The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that California Governor will lift the stay-at-home orders impacting much of the state today. The spin is that the out-of-control coronavirus in California is tailing off, so they’re going to change policies. This is not true. California has had some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in America since very early on, even when the virus wasn’t rapidly spreading there.
Additionally, it isn’t as if there is some kind of massive drop-off in the number of cases in the state either, making the move even more perplexing if it were to be due to “the science.” (In reality, California is refusing to share key coronavirus data with the public, claiming that it would “confuse” or “mislead” them).
California closes outdoor dining (left), California reopens outdoor dining (right). [Obama shrugging confused gif here] pic.twitter.com/RXUAEUgSzS
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) January 25, 2021
Let me also add, that some of us have been pointing out for an awful long time that these lockdowns don’t appear to do anything to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
So, what if the lockdowns actually caused MORE PEOPLE to get infected than leaving everything open would have? Because that does increasingly seem possible.
— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) May 23, 2020
Can we all just admit the coronavirus lockdowns were a huge mistake or are some people not quite there yet?
— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) May 25, 2020
California was the first state to order a lockdown, has had a mask mandate in place since June & has had some of the tightest restrictions of any state in the nation since the beginning. In other words, none of this stuff works. pic.twitter.com/Qdyl0A661U
— John Hawkins (@johnhawkinsrwn) December 15, 2020
It’s worth hammering this kind of thing home because it’s conservatives that always get falsely accused of being anti-science, but we’re the ones who actually look at the facts and the numbers and make decisions based on them instead of just picking whatever ideological position we favor and repeating the word “science” over and over. Maybe, very early on, you could have made a scientific case that lockdowns were the key to beating the coronavirus, but that has been obviously untrue since at least May. So, why are you now seeing liberal states coming around to the way of thinking conservatives have been touting without admitting it?
Well, that’s easy. After sabotaging the economy all year, at least in part to help Joe Biden win, the Democrats captured the White House. Now, they can open up the economy and ask the Democrats in DC to send them billions of dollars to pay for the damages they caused to their own states with the COVID-19 lockdowns and their refusal to curtail riots.
They scratched Joe Biden’s back in 2020 and now it’s their turn.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know.Â
