Germans March Against Shutdown | Power Line

Germans March Against Shutdown | Power Line
"...Of course, it wasn’t the virus that crushed Germany’s economy, it was the shutdown.

The huge crash in the April to June period was triggered by a massive collapse in exports and measures introduced in a desperate attempt to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

This will set alarm bells ringing in Germany as even in the worst three months of the financial crisis in 2009, the country’s economy shrank by less than five percent.

This is a point that is not made often enough: 

• the costs of government shutdowns to “fight” the coronavirus are huge and indisputable. 
• The benefits of shutdowns are speculative and hypothetical. 

In my opinion, those benefits are minimal and maybe nonexistent. 

Closing down economic and social life can indeed slow the spread of the COVID virus (or any disease), albeit at enormous cost.

But what is the benefit? 
The evidence increasingly shows that shutdowns merely prolong the inevitable effects of the disease. 
Instead of suffering only from the effects of the disease, we now suffer from the same effects of the disease, spread over a longer time, but in addition are experiencing the incalculable human toll caused by the shutdowns. 

I have yet to see any convincing evidence that this assessment is incorrect...Read all.