We all remember what happened last year, as news of the China virus overwhelmed the media. State governments quickly jumped on a “lockdown-our-residents” bandwagon, depriving Americans of their rights. A staggering number of businesses were forced to shut their doors. And even with the pitiful checks handed out by the PPP, countless Americans lost their jobs.
But by around May of 2020, some states started to see the light. They realized that locking down society was a terrible, downright evil idea, and they started to aggressively reopen. The media and so-called experts condemned these governors, claiming they were signing our death warrants. But guess what?
States that reopened did not fare worse (in regards to the spread of COVID) than lockdown states. In fact, the numbers were roughly the same—suggesting lockdowns did in no way help.
Do you want to know what was very different between these states, though? How their job markets were. I’m sure you can already predict the numbers.
“Between February and December of last year, states that went for Biden saw the total number of people working drop an average of 6.2 percent, versus a 2.5 percent decline in those voting for the Republican, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of federal jobs data,” the U.K. paper reported. “The 13 states that saw the lowest decline in employment all lean strongly Republican, led by Alaska and Utah which actually saw employment increase by 0.7 and 0.3 percent respectively.”…
“Blue-state governors in California and New York and Michigan have been far more strict about shutting down economic and physical activity than their red-state counterparts in Florida, South Dakota, and Texas,” he wrote. [Source: Daily Wire]
Republican-led states that either never shut down or quickly reopened only experienced a 2.5% drop in jobs. Any job losses are unfortunate, but that’s a relatively low percentage. Some conservative-leaning states did even better than that.
What’s staggering are the job losses from lockdown-loving, Democrat states. In Hawaii, the job losses stood at an enormous 13.6% (big surprise that a state that thrives on tourism lost so much, when they prevented people from visiting).
The real kicker of all this is that the infection rates and death tolls from COVID in all these states are roughly the same. Red and blue states, with comparative populations, had close to the same numbers. Which means the lockdowns did nothing to “slow the spread” or save anyone’s lives.
So, the obvious conclusion we can make is, state governors locked down their states for nothing.
Every time there was a spike in cases, Democrats were quick to expand restrictions or extend them. They used fear of this disease to act like dictators, depriving children from going to school, parents from earning a paycheck, and religious Americans from going to church. Yet none of that prevented a contagious disease from doing what contagious diseases do.
Not that Democrats will ever admit they were wrong. Even now, some states refuse to return to normal, still pushing bogus mask mandates and various restrictions (especially with schools). But the next time some COVID maniac yells at you, tell them about this.
Author: Max Gunderson