Flawed Assumptions from D.C. Bureaucrats Led to Disastrous Lockdowns

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addresses a briefing on the latest information about the Coronavirus Friday, Jan. 31, 2020, in the James S. Brady Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

At The American Spectator, David Catron explains how governors ignored the epidemiologists, and instead trusted the flawed assumptions of D.C. bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci, and flawed modelers like Neil Ferguson. He writes (abridged):

Every state and local politician who imposed lockdowns pursuant to the COVID-19 pandemic claimed their decisions were based on “the science.”

In reality, they ignored the advice of leading epidemiologists, relying instead on statistical models produced by “experts” with histories of wildly inaccurate projections.

The most notorious of these oracles was, of course, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, who claimed that coronavirus could kill 2.2 million Americans. Based on such apocalyptic predictions, combined with overcautious warnings from Beltway bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci, all but a few governors implemented economically destructive stay-at-home orders — despite the reservations of respected epidemiologists

Included among the genuine experts who advised that far more information was needed before such draconian countermeasures could be scientifically justified were John P. A. Ioannidis of Stanford University, Michael T. Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, and Knut M. Wittkowski, formerly of Rockefeller University.

All three pointed out flaws in the assumptions upon which officials based their lockdown orders. Ioannidis was the first to publicly question the reasoning behind these edicts. In an essay published in STAT on March 17, he wrote that the precipitous response to the pandemic was “a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco” and that decisions of monumental significance.

The officials who imposed state and local lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic ignored science and relied on charlatans like Neil Ferguson and the same jackleg models that predicted bird flu would cause 150 million deaths and projected 2.2 million coronavirus deaths in the United States.

Now the models tell us that there will be a summer surge if we don’t stay home like good little girls and boys.

This nonsense has nothing to do with science or public health. It is, as always, about politics and power. It’s time to come out and dare them to do something about it.

By DAVID CATRON