Analysis has found that the $6 trillion COVID-19 stimulus packages passed by Congress, which includes the 1.9 trillion passed on Wednesday, will cost American taxpayers the equivalent of $17,000 individually or $69,000 per family.
The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reports that House Budget Committee ranking member Rep. Jason Smith provided him with highlights of the COVID bill passed by the Senate:
- Less than 9% goes to combating COVID-19.
- Twenty-seven percent (or more than $500 billion) goes to state and local governments.
- Twenty-one percent (or approximately $400 billion) goes to policies that reduce private-sector employment.
- $135 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.
- $135 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- $200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
- $12 billion for foreign aid.
What is spent in this year of the $1.9 trillion?
- Five percent ($6 billion) of the $130 billion set aside for K-12 schools.
- Five percent ($250 million) of the $5 billion for Emergency Housing Vouchers.
- Seventeen percent ($7 billion) of the $39 billion for child care.
- Twenty-three percent ($11 billion) of the $50 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
- None of the $5 billion for homeless assistance.
Smith reportedly told NPR, “If this bill was about direct payments to people and putting shots in the arms and vaccines, you would have strong bipartisan support across this Congress and across this country, but less than 9% of the entire spending in this bill actually goes to crushing the virus and helping distribute vaccines and putting shots in arms.”
For the full report, click HERE
Stanford Doc: Lockdowns are “Biggest Public Health Mistake” Ever Made
Stanford University Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya called the COVID-19 lockdowns “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” and says the harm it causes to society is “catastrophic.”
In an interview with the Dialy Clout, as reported by Newsweek, Battacharya said the lockdowns are having a devastating effect on both short and long-term public health.
The Stanford doctor is behind the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition signed by thousands of medical professionals and practitioners, which calls for an end to the lockdowns.
In the interview, Bhattacharya said the declaration stems from “two basic facts.”
“One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger…and that’s a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it’s people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let’s protect the vulnerable. The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live.”
He also pointed to the disparate effect the lockdowns have based on socioeconomic status: “People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich,” he said.
The impact the lockdowns is having on children appears to be quite devastating. According to a recent report, from January 2020 to November 2020, self-harm claims have risen by 333 percent and overdoses have gone up by 120 percent among 13 to 18 year-olds.
In an email to Newsweek, Bhattacharya said, “I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation.”
“At the same time,” he wrote, “they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously imposed. In the US, they have – at best – protected the ‘non-essential’ class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are trickle down epidemiology.”
For the full report, click HERE.
Study: COVID Lockdowns Had No Clear Benefit Over Voluntary Preventative Measures
Well, it sure is convenient that this information is coming out just in time for the Biden presidency…
According to Newsweek, a new study evaluating global COVID-19 responses found that lockdowns “did not provide significantly more benefits to slowing the spread of the disease than other voluntary measures…”
The study was conducted by Stanford researchers and analyzed the growth in COVID cases in 10 countries in early 2020.
“The study compared cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. – all countries that implemented mandatory lockdown orders and business closures – to South Korea and Sweden, which implemented less severe, voluntary responses. It aimed to analyze the effect that less restrictive or more restrictive measures had on changing individual behavior and curbing the transmission of the virus,” writes Newsweek.
The researchers found “no clear, significant beneficial effect [of more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”
There has been a growing chorus of strict lockdown proponents doing complete 180s as it relates to their COVID policies, and now politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot are breathlessly claiming they must reopen businesses quickly.
Earlier this week, Cuomo tweeted, “We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely.”
We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely.#SOTS2021
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 11, 2021
Lightfoot said reopening is imperative because the closures forced residents into “secret, underground parties in hotels and businesses.”
“If we have people and give them an outlet for entertainment … we have much more of an opportunity, in my view, to be able to regulate and control that environment,” Lightfoot said.
“Let’s bring it out of the shadows. Let’s allow them to have some recreation in restaurants, in bars, where we can actually work with responsible owners and managers to regulate and protect people from COVID-19.”
These Democrat leaders couldn’t even wait for Biden’s inauguration to do an about-face on their COVID policies which we all know were put in place to damage President Trump’s legacy.
