Left-leaning media outlets are breaking out the party balloons and funny hats this weekend because of COVID. No, the pandemic isn't back, so don't fly into a panic. The celebratory atmosphere is showing up because they finally found a survey of "experts" who are claiming that hundreds of thousands of additional lives could have been saved during the pandemic. How? By having more states follow the strictest face mask and vaccine mandates. Try not to injure your neck by shaking your head in dismay over these conclusions. The Independent has the details of this supposedly definitive study. 

The US could have avoided almost 250,000 Covid-19 deaths if every state had adopted stricter mask and vaccine requirements seen in the Northeast during the height of the pandemic, according to a new study.

Researchers say that the country, which saw more than 1.1 million Covid deaths, could have been spared an estimated 118,000 to 248,000 more lives.

The research from University of Virginia public policy and economics professor Christopher J Ruhm, published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Health Forum, analyzed mortality data between 2020 and 2022, comparing it to a baseline of 2017 through 2019.

Yes. If I'm looking for definitive information about the suppression of an airborne virus, the first person I'll ask is an economics professor. Amy Curtis at Twitchy delivers the correct amount of snark in rebutting these claims. 

There is no way -- none whatsoever -- that any study or scientist or doctor could know what might have happened in the past.

So when the media try to retcon us into thinking that if we has just locked down even harder during COVID, we would've saved more lives.

There are so many variables in this, it's impossible to know how things would have played out. Especially now that we know masking and the vaccine were wholly ineffective.

The authors of this study apparently missed the hearings where the sainted Dr. Faucci and others testified before Congress under oath and admitted that they made up the entire idea of social distancing out of whole cloth. It was never effective and it was never going to be effective. If a disease is spread strictly through contact or the spraying of droplets of saliva or other bodily fluids when people sneeze or cough, it might have been useful. But once a virus goes airborne, there is no "safe distance" in confined spaces. 

The same goes for face masks. They could readily be effective in blocking droplets, but they don't stop people from breathing in the air. The cloth masks that the majority of people were wearing during the pandemic were later shown to be entirely useless. Even the highest quality surgical masks were only useful if they were worn properly with a tight seal. But when the mandates allowed people to lower their masks in public when eating or drinking, even those masks were rendered ineffective.

The lockdowns were simply a disaster. Even the authors of this study admit that "efforts to close nursing homes and schools likely caused more harm than good." (Ya think?) But people were dealing with an unknown medical threat and looking to the government for answers. Once the government at every level got a taste of unbridled executive authority, many of those politicians immediately became addicted. And don't even get me started on those bizarre mRNA vaccines. Despite all of the promises that were made and the hundreds of billions of dollars that were flushed away on them, they didn't work. True vaccines prevent the contraction and transmission of the virus they target. The COVID vaccines did neither. I had the original vaccines and one set of booster shots and I still caught the damn disease. (Twice!) Between the President and the First Lady, it seems like they caught COVID a dozen times or more and they were vaxxed from hell to breakfast.

This report is nonsense. The leftists are just looking for a way to go back to restricting everyone's freedom and movement and telling people how they need to live. Don't let it happen again. If we do, the next "emergency" will never end, I assure you.