the same costs in the future.
—Joseph Lord and Kevin Stocklin
BIG FREE SPEECH CASES BEFORE SCOTUS
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two landmark freedom of speech cases this morning.
First, SCOTUS will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, which alleges that Biden administration officials engaged in what amounts to government-led censorship-by-proxy by pressuring social media companies to take down posts or suspend accounts for content it deemed as false or misleading.
Specifically, these allegedly censored posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lab leak theory, the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, the 2020 election, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other topics that were marked as disinformation, according to plaintiffs.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, one of the plaintiffs, told The Epoch Times that this amounted to “a vast censorship enterprise” that operates amid “a dystopian scenario, Orwellian in nature.”
Plaintiffs argue that federal officials pulled the strings of social media censorship by applying coercion, threats, and pressure on social media companies to suppress free speech.
Potentially thousands of protestors are expected to descend on the Supreme Court building today to call for SCOTUS to side against the Biden administration in a case that is seen by many as pivotal for the fate of free speech.
Administration officials, meanwhile, have argued that by simply speaking to social media companies, government officials didn’t violate core constitutional rights.
“Government officials do not violate the First Amendment when they speak in public or in private to inform, to persuade, or to criticize speech by others,” the U.S. government wrote in a brief.
Opponents of this position argue that the government shouldn’t be involved with what’s allowed on social media at all, and say that permitting them to continue “jawboning” tech platforms into removing content poses significant risks to the future of free speech in the U.S. as social media has increasingly become a key political forum.
A separate but closely related case, National Rifle Association (NRA) v. New York, will address a similar topic.
Specifically, following the Parkland, Florida shooting, former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services Maria Vullo encouraged financial institutions to sever ties with the NRA, offering them rewards and regulatory lenience in exchange for doing so.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union, a left-leaning civil liberties organization, has condemned Vullo’s actions.
Vullo’s lawyers said in a response to NRA allegations that “the ability to opine on important questions of public policy is vital to the work of many government officials.” They added that Vullo “did not violate the First Amendment by expressing her views regarding a national tragedy.”
—Joseph Lord
BIDEN BLAMES TRUMP FOR DERAILING BORDER DEAL, BUT WHAT ARE VOTERS SAYING?
The border crisis is putting Biden in a tough spot. His approval ratings have suffered due to the ongoing problem, but he’s now trying to leverage the failure of the Senate border bill to blame Trump for the crisis.
However, recent polls show that the president’s message doesn’t appear to be resonating with independent voters and many of his supporters, who are concerned about his failure to address the border issue.
Some Democratic voters are saying the president has waited far too long to visit the border and recognize the problem. And some are even considering voting for Trump in the upcoming election due to the border crisis.
Martin Aguilera, a Democrat from Texas, is one of them.
“I voted for President Biden. I thought he was going to be a good president. But I don’t see that,” he told The Epoch Times. “I’m a Democrat, but I’m going to vote for Trump.”
“My mother and father came from Mexico, and they came to work legally,” Aguilera said.
He’s upset about how his and other taxpayers’ money is being spent on illegal immigrants.
According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans name immigration as the top problem facing the nation. A Monmouth University poll also found that 53 percent of Americans support building a wall along the southern border and 61 percent support the “Remain in Mexico” program, both of which were championed by Trump.
Several polls also showed that Biden’s handling of immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border received very low ratings.
Pollsters and pundits predict that immigration and border issues will remain top worries for voters and that both parties will continue to play the blame game.
Trump will continue to campaign on his immigration policies, which he argues make America safer.
Meanwhile, Biden will keep promoting his bipartisan bill, blaming Trump for the problem. His ability to sway voters may decide the election outcome.
—Emel Akan
BOOKMARKS
The U.S. border crisis isn’t restricted to the southern border, according to a new report by The Epoch Times’ Allan Stein. Last year, Border Patrol encountered roughly ten times more illegal crossers through the United States’ border with Canada than it did in 2021.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been elected for a fifth term as president of the Russian Federation, The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports. The election has been criticized as unfair and illegitimate by the West.
Former President Donald Trump will impose a 100 percent tariff on Chinese cars made in Mexico and imported into the United States, The Epoch Times’ Naveen Athrappully reported. The plan is designed to counter Chinese firms working around tariffs by manufacturing in Mexico and then importing into the U.S. at more favorable rates.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot down Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) criticisms, The Epoch Times’ Joseph Lord reports. The prime minister, increasingly controversial among Israel’s Western allies, also refused to commit to holding new elections after the war.
