Two twits, Twitter, twaddle, and truth.

Vincent J. Curtis

29 July 21

RE:  A big tent of COVID misinformation.  By Grant Lafleche of the St. Catharines Standard, and Edward Tian special to Torstar.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 29 July 21.

When two twits are tasked with analyzing tweets, what do you get?  Twaddle!

The purpose of the article by Grant Lafleche and Edward Tian was to discredit the anti-lockdown movement by associating it with other, unsavory, movements and insinuating that the movement had no basis in science.

In fact, the settled science is that widespread lockdowns are ineffective in controlling the spread of COVID.  And it doesn’t matter whether QAnon agrees that the earth is round or not as to the actual facts.  The reason lockdowns persist is that it makes governments look like they’re doing something, and it makes the Karens of the world feel better.

The first articles questioning widespread lockdowns were published in April, 2020, by Hoover Institution Fellow Dr. Scott Atlas.  He showed that prolonging a lockdown beyond two weeks created health issues itself, and that after four weeks the potential benefits of lockdown were eclipsed by the adverse consequences.

In January, 2021, the Stanford University Medical Center released a study of lockdown measures tried world-wide, and found they were ineffective in controlling the spread.  In April, 2021, two M.I.T. professors explained why lockdown measures don’t work.  The mathematical modelling of the spread showed that keeping people indoors with inadequate ventilation caused the spreading of any airborne contagion.

This author has shown empirically with Ontario’s COVID data that the province’s lockdown measures were completely ineffective.  But too many reputations of important people would be crushed if the Ford government admitted it.

Trying to discredit the “anti-lockdown movement” by associating it with unsavory elements is a political tactic that avoids coming to grips with the underlying truth that lockdowns failed – and not due to lack of application.

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