By Tom Woods

The LA Times just ran this headline:

“Covid Lockdowns Saved Millions of Lives — So of Course Ron DeSantis Is Against Them”

No evidence for this claim is provided. The evidence against it is everywhere you look, if you bother to look at any of the charts.

But this is why I keep saying that as tired of this issue as we may be, it is not dead until the “lockdowns saved lives” camp is completely routed.

Johan Norberg, a Swedish libertarian who’s been a guest on the Tom Woods Show and who’s done interesting work on numerous topics, just released his own study of the Swedish record since 2020, and like others he finds Sweden to have done the best, in terms of all-cause mortality, in all of Europe, with some data possibly showing it second to Denmark.

Economically, too, Sweden did better than so many other places. Norberg writes, “The world economy was 2.9% smaller late 2021 than it would be according to forecasts before the pandemic; the Eurozone 2.1% smaller, and the U.S. 1.2% smaller. The Swedish economy was 0.4 percent BIGGER than forecast before the pandemic.”

The New York Times, meanwhile, referred to Sweden as a “cautionary tale,” and Donald Trump warned that Sweden “is paying very heavily for its decision not to lock down.” We expect that kind of talk from the New York Times, but it’d be nice if prominent Republican politicians didn’t also make idiotic statements about lockdown, statements they never retracted or apologized for even after the data was overwhelming.

Finally, a quick reminder that the great John Bush, my friend of 16 years, is doing a Bitcoin-for-beginners workshop tomorrow. If you’re interested in Bitcoin but the subject seems daunting, chances are you’ll stay that way unless you say: doggone it, I’m going to find out about this thing once and for all.

Doesn’t cost anything, but you’ll need to reserve your spot here:
https://www.tomwoods.com/beginners

Tom Woods