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'15 Days to Slow the Spread'
Townhall.com ^ | 20 March A.D. 2024 | John Stossel

Posted on 03/20/2024 7:44:40 PM PDT by lightman

Four years ago, government officials told us, "Stay home!" We have "15 days to slow the spread."

Days turned into months and then years, while officials chipped away at our freedoms.

I have long been wary of politicians, but even I was surprised at how authoritarian many were eager to be.

Some demanded police to go after people surfing. They took down the rims of basketball hoops. Children's playgrounds were taped up like crime scenes. They told people in rural Utah and Wyoming to stay in their homes.

In the name of safety, politicians did many things that diminished our lives, without making us safer.

They complied with teachers unions' demand to keep schools closed. Kids' learning has been set back by years.

Politicians destroyed jobs by closing businesses. Some shutdown orders were ridiculous. Landscaping businesses and private campgrounds were forced to shut down.

Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden sharply increased government spending. Trump's $2.2 trillion "stimulus" package, followed by Biden's $1.9 trillion "American Rescue Plan," led to so much money-printing that inflation doubled and then tripled.

This week, the fourth-year anniversary of "15 days to stop the spread," my new video looks back at politicians' incompetence.

First, government probably killed people with its endless red tape.

At least the Trump administration broke FDA rules to speed vaccine approvals. But FDA rules kept perfectly good American Covid test kits off the market because they hadn't gone through its multiyear approval process. Recommended Too Dumb for Harvard? Lemon's Too Dumb for Twitter Ann Coulter

Michigan's Gov. Gretchen Whitmer banned "public and private gatherings of any size." Residents were told they could not see friends or relatives.

Many of her rules seemed random. She banned motorboats and jet skis, but allowed kayaks and canoes. She closed small businesses, but exempted big-box stores if they blocked off aisles offering plant nurseries and paint. Why?

Even the CDC's "six-foot rule" under Trump was arbitrary, says former FDA commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb. Covid travels in aerosols that flow much farther than six feet.

When some Americans became fed up and protested, they were vilified for "threatening the public." Some were fined. A few were arrested.

It's clear now that restrictive rules were not the best way to protect people.

Sweden took a near opposite approach. They mostly left people alone.

Swedish officials encouraged the elderly and other at-risk people to stay home.

But beyond that, they let life carry on as normal. Sweden didn't impose lockdowns, school closures or mask mandates.

They followed standard pre-Covid wisdom that the best protection is what epidemiologists call "herd" or "collective" immunity. Once a critical mass of people are infected and recover, collective immunity will reduce the total number of infections.

Arrogant American politicians and media "experts" sneered at Sweden's approach.

NBC "reported" on what it called, "Sweden's failed experiment. How their dangerous Covid gamble went wrong."

CBS confidently stated, "Sweden becomes an example of how not to handle COVID."

Time Magazine headlined: "Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster."

But the media's experts were just wrong. Swedish health officials were right.

Yes, at the beginning of the pandemic, Sweden suffered high numbers of Covid deaths, but as predicted, over time, herd immunity protected people. Sweden's excess death rate was the lowest in Europe.

Sweden's economy got through the pandemic much healthier than other countries. Because Swedish schools never closed, Swedish students didn't suffer the learning losses that American kids did.

Four years later, have media blowhards who were wrong apologized? Corrected their stories? No.

Have American politicians apologized and begged forgiveness for their arrogance, for destroying jobs, restricting our freedom and needlessly pushing us around? No.

Let's not give politicians power like that again.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: authoritarian; civilrights; covid; covid1984; covidcommunism; lockdown; tyranny
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To: lightman

Contrast the gatherings outside to Voice opposition to the Tyranny And the
‘Mostly PEACEFUL” RACE RIOTS of
BLM/ANTIFA !!!
.
Two Weeks To Flatten the Curve
Four Years Like Slaves We Served!!!
.
DemonRats Owe Us !


21 posted on 03/20/2024 8:18:18 PM PDT by Big Red Badger (ALL Things Will be Revealed !)
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To: NorthMountain

@ post 16 - For the Win!


22 posted on 03/20/2024 8:20:08 PM PDT by week 71
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To: madison10

Good Call


23 posted on 03/20/2024 8:21:28 PM PDT by Big Red Badger (ALL Things Will be Revealed !)
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To: lightman

Government only has our best interest at heart.


24 posted on 03/20/2024 8:24:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: madison10

The Wuhanic Panic was far more destructive than the Wuhanic Plague.

I continue to be outraged at the control-freak tendencies most of our political “leaders” exhibited ... and disgusted by the extent to which most of my fellow Americans pusillanimously surrendered to them.


25 posted on 03/20/2024 8:30:45 PM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: lightman

26 posted on 03/20/2024 8:32:00 PM PDT by conservativeimage (Divorce the Deep State and Reconstruct Civilian Government: https://tasa.americanstatenationals.org)
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To: sport

A lot of people in my area are still wearing masks. It’s surreal. I have to wonder if they’ve ever done any critical thinking or research.


27 posted on 03/20/2024 8:32:09 PM PDT by Mr. N. Wolfe
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To: lightman

I’m guessing that 90% of the veterinarians in practice were thinking that the medical community was “screwing the pooch” with their decisions concerning the Coronavirus outbreak. The Medical Community broke the hard and fast laws of epidemiology and vaccine safety with their directions. The entire fiasco was against everything I was taught in epidemiology and medicine in controlling epidemics.


28 posted on 03/20/2024 8:48:19 PM PDT by vetvetdoug
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To: joe fonebone

I’m not much of a people person as it is. Not my choice, others just don’t fully accept you if you are not neurotypical. Anyways I had to put more than one person in their place for telling me I need to put my mask up over my nose (can’t breathe well out of my nose) and was standing 5 ft or more away from them. What a surreal and F’d up time that while thing was. :(


29 posted on 03/20/2024 9:05:23 PM PDT by kelly4c
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To: lightman

the fascist, fear-driven spirit of the time pretty well summarized.

the ugly wickedness of unfettered gov’t was completely unleashed in 2020 America. most—swallowing the gobs of propaganda without bothering to chew—stampeded along with the demagogic totalitarians who were, and still mostly are, in charge.

‘For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.’ NKJ 2 Timothy 1:7.


30 posted on 03/20/2024 9:08:29 PM PDT by dadfly
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To: lightman
Some of us knew we were being swindled the late March day when Mike Pence lowered the “15 days” sign and hoisted “30 days to flatten the curve.”

Mike Thirty-Pence sure proved himself to be a master baiter.

Yup and yup. Despicable.

31 posted on 03/20/2024 9:10:59 PM PDT by nutmeg (FJB)
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To: lightman
I have long been wary of politicians, but even I was surprised at how authoritarian many were eager to be.

Many of them truly deserve to have their necks stretched.

32 posted on 03/20/2024 9:29:20 PM PDT by TigersEye (Our Republic is under seige by globalist Marxists. Hold fast!)
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To: Mr. N. Wolfe

“”A lot of people in my area are still wearing masks. It’s surreal.””

I still see persons on bicycles wearing a mask. Some of them appear to be commuting to and from work. I often used a bicycle for local transportation, and cannot imagine interrupting the flow of oxygen into the body, or concentrating the C02 exhalation so that I breathe more C02 into the body with every breath.

Imagine a Saturday Night Live skit where the entire Tour De France peloton are wearing the N-35 masks. Those that do not keel over on the flatlands will definitely pass out/die on the first mountain climb.


33 posted on 03/20/2024 9:39:49 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus III (Do, or do not, there is no try)
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To: Mr. N. Wolfe

They wear masks to signal that they want nothing to do with us.


34 posted on 03/20/2024 9:41:18 PM PDT by HIDEK6 (God bless Donald Trump. A)
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To: joe fonebone

Never trusted the feds since 1968; never wore a mask, never got any government goop (pure blood), wont even get a flu shot now because I think they mix and match, went anywhere and everywhere I chose to and screw their rules.

I’m pretty sure I got the VID around November or early December of 2019, I was down south in the LA area doing some work on my house down there. Got a cold/flu/just plain crappy feeling for about two weeks, my brother had the same, he lives in the Palmdale area but does a lot of business in the LA area.

Government says it didn’t get here until January of 2020 but that was just when they FINALLY IDENTIFIED IT.
Dumbasses, like flights weren’t coming in from CHINA long befor they figured it out.

I’m 73 my brother is 75, I’v been a smoker since I was 11 years old and we BOTH SURVIVED IT!


35 posted on 03/21/2024 12:20:06 AM PDT by 5th MEB (1)
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To: 5th MEB

Good for you!


36 posted on 03/21/2024 12:25:31 AM PDT by antceecee
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To: lightman

Trump vax trump lockdown. An honest person will admit they would have never locked down or taken a Biden or Obama vax.
Of. Purse trump was in Iowa talking repeatedly about the billions he saved worldwide with operation warp speed and the honest people there said yes sir may I have another. How many months did the experts run the presidency…
And to ensure his tyranny was perpetual he stood beside fauci and singed in mail in voting..
fauci- Trumps presidential commendation awarded.
Yes let’s do that again. This time though the labs will be creating something more fun, like ivermectin resistant diseases.


37 posted on 03/21/2024 3:10:02 AM PDT by momincombatboots (BQEphesians 6... who you are really at war with. )
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To: Drew68

” standing behind Fauci and Birx at the presidential podium, nodding his head in agreement.”

I don’t recall the “nodding his head” part. Mostly, he looked like a POW forced to tolerate the nonsense being spewed by the two terrorists.


38 posted on 03/21/2024 3:34:55 AM PDT by MayflowerMadam (Fraud vitiates everything." - SCOTUS)
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To: Mr. N. Wolfe

“A lot of people in my area are still wearing masks.”

Good. At least they’re self-identifying that they’re low-IQ Democrats (Is that redundant?), so you can avoid them. But you CAN point and laugh.


39 posted on 03/21/2024 3:39:52 AM PDT by MayflowerMadam (Fraud vitiates everything." - SCOTUS)
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To: lightman

.


40 posted on 03/21/2024 3:43:13 AM PDT by sauropod (Ne supra crepidam.)
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