If the world can learn one thing from the COVID chaos in China, it is that “locking down does not work,” said health care policy adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.
“This is a massive human rights violation,” Atlas said.
‘Flies in the Face of Common Sense’
The policy reversal that came without a transition plan accompanied an exponential surge of cases that was quickly overwhelming the country’s health system.“I think that it’s very important to recognize that,” he said, adding, “The disease was spreading intensively because I believe the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease, and I believe that the Chinese authorities have decided strategically that that for them is not the best option anymore.”
The Chinese numbers, Atlas said, are “absurd” to think of.
“This just completely flies in the face of common sense,” he said.
“No one should believe the counting method that is reported by China,” he added, noting that to “save face and justify their reckless harmful lockdowns,” the regime would “necessarily have to say they had fewer deaths.”
“I don’t know how anyone would think that they have transparency on how they’re counting.”
Lockdown Success ‘Fantasy’
That the regime has been “lying about the numbers” from the beginning, Atlas said, poses a troubling question.In January 2020, after suppressing whistleblower doctors and journalists trying to sound warning about the emerging virus, China became the world’s first country to shut down cities in response to COVID-19 spiraling out of control. As the virus spread, the lockdown method that Beijing insisted was effective was then quickly copied by other countries around the world, such as the United States.
“There was this false belief that somehow China had ‘beaten the virus.’ This was a completely absurd lie—a fantasy.”
It was a lie that Atlas believes policymakers “blind to science” bought without question.
“It’s one thing that a society like China imposes draconian policies on its public, because that’s what totalitarian societies do,” he said. “But it’s another thing—it’s extraordinary that governments of supposedly ‘free societies’ would attempt to impose these sorts of policies on the public—and even more sad is the acquiescence of people to such policies.”
“It’s a horrible indictment of American leadership to emulate a totalitarian society like China.”
Separate from the fact that locking down can’t get rid of a virus, Atlas sees two things that the world hasn’t grasped about the CCP’s “inhumane policies": “the true failure of their policies and the massive harms on their own people.”
“The worst thing for China, or any totalitarian society, is to have people start realizing that the government policies are failures,“ he said. ”Because the only reason that the totalitarian societies exist is they have power.”