When will the pretentious proclaimers of Covid-19 “science” finally realize that the “science” has been wrong about almost everything so far? Despite their chronic wrongness, these elitists continue to use their unreliable “science” as a cudgel to put Americans under house arrest, destroy their businesses, put them out of work, trigger shortages of key commodities, burden them with trillions in federal debt, and imperil their lives.

What “science” has been wrong so far, you might ask? Let’s go through the specific claims.

The first claim was that this virus could not be transmitted between humans. This came from Chinese experts and the World Health Organization. It turns out the virus is actually very contagious between humans. While the myth of non-contagion was being touted, the Chinese allowed residents of Wuhan to travel internationally and spread the contagion around the world.

We were told the virus originated from infected bats sold in a wet market in Wuhan. It turns out that the alleged bats are not native to that area, and were never sold in the wet markets. Instead, there is a Chinese bio-weapons lab 300 yards from the alleged wet market. This lab was explicitly testing coronavirus in bats (they had advertised for coronavirus test technicians in 4Q/2019). Once the virus escaped from the lab and the Chinese realized they had a disaster on their hands, they locked down Wuhan and the surrounding province from traveling to the rest of China. But they still didn’t stop Chinese citizens from travelling to the rest of the world.

We were told that this was not a pandemic, and that international travel was okay. President Trump was condemned as xenophobic for closing our borders to the Chinese, and then to the Europeans. Actually, a pandemic emanating from Wuhan and winding through Europe was already underway. Now every country in the world has closed its borders. Now many states in America are trying to prevent movement between states and within their states. Now millions of Americans have been ordered to stay in their homes.

We were told that millions were going to die in America if we didn’t shut down the economy to “flatten the curve” to prevent the medical system from being overwhelmed. Actually, after putting over 30 million people out of work, bankrupting countless businesses, and taking on trillions in new debt, we’re learning that the curves in states and countries that didn’t shut down “flattened” in almost the same manner as the curves in states and countries that did. Many hospitals in the country are now underutilized and are begging for bailouts because they have far fewer paying customers than they had before. Some hospitals are even shutting down, and others are laying off skilled medical personnel.

We were told mitigation medicines such as chloroquine were useless, and that it was dangerous for anyone to suggest using them. Actually, chloroquine has been in use for decades for related conditions. It has proven helpful with previous SARS-based coronaviruses (which is what Covid-19 is), and is being prescribed by medical professionals all around the country for Covid-19 cases. There are reports that some medical professionals and politicians are even hoarding chloroquine for themselves and their families.

We were told that this virus was one of the deadliest in history, which is why it was imperative to give elitists the powers to take control of the economy, abandon our constitutional protections, and sacrifice our civil liberties. Actually, we’re learning that the alleged death rate of 5% to 10% was wrong by a hundred-fold. As more and more testing occurs, we’re learning that the virus has spread far wider than the “official” counts were reporting. This is actually good news. Most people who have contracted the disease were either asymptomatic or experienced mild symptoms. Now that we’re learning millions have already had this disease, the real death rate is trending closer to the typical death rate for the flu, especially for younger people.

We were told we had to “shut down” the economy to keep the virus from spreading. Actually, the economy has never been “shut down”, because it is impossible to do so. We would all starve or suffer dire hardship for lack of every commodity that we need. The “essential” workers are still working, which is about 80% of the workforce. There are two things to note from this. First, how do you stop a contagion by letting 80% of the workforce continue to work? You can’t, but you can sure make lives unbearable for the 20% who are being prevented from working. Second, how do you define “essential”? It appears that “essential” includes government workers, politicians, elitists, media professionals, bankers, and a host of other well-situated folks. The non-essential folks are apparently the non-elitists living paycheck-to-paycheck. How long do you think this “shutdown” would last if all of the government workers, politicians, elitists, media professionals, and bankers had to sacrifice their paychecks?

We’re being told that we have to keep the economy “shut down” until a cure or a vaccine is discovered. Shutting down the economy indefinitely will result in a social and economic disaster worse than the Great Depression if we allow that to happen. Our society will come unhinged, and may never recover. Actually, it is foolish to make the economy wait for a cure or a vaccine, because there has never been such a thing for any virus in history. Single-helix RNA viruses mutate rapidly. There are already 12 strains of Covid-19 that have evolved. Every year millions upon millions of people catch the cold or new strains of the flu, despite our heroic attempts to vaccinate and mitigate. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is. Shutting down the economy will not stop any virus. It will only create chaos, complicate our efforts to fight the virus, and lead to more deaths from other causes than the virus itself. The truth is that we have to develop herd immunity, and the only way to do that is to re-open society for those who are not in the high-risk categories.

We were told we had to quarantine everyone in a nationwide lockdown to mitigate the death rate. Actually, a targeted quarantine of the elderly or of people with underlying conditions would have made far greater sense, since the death rate for them is of grave concern. The death rate for the young and healthy, who are the majority of those who have lost their jobs and their civil liberties, is probably less severe than that of the common flu.

Please understand that I’m not opposed to science. Science is vital for the well-being and progress of humankind. But what has been called “science” in the case of Covid-19 is actually just hyper-political guesswork. How do I know this? Two ways. First, as I’ve noted in this article, most of the “science” has proven to be as wrong as wrong can be. Second, people are taking polar positions on the “science” based on political ideology and the desire to undermine a presidency, rather than on the results of the true exercise of the scientific method.

The national lockdown that is being called “science” right now has been the most speculative, the most expensive, and perhaps even the deadliest political and economic “experiment” in history (aside from communism). It was based on faulty data, partisan ideology, and zero precedent. The “cure” will prove to have been worse than the disease. Far worse.

We didn’t do this national lockdown “experiment” when we were confronted with AIDS, MERS, SARS, or H1N1. By the way, the worldwide deaths from H1N1 were nearly half a million. Deaths from Covid-19 are about half that. But even more perplexing about this precedent is the dilemma it exposes about when to repeat this “experiment” in the future. Every year a new viral strain emerges somewhere. Every year we have limited information at the outbreak about the severity or the extent of contagion. Do we shut down the economy every year as a safety precaution? It’s hard to imagine a more outlandish strategy. And yet that’s exactly what we did this year.

Dire warning: If you think this Covid-19 lockdown experiment was bad, you will be horrified if we ever grant the same authoritarian powers to the Elites to address the “science” of climate change.

(Written by James Keena, author of the new novel “2084: American Apocalypse”, available on Amazon).