The lockdowns have wrecked a generation of children, impoverished families, shut down businesses and downed America in an ocean of depression, anger and fear

They’ve engineered a first-of-its-kind assault on our liberties. Never in American history has the entire population been treated like criminals under house arrest. Freedom of association has disappeared. Whom we can visit, where and when we can travel? When can we again make those every-day decisions that flow from our God-given freedoms? They’ve been axed by autocrats–the high-bound politicians who have blindly followed the often-wrong demands of epidemiologists. And by an historically compliant media.

By now, their trail of misery, despair and insolvency is so well trod that it needs no repeating here. Millions of Americans have suffered, some fatally, because of the monstrous lockdowns. And because of “experts'” shifting, erroneous and outrageous demands. Many Americans will never recover from the lost year, or, God forbid, years.

They’ve been wrong, at the outset, about the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once its deadliness became apparent, they grossly overreacted with sledgehammer blows instead of targeted action.

Just how wrong is detailed David Catron‘s The American Spectator article: “Lockdowns: Which ‘Experts’ Were Right? A year later it’s clear that most media and government experts were dead wrong.”

Start with the data. He quotes Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis of the Stanford University School of Medicine:

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed.… In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work.… [w]e don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health.

They’ve been wrong about when the vaccine would become available, grossly missing the fact that we’d have it at the end of last year. Their predictions about the number of deaths have been outlandish and constantly changing, typically hanging too high.

The evidence of their failures are seen in the schools that have been long open and in states like Florida that quickly ended the lockdowns. Despite the ridicule from distant (shutdown) platforms, as Carton notes:

Specifically, Florida’s COVID-19 death rate of 144 per 100,000 residents is lower than New York’s 243 per 100,000residents. Likewise, Georgia has a larger population than New Jersey, yet its COVID-19 death rate of 159 per 100,000 residents is lower than New Jersey’s 262 per 100,000 residents.

No, I’m not advocating complete abandonment of safety protocols. Nor am I trying to downplay the pandemic’s seriousness or the tragic loss of loved ones.

But that does not require that we step pleading for a more targeted, reasonable approach. Instead of what seems like educated guesswork. Start by opening all the schools, now.

Sadly, the epidemiologists have damaged the credibility of science. It will be a long time before the public again takes the experts’ warning words as dogma.

Americans have become captives of a culture of fear. As an American trait, taking risks has been somewhat erased. Too many people who, in this Republic, are entrusted with caring for the common good, have handed over their responsibilities to non-elected people whose guidance sometimes seem to be hunches.

A long time ago, America as we have known and loved it, must be restored.