The Second Oldest Lie: Verified?

It’s been said (even by me) that the “Second Oldest Lie” in the world is:

“I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

As to what the “World’s Oldest Lie” is rumored to be, modesty – and my website host – prevents me from mentioning it, which is just fine because it’s not important right now.

But, what might be important is a recent study documenting which countries paid a higher price during the COVID-19 “Eldemic”:

“Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay.”

Plain-English translation? Countries with decreasing Life Expectancy (such as the USA), higher incomes (like the USA) and higher rates of Non-Communicable Diseases (such as cancers, heart disease, and obesity…like, say, the USA) paid the highest price in terms of COVID-19 deaths (which, as we know, the USA did).

More importantly, the researchers concluded this:

“Regarding government’s actions (i.e., containment and stringency index), no association was found with the outcome [of preventing COVID-19 deaths], suggesting that the other studied factors were more important in the COVID-19 mortality than political measures implemented to fight the virus, except for the economic support index.”

Source:Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation“, De Larochelambert Quentin, Marc Andy, Antero Juliana, Le Bourg Eric, Toussaint Jean-François, “Frontiers in Public Health”, 2020, Vol. 8, DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339, ISSN=2296-2565, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full#SM6

Plain-English translation? Nothing the government did or told you to do during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic helped reduce the death rate from the virus except for handing out money to support the economy.

Now, even the authors state that “It is out of scope to speculate on any cause-effect relation.” but that simply means the authors aren’t experts on Politics, Economics, Sociology, or Medicine, only Statistical Modeling.

Of course, this won’t stop people from doing just that: Speculating a “cause-and-effect” relationship. They range from President Trump not acting fast enough to stop the pandemic, mishandling the crisis, telling us all to take Hydroxychloroquine, not paying attention to his Obama-error advisors, not keeping the economy shut down longer, etc.

But, I’m sure Liberal Democrats would be more than happy to provide a solution to make sure every country “shares the price” equally should another unfortunate virus scourge the world in the future: Government control of personal health, wealth redistribution from successful to less successful countries, and more government money distributed to those less fortunate, requiring an expansion of government bureaucracy and employees.

As usual.

Perhaps former President Ronald Reagan was also right when he stated during his first Inaugural Speech back in 1981:

“Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

Thanks for Reading!

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