The Marines tested two groups of recruits. One was in strict lockdown, mask-wearing, hand-washing, sanitizing everything constantly. The other group lived the ordinary lives of Marines. The result?
Which is to say that the nonparticipants actually contracted the virus at a slightly lower rate than those who were under an extreme regime. Conversely, extreme enforcement of NPIs plus more frequent testing and isolation was associated with a greater degree of infection.
Check the article for the details and the data.
But the media totally missed the story.
Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:
CNN: “Many military Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, studies show”
SciTech Daily: “Asymptomatic COVID-19 Transmission Revealed Through Study of 2,000 Marine Recruits”
ABC: “Broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening”
US Navy: “Navy/Marine Corps COVID-19 Study Findings Published in New England Journal of Medicine”
No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.
We have to ask if the press is just this stupid or if it is deliberately on the side of total government control of every aspect of our lives.
This is science in a virtual lab controlled experiment. You can get a Marine recruit to live in a way that a civilian will not. And it shows that lock-downs, school closings, shutting restaurants and bars, canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas, ending funerals and weddings, getting together with friends, is Orwellian theater. There is no evidence that it helps. Even mask-wearing for the general public is not science-proven to help.
The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive. They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.
If I had told you at the beginning of 2020 that by the end of the year you would be forced to wear a face mask to enter a store, that restaurants would be closed by government edict, that the Governor would order you to cancel Thanksgiving dinner for your family and that the so-called "American Free Press" would be cheerleading for the lock-down you would have called me a conspiracy kook.
Yet here we are.
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