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Revolver News just showcased how a new study out of Canada has confirmed our study from last summer finding that the long-term mortality impact of lockdowns will drastically exceed any lives saved from prevented coronavirus deaths.

But it’s not just Revolver and a few academics who are souring on lockdowns. Like clockwork, the most famous lockdown enforcers on the left are turning against them as well, just in time for Joe Biden’s inauguration. The timing is so blatant, so cynical, that it seems like a deliberate ritual to humiliate a servile public.

For months, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has ruled like a tyrant over the people of New York. Religious believers holding drive-in church services were threatened with huge fines, or even arrest. Thousands of restaurants and other businesses failed as Cuomo kept the state in strict lockdown mode deep into the summer.

Yet now, Cuomo is making a mockery of his earlier authoritarianism. Last week, the governor announced that the state must move rapidly ahead with reopening, and can’t even afford to wait for the new coronavirus vaccine to be more widely distributed.

Revolver will of course be very glad to see New York reopened, and some small measure of liberty restored to the state’s suffering citizens. But at the same time, Cuomo’s total reversal of attitude is glaring. Coronavirus is not dying out in the state of New York. In fact, the state hit a new record high for cases just three days before Cuomo’s tweet, then set another record on Friday. Deaths are rising as well; the 264 deaths announced on Thursday were the most in the state since the major wave of fatalities last spring.

Revolver doesn’t believe these caseloads and deaths justify punitive lockdowns. But Cuomo did, and imposed his position on 19 million New Yorkers for all of 2020, to their tremendous ruin. Now, suddenly, Cuomo is racing to reopen before the vaccine he insisted on waiting for can be distributed.

What changed? You know exactly what changed: Joe Biden was elected president. The same cynical political actors who wanted the coronavirus crisis to be as cataclysmic as possible, in order to bring down President Trump, now want to insist that everything is swiftly returning to normal, so that the recovery can be attributed to the miraculous influence of Old Joe.

Cuomo isn’t alone in his reversal. Last May, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot was so zealous about coronavirus that she held back the city from reopening last May, even when the rest of Illinois was doing so, and even though Illinois had only a few hundred coronavirus cases a day.

But now, everything is different: Illinois has far more coronavirus, but lockdowns are no longer a priority. On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she wants to reopen the city’s bars and restaurants for indoor dining very soon, even though Illinois’s daily load of coronavirus vastly exceeds the numbers from last spring.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday she’s seeking to reopen Chicago’s bars and restaurants for indoor service as soon as possible.

“If we look at the various criteria that the state has set, we are meeting most, if not all of those, so that’s a conversation that I will have with the governor,” she said.

“We are at the point where we need to be talking about when and not if.”

Easing restrictions on indoor service would provide a safer outlet for people to socialize and possibly cut down on underground parties where attendees do not social distance or wear masks, she said. [Chicago Sun-Times]

Everywhere, the old lockdown narrative is evaporating even as cases and deaths peak across the United States. On Thursday, Newsweek touted a study whose finding has been obvious to more critical observers for months: Intense lockdowns do almost nothing to curb coronavirus versus less punishing methods.

This was hardly the first study to make such a finding. A study from all they way back in June found no link between strict lockdowns and coronavirus mortality rates. But now, of course, things have changed. Donald Trump is on his way out. The president, befitting his concern with the well-being of ordinary Americans, was a sharp critic of long-term lockdowns and school closures. In their frenzy to oppose the president and drive him from office, the progressive establishment grew ever more hysterical in their lockdown mania. But now that their plan worked, they want the country to be recovering under a Biden administration.

The maneuver is so cynical and so blatant that it’s hard to believe. But why should Americans be surprised? This is the same elite that sought to criminalize all outdoor gatherings, but then embraced the George Floyd protests as perfectly healthy. This is the same elite that flip-flopped completely on masks. This is the same elite that called riots “mostly peaceful” as buildings burned in front of them. The more they get away with, the more arrogant they will become, and the more essential it will be to topple them completely.

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