The Case Against Lockdowns

About this sermon

Music provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com Spanish translations by Vélez Translations, http://www.veleztranslations.com Imagine a scenario in which we discovered that an asteroid was hurtling towards our planet – the kind that was likely to kill half the life on earth and it was inevitable. It was going to strike and there was nothing we could do to prevent that. How would you spend the little time you had left in anticipation of that event? Would you spend every waking moment you had trying to ensure that you were one of the ones who would survive by digging a bunker in your backyard? Or would you accept that a bad thing was happening that was outside of your control and use the time you had left to maximize whatever good you could do with the time you had left? You could spend that time getting right with God, getting right with other people, and saying and doing the things with your loved ones that the business of daily life may have compelled you to neglect. How you respond to that question says a lot about your priorities and while it’s not a perfect analogy to what I’m going to be talking about in this video, I do think there is enough to compare there that I’m going to revisit it before the end of this video, so try to keep that hypothetical scenario in the back of your mind. I’m not the kind of person who would stubbornly insist that there is never a reason for us to consider locking ourselves down to avoid a potentially greater risk if we didn’t take those measures. But there is a case to be made for why lockdowns are a bad idea, and since that side of the debate doesn’t seem to be getting much breathing room, I thought I’d try to share some thoughts on it. The first thing we have to admit is that locking down is an extreme measure with devastating effects. It’s the kind of thing that can plunge people into economic desperation because of employment and income loss. It can breed loneliness and isolation, exacerbate mental health risks, place sundry vulnerable people at risk of domestic abuse, and it can discourage countless people from accessing necessary health screenings and checkups that, if avoided, will be the difference between life and death. Because of these effects, I’ve come across some estimates which have claimed that the last lockdown we went through caused FAR more loss of human life than it prevented. For example, according to Dr. Scott Atlas, so called deaths of despair (suicide, drug abuse, etc) have and will continue to dramatically rise, estimates as high as 46% of the most common kinds of cancers which would have been caught by routine screenings, have gone undiagnosed. That means that by the time they are diagnosed they will be stage 3 or 4 instead of 1 or 2. Half of people who had chemotherapy appointments scheduled, did not show up. Half of people scheduled for regular immunizations, did not show up. During the last lockdown, there were over 200,000 cases of child abuse in the US that went unreported because there was nobody outside of that domestic situation to notice anything unusual. Another statistic I read said that for every 1% increase in unemployment, there is a 2.8% increase in suicides. The last time we did a lockdown, the unemployment rate in the province I live in went from 7.2% to over 15%. That’s an increase of about 8%. And think about what this is like for the mental and social development of kids. It’s one thing to say, we have to do a one-month lockdown to flatten the curve. That’s what we were originally told. But now this thing has been going on for months approaching a year. When you were a kid, a year seemed like a lifetime and that’s because they are absorbing every experience and being irrevocably formed by them. They’re making lifelong neurological connections. And in that time, they’ve learned that they are a danger to other people, other people are a danger to them, faces from which the majority of non-verbal communication precipitates, should always be covered up, and rights and freedoms don’t count for much. Every time I see a minor outside, by themselves, they’re wearing masks. I was out for my morning run today, not wearing a mask because that would be a health hazard, and I ran past a bus stop where a teenager was waiting and he looked at me like I had just threatened to murder him. These are not healthy and rational lessons that they are learning. Now, again, there can be justifiable reasons for these measures, but is the current threat a justifiable reason. read the full transcript at https://brianholdsworth.ca Extra reading: https://www.eurasiareview.com/30052020-three-ways-lockdowns-are-costing-human-lives-oped/ https://www.thestar.com/edmonton/2019/09/27/sixteen-more-albertans-die-by-suicide-for-every-one-per-cent-increase-in-unemployment-report-finds.html https://unherd.com/thepost/scott-atlas-im-disgusted-and-dismayed/?pt