Team-Lockdown Still Pushing the Canard that “More Testing” is Needed Before New Hampshire’s Lockdown Can be Lifted

So there is this from earlier today:

And this:

And a few days ago this:

As you may recall, we were told by the “experts” that we had to put the economy in lockdown because “the surge is coming,” “the peak is coming” or some variation on the foregoing … and that absent the lockdown our hospitals would be overwhelmed. And as you also may recall, the “surge,” “peak” or whatever never came … not because we “flattened the curve” via the lockdown, but because the models predicting the “surge,” “peak” or whatever you want to call it were grotesquely wrong.

But rather than simply reopen the economy by dropping the State of Emergency and all the various “emergency orders” … because that would mean admitting that the lockdown was a mistake … the Governor is claiming WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE that the lockdown did “flatten the curve” and that we cannot reopen too precipitously. In other words, for political reasons Sununu is slow-walking reopening.

Part of Sununu’s “damage control” is maintaining that testing everyone is essential to reopening … presumably to be able to claim that he couldn’t have reopened sooner because the testing was not available.

The Democrats are trying to force Sununu to slow-walk the slow-walk by claiming … because the Democrat election strategy is to take away President Trump’s strongest issue by preventing any economic rebound … that “we need more testing.”

It was anticipated that “we need more testing” would replace “the peak is coming” as Team-Lockdown’s rallying cry, so I posted on this topic back on April 28th:

To reiterate, we already know all we need to know to reopen New Hampshire: (1) lockdowns are no more effective at stopping COVID than not locking down and (2) COVID is no more lethal than the seasonal flu.

I’m supplementing that post because Messmer and Volinsky are claiming that we need to do “contact tracing” as a prerequisite to reopening the economy. From the linked article in Volinsky’s tweet:

The recommended levels of testing are necessary to contain COVID-19 through a strategy of testing, tracing and isolating positive cases and their contacts, Harvard officials told NPR.

“Testing is outbreak control 101, because what testing lets you do is figure out who’s infected and who’s not,” said Ashish Jha, director of the Global Health Institute, in remarks carried by National Public Radio. “And that lets you separate out the infected people from the non-infected people and bring the disease under control.”

In response, I want to bring to you attention some thoughts on the matter from Dr. Scott Atlas, who recently appeared on the Tucker Carlson show:

“Testing is very important for three groups of people only right now: People entering nursing homes, people working in a hospital … pandemic responders, and patients who have symptoms of a viral infection,” he added. “We need to know if they’re contagious, but contact tracing is just simply … I hate to say it’s irrational so I’ll say it’s just not the appropriate time to use that tool.”

And:

“Contact tracing is an important tool for public health pandemics but not now,” Atlas explained, “not in this stage when millions and millions of people already have the virus.

In other words, the time for containing COVID through tracing was back in November and December of 2019. That horse has long since left the barn and no amount of tracing is going to get him back in the barn.

Testing at this point should NOT be used not to try to contain COVID … it’s too late for that … but to protect at-risk people. The only people actually at risk are the elderly in nursing homes and the non-elderly with a preexisting medical issue that makes them vulnerable to COVID.

Testing to determine whether it is “safe” to reopen the economy is a waste of time because COVID is actually LESS dangerous than the flu for the vast majority of the population.

In sum, we don’t need a certain quantum of testing in order to know whether it is safe to reopen the economy because we already know that it is “safe” to reopen the economy because … repeat after me … for the vast majority of the population COVID is LESS dangerous than the flu.