Guest Editorial By Kristina Kristen

Government officials’ interventions for COVID-19 have been strategically one-sided and myopic. Many leaders, in response to the perceived virus threat, completely abandoned rational considerations to lower overall suffering and death. In a blind focus intended to “stop the virus,” officials recklessly locked down billions of people globally with little to no debate, while ignoring the cost factor, an indispensable half of a “cost-benefit” analysis in calculating any solution.

The cost-benefit analysis, the most basic tenet of any decision making process, especially those having to do with life, death and health, must contain two critical data points: whether the intervention will work and whether the cost of it working will create more harm, in which case other alternatives must be considered, including: doing nothing. If a so-called solution “works” but in doing so creates massive, disproportionate collateral damage and increases overall harm, then clearly it cannot be called a solution, and certainly should never be mandated onto a population.

An Unprecedented, Unscientific Experiment

Draconian mandates of isolation, social distancing and masks imposed on healthy populations have never been done before. Why? The answer is simple—because an elementary calculation of potential lives saved versus the overall decimation of an entire society was a preposterous “solution” to any microbe. The “medicine” would be far deadlier and damaging than the “disease.”

The layered downstream and long-term effects of lock downs, social distancing, and mandated masks have yet to be fully revealed, but what we do know is poverty and suicide rates have sky-rocketed as 50,000,000 people have been forced into poverty in the US, alone. [27,28] Deaths from poverty and despair, based on estimates of 37,000 deaths per 1% increase in unemployment in the US will be devastating, lasting after the virus is long gone.[39]

Globally, a UN report also finds the lock downs are reversing decades of progress on alleviating poverty and improving health and education [26]. Strangely, COVID-19 seems to be mostly a disease of the developed world, with 74 percent of the 4.4 million cases and 85 percent of worldwide deaths occurring in North America and Europe. [37]

On the other hand, lock downs kill people through deprivation of livelihoods and disturbance of health services. Some 1.6 billion of the world’s 2 billion informal workers, or nearly half the global workforce, have already lost their jobs, according to the International Labor Organization. These include gig workers in Western economies. But the vast majority of job loss is in developing countries, where most employment is informal and families live hand-to-mouth, relying on a daily wage if they are to eat at the end of that day.[38]

Missing Concept: Economics Impact On Life, Health, and Mortality

There is an incessant false dichotomy implied in the flawed assertion that “health is more important than wealth.” The economy, to many, is somehow disconnected from what it actually is, a life force. What seems to be lost on some is while the wealthy profit from this life force the majority live, suffer, and die by it. To make matters even worse with regard to supposed “benefit,” global data now illustrate countries with full lock downs not only have massive economic collateral damage, but deaths from COVID in many cases are higher than countries with minimal to no lock downs, such as Sweden, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan— the natural “control groups” in this massive, unprecedented global experiment [30]. This evidence takes any “benefit” of lock downs completely out of the equation, leaving all “costs”– real costs that officials have ignored.

Problematic “Virtues”

Mandating millions of healthy people, young and old, to wear cloth masks is perhaps the most troublesome “solution” that, as it turns out, also delivers little benefit with a suffocating cost. On a very basic level, we all understand the size of the particle compared to the size of the filter, matters…right? The image of throwing sand against a chain link should come to mind. What we know is masks can filter some bacteria and contaminants, but given the size of viruses at 0.06-0.125 microns, cloth masks are virtually incapable of blocking their aerosolized transmission […]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/covid-response-is-all-cost-no-benefit/

© Aug 20 2020 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.